God’s Light is You
by Rev. Cory Coberforward
John 8:12-20
When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
The Pharisees challenged him, “Here you are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid.” Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going. You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one. But if I do judge, my decisions are true, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father, who sent me. In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true. I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me.” Then they asked him, “Where is your father?”
“You do not know me or my Father,” Jesus replied. “If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” He spoke these words while teaching in the temple courts near the place where the offerings were put. Yet no one seized him, because his hour had not yet come.
Responsive Reading - Psalm 24:3-7
Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord?
Who may stand in his holy place?
The one who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not trust in an idol
or swear by a false god.
They will receive blessing from the Lord
and vindication from God their Savior.
Such is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek your face, God of Jacob.
Lift up your heads, you gates;
be lifted up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Read the written message below with music videos
How do you define yourself? This is often the question at the root of many spiritual teachings as well as many mental health issues. We tend to think that our issues are our own, whereas in fact the roots of all our problems tend to stem from our histories with other people, genetics, family systems, social systems, economic systems, and many other things that only exist in a continuum with the universe itself. Tell me, could you have had that defining moment if gravity never existed, or the solar system, or a billion other things? The same goes for our good qualities, we think we are our intelligence and prowess when in fact it isn’t really something we had control over. Even if we feel like we worked for something, what were the root causes of being able and willing to work for it? In this way our idea of ourselves is just that, an idea, often confined by our social norms; “I am my body and what its done,” “I am my mind.” To find peace within ourselves, we have to come to identify with more of what we truly are.
We’ve reflected quite a bit on how Jesus calls us the light of the world, and here he is in our reading from John 8 calling himself the same. What’s key here is remembering that when Christ talks about following him and never seeing darkness he is talking from a trans-personal light, as “The Way, the Truth, and the Life.” He isn’t saying, “Be Christian or else!” When he talks personally, he says things like “I don’t talk of myself,” and “Not my will but yours, Father.” On the other hand, when he speaks as “the Way” he says things like, “If you knew me, you would know my Father also,” and “Now you have seen the Father.”
The mystic Swedenborg wrote that as people in heaven (who he called angels) came to know that all their gifts were from and of God, they felt like they were more themselves. Christ knew that on a personal level he was nothing, not from a sense of misplaced humility but by realizing that the personal is a passing illusion - we are actually one with God and the universe. Our minds tell us all kinds of things, and often we don’t take them too seriously, but when it comes to questions of who we are we often feel like we have a good idea because we have a name, a body, a diploma, a zip code. But what are we truly? The light of the world.
It’s no coincidence that Jesus so often uses light when talking about himself and us and our society so often uses it when talking about consciousness and wisdom. There is even an aspect of light that we can relate to love, which is its heat. What we fail to realize is that when we look at our own experience of who we are it is the light of consciousness itself that fits the bill the best, not our bodies (which change throughout life and in dreams), nor or our minds which flit to and fro as we observe them. All experiences rise in consciousness, as consciousness, to consciousness, and there is a type of love that underlies that.
This idea levels the playing field between us and the creatures of the field and clarifies why it is our responsibility as the light of the world shining from an evolved human mind and body to take care of our earth. In doing so we are taking care of ourselves as one with our neighbours, letting our light shine. When we turn to this light within and within Christ (and others), we are turning to our unity, to our very essence as being, to Love. They say God never changes and that God is close to us, well, what never changes in our experience but the very spacious peace of our consciousness, our light?
This is why Christ’s teachings so often involve letting go of our addictions and even our habitual living to “follow” him. He even said that we will have to give up our families, which means we must let go of our hard and fast definitions and boxed-in thinking. He said these things centered in love, but, as he also said, he “came to bring a sword.” Our minds may find this kind of talk from Jesus scary, but what sees that fear? It’s funny, the Bible says that God shines on both the good and the evil, and so does our light within our minds!
The Pharisees in the Bible had a problem with Jesus’ line of teachings because it empowered the people and himself. “How dare he say that he’s a son of God?” He also said that we too should become children of God. When we take personal ownership of both our positive and our negative attributes, we fall into addictive thinking, fear, judgment, and arrogance. We all know what it’s like with someone who identifies very strongly with their thinking, sometimes they become narcissistic and defensive (outwardly judgmental), or they can become too humble and self-deprecating (inwardly judgmental). What’s our own tendency? And what is it that sees that? Jesus said in our reading that he himself passes no judgment.
Overcoming the darkness of identifying with our mind is part of what Jesus was saying when he said that he had overcome the world. The world arises within the mind and is structured by people’s thinking and the resulting doing. Christ came to know himself to be that which transcends the world and mind and invited us in countless ways to join him. He shed a light on our light so that we could be empowered to see ourselves for what we truly are. All too often we get caught in the darkness and ignorance of the mind, missing that life is easier than we make it out to be in our heads. We are already one with what we’ve been looking for. Beyond vulnerability and fear, we are one with Life and Being. To truly get to know ourselves and Christ we have to let our light, God’s likeness, shine, seeing it in the things around us and knowing it in the silence within, instead of confining it to our well-worn inner dialogues and judgmental trenches.
Peace to you,
Cory