Image of God

This morning the first Sunday after Christmas the Gospel reading designated for today is John 1:1-18.  It seems reasonable that this reading was chosen for today. I have read and heard this section of scripture many times. Like most selections from the Bible new understanding can be gained as we reread and ponder the meanings contained in them. I suppose it could be compared to mining for gold; new vanes can be discovered. This section is rich in insights available to us. I suppose a book or even books could be written about the wisdom in these eighteen verses.

Parts of four verses caught my attention this morning and they may have done so because they have often been read in the New Revised Standard Version and I was using the Contemporary English Version. The fifth verse reads, "The light keeps shining in the dark, and darkness has never put it out." There is a footnote for this verse that suggests another translation of the original language that says "...has never put it out." could be read, "understood it." Verse 14c says, "From him all the kindness and all the truth of God have come down to us." Verse 17, "The Law was given by Moses, but Jesus brought us undeserved kindness and truth." And verse 18 continues, "no one has ever seen God. The only Son, who is truly God and is close to the Father, has shown us what God is like."

So why these verses and sections of a verse? I think verse 18 ties together one of the many concepts that the author was attempting to communicate. He says there that Jesus shows us what God is like. Verse 5 says that God is light. Verses 14c and 17 use the word kindness. So if Jesus shows us the light (understanding) of what God is like we know that God exemplifies kindness, as does Jesus His reflection in human form. So, if we are Followers of the Way, as early Christians considered themselves, then a part of our task is to exemplify kindness in how we live our lives. Kindness can take many forms including compassion, understanding of others, and many more forms.

Back to the footnote associated with verse 5. It says that the darkness has never, "understood it (the light)." We can see examples of this in the world today in the way politicians speak about people who they label as "others, foreigners, or by using other phrases that demonize and separate people or even view them as somehow less than human. Those that do that do not "understand it (the light). It is our task to spread the light, the understanding of God as reflected in Jesus and to emulate Jesus as far as it is possible for us, as humans, to do so.

Silence

"No meditation better clears the mind than to listen to the shape of the silence that surrounds us. It focuses us on the thin line between what is there and what is not there. It opens our heart to the unseen, and reminds us that the world is larger than the events that fill our days."

- Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life by Kent Nerburn. page 23 

c 1998 Kent Nerburn

Luke 24: 13 - 35 The Road to Emmas

In his book The Searchers Joseph Loconte writes at the end of his introduction Two Friends On A Quest:
"Menachem Mendel, a rabbi in the nineteenth century put it this way: 'For the believer there are no questions, and for the unbeliever there are no answers.'

That claim, however, doesn't ring true for most of us. Life has a way of forcing painful questions upon us, whether we welcome them or not. And the human heart has a way of keeping alive in us the longing for answers. To extinguish this hope, either through neglect or cold rationality, would seem to diminish what it to be human. The road to Emmas, after all, is a road all of us find ourselves on - eventually. It is the path of every pilgrim who tries to make sense of the wilderness of the world around him.

'As I watched, there awoke in me an immense curiosity,' writes Perry. I was onto something.' " (1)

Further along in The Searchers, in chapter seven after Joseph Loconte has explained that during and after the Age of Enlightenment many people viewed religion as, "...the friend of ignorance..." But he goes on to say, "... authentic belief is the culmination of a process involving both the heart and the mind." (2) And two pages later he says, "Yet the description of belief on the road to Emma's - a pattern seen often in the Bible - suggests just the opposite. Christian faith, it turns out, involves the mind as well as the heart; reason as well as intuition." (3) And if we are to believe the gospel writers, we are told in Luke 2:52 that Jesus grew in wisdom and favor with God and man. If it was necessary for Jesus to grow how much more necessary is it for us to grow as well?

Yet there needs to be more to our faith than wisdom for, as the author of Luke says in his telling of the journey to Emmas, He took bread, gave thanks,broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him. The author of The Searchers goes on to say, "Perhaps this is how the natural world is opened up to the supernatural. The homely experience of offering thanks to God and breaking bread together with Jesus helps to remove what ever obstacle was keeping these men from realizing who he was." (4) Indeed, and it can be no less true for us; as we take the bread and the wine we open ourselves to that experience of communion with Jesus that is not explainable in the ordinary, everyday way we make sense of things. The writer of Hebrews understood this when he wrote, "Faith makes us sure of what we hope for and gives us proof of what we cannot see." (5)

(1) The Searchers page XXIV
(2) Page 155
(3) Page 157
(4) Pages 156 - 157
(5) Hebrews 11:1 cev

"To kill one man is to be guilty of a capital crime, to kill ten men is to increase the guilt ten-fold, to kill a hundred men is to increase it a hundred fold. This the rulers of the earth all recognize and yet when it comes to the greatest crime - waging war on another state - they praise it.

     It is clear that they do not know that it is wrong, for they record such deeds to be handed down to posterity; if they knew they were wrong, why should they wish to record them and have them handed down to posterity?

     If a man on seeing a little black were to say it is black, but on seeing a lot of black were to say it is white, it would be clear that such a man could not distinguish black and white. Or if he were to taste a few bitter things were to pronounce them sweet, clearly he would be incapable of distinguishing between sweetness and bitterness. So those who recognize a small crime as such, but do not recognize the wickedness of the greatest crime of all - the waging of war on another state - but actually praise it - cannot distinguish right and wrong. So as to right or wrong, the rulers of the world are in confusion."

Mozi, China, circa 470 - 391 B.C.

This quote comes from the book Non - Violence: The History of a Dangerous Idea by Mark Kurlansky.