Seeing the Light
1 Jn. 5:9-13; Jn
17:11-18[1]
I still remember my first inter-faith encounter, even though
it was almost 30 years ago. I had
already completed my college degree in Bible, and I was a seminary student in
my second year—and I thought I knew quite a bit about spiritual things. One evening, a friend told me he had met two
Muslim men who just moved to our apartment complex in Fort Worth, and asked me
to go with him to talk to them. Well, of
course I went. When we got there, we started talking with them, and the
conversation quickly moved toward faith.
Assuming that their religion was completely “man-made,” I began to talk
about how I experienced the presence of God in my faith. I will never forget my feeling of shock when
one of the men said, “I, too, experience God’s presence through my faith”! I was young, and had not been prepared
adequately to dialogue in a meaningful way with people of other faiths. I had operated with the standard prejudices
that the Christians I knew cherished about other faiths—that they were simply human
substitutes for the “real thing,” faith in Jesus Christ! My encounter with
those two men was the beginning of a fundamental shift in my outlook toward
people of other faiths.
When we read our lessons from Scripture for today, it
shouldn’t surprise us that so many Christians throughout the ages have tended
to hold some kind of prejudice or another toward those “outside” the
church. In 1 John, the distinction seems
clear enough—those who believe in Jesus as the Son of God have life, those who
don’t believe don’t have life (1 Jn. 5:12).
Similarly, the reading from John 17 sounds like the Christians were
under attack from the outside world.[2] At the very least, the “world” was something
from which one had to protect oneself. While
these kinds of negative statements can be found in various parts of our
Scriptures, what we have to understand is that they were addressed to a very
specific time and place.
It would seem that, for the most part the Christians for whom
the Scriptures bearing John’s name were intended lived in Asia Minor—modern day
Turkey. Toward the end of the First
Century, we have evidence that these Christian communities were under mounting
pressure—both from the outside as well as from within. They felt their very existence was
threatened. So it’s no wonder that they
looked at the outside world as something dangerous. They even viewed former members of their
communities to be a threat because they disagreed over the question of Jesus’
identity as human and divine.[3]
While we can certainly understand thoughts like these when a
community that feels threatened, we have to remember that taking Scriptures that
were intended to address a specific situation and lifting them out of context
to apply them to our day and time can be a risky venture. In a very real sense, it can enable the
“oppressed” to become the “oppressors.”
And in fact, you don’t have to work very hard to find all kinds of
examples throughout the history of the church where that was exactly what
happened—Christians took Scriptures like these and used them to justify all
kinds of hateful and even violent acts against those deemed “other” and
“outside.”
But the very Scriptures themselves point us to a higher road.
Some of the very books of the Bible that
suggest the “world” is such a threat to the Christian communities also clearly
speak of the “world” as the object of God’s redemptive love in Jesus Christ.[4] In fact, in the same prayer that expresses
concern for the Christians due to the threat of the world, Jesus also speaks of
sending them out into the world just as he was sent into the world (Jn. 17:18)!
I think that part of what we find in 1 John might help us out
here as well. The Scripture says that
those who believe “have the witness in themselves” (1 Jn. 5:10). There is some debate about what this means,
but I think it means that when someone’s faith in Jesus is real you can see the
life that is in them.[5] It’s obvious by who they are and how they
live. You can’t miss it. But I think the same can be said for a lot of
people who are “outside” the church. There are a lot of people out there who
have the light of God’s life within them.
All we have to do is open our eyes and see it.[6] Whether we’re talking about Mohandas Ghandi,
a Hindu, or the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist, or Mother Theresa, a Catholic nun, or
Pearl Buck, a Presbyterian missionary.
You can see the light of God’s life in and through their lives. They “have the witness in themselves.”
I think this kind
of approach is a much better option for us in our day and time. Instead of looking at others with shallow
prejudices and dismissing their religions, if we will open our eyes we can see
many people of all faiths who shine the light of God’s love all around
them. Rather than getting them to “see
the light” and come around to our way of looking at things, perhaps we should
first be open to seeing the light they already have within them. We may be surprised to find that it looks a
lot like the light of God’s life in us, and that we have a lot more in common
that we expected!
[1] © 2012
Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 5/20/12 at First
Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior
Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.a
[2] Cf. Gail
R. O’Day, “The Gospel of John,” New
Interpreters Bible IX:793; contrast the overly subtle approach of Paul
Minear, Interpretation 32 (April 1978): 178-79, where he insists that the
“world” is not humanity or those outside the church, but “the hidden
jurisdiction of the Evil One.”
[3] Cf.
Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John,
31–35; cf. also Stephen S. Smalley, 1,2,3
John, 291. The group that left had so emphasized Jesus as divine as to deny
that he was human.
[4] In John’s Gospel, it is clear that “God so
loved the world that he gave his only Son” and that “God did not send the son
into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved” (Jn.
3:16-17). On this ambiguity regarding
the “world” in John’s Gospel, cf. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI, 763-65. Cf. also Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.1:73-76, where he points to a similar dynamic in
Paul’s writings, and yet emphasizes that Paul says “God was in Christ,
reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19).
[5] Cf. Smalley,
1, 2, 3 John, 285-86; and C. Clifton
Black, “The First, Second and Third Letters of John,” New Interpreters Bible XII:440.
Cf. also G. Strecker, and H. W. Attridge, The Johannine letters, 195–196: “The Christ-event is not a thing of
the past to which one may look back with an objectifying glance. … It occurs hic et nunc in the community, as a
reconciling, life-giving reality. Christian life before God is life in the Son.”
[6] Cf. Tara
Brach, Radical Acceptance, 301, where
she speaks of this in terms of recognizing “the spark of God in others.” Cf. similarly, Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World, 92, where she
recognizes that this is a challenge, the challenge of “escaping the small self
long enough to glimpse the wholeness” in which everything that is exists. She says, “Everything that lives, lives in
this light”!
