I don’t know Oscar Pistorius, besides what was presented to the world in all the information broadcast around the Olympic Games in London last summer. All I know, then, is that he was the first double amputee to compete in the “regular” Olympic games against “able-bodied” athletes. I know that he was nicknamed “the blade runner” because of the design of the prostheses that he used to run. I know that despite winning multiple medals in the paralympic games, he did not finish in the medal in the Olympics, but that it was a monumental achievement that he competed at all, and the world watched with hope in our hearts, urging him to do well, and was encouraged by the power of the human spirit as we watched him run.
The media plays tricks on us, making us feel as though we know someone by presenting them “up close and personal,” telling their story as though they were next-door neighbors or long lost brothers or sisters, inviting us to care about them. Not a bad technique, frankly. It works so well that we are stunned when this person we know so well does something that seems out of character, when this person falls from the pedestal we’ve put them on.
I don’t know Oscar Pistorius. I don’t know what he has done, whether the emotion displayed in that South African courtroom was the ravages of guilt for an heinous act or the despair of an individual caught in an unimaginable circumstance that he was helpless to control. I don’t know. I don’t know whether to be angry, or to feel sorry or cynical about people in general. I don’t know. What I do know is that Oscar Pistorius was walking in darkness.
Duh. I’m sorry, you’re thinking, that’s the best you can do? In the face of this international tragedy you fall back on banalities? You trot out cliches that sound marginally pious but don’t say anything other than the obvious. I mean, come on. You can do better than that, can’t you?
Well, no, I don’t think so. Except perhaps to say something like there is darkness in the world. And the darkness is really dark. Therefore, it should be our strongest desire, our deepest passion to seek the light. And not just any light. But a light that gives life.
OK, I can hear your eyes rolling from here. Take a look at the text for this week while I consider how to say this in a way that doesn’t sound like something you’d read on a bumper sticker.
John 8:12-19 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life." 13 Then the Pharisees said to him, "You are testifying on your own behalf; your testimony is not valid." 14 Jesus answered, "Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. 15 You judge by human standards; I judge no one. 16 Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is valid; for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. 17 In your law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is valid. 18 I testify on my own behalf, and the Father who sent me testifies on my behalf." 19 Then they said to him, "Where is your Father?" Jesus answered, "You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also."
I could have simply chosen verse 12 as the text for this second week of Lent. That is where the “I Am” saying is found. So, we could have read one verse and then all nodded our heads and gone home. Yep, Jesus is the light. Got it, thanks.
The purpose of the subsequent verses is to show us that this isn’t as easy as it first seems. This isn’t a throw away that Jesus just tosses out one fine afternoon. This isn’t just one more metaphor being presented to help us wrap our minds around the reality of Jesus. Or rather it isn’t just that. It is, instead, an offer. It is an invitation to enter into a relationship that takes us to whole new reality, a different way of being alive in the world.
To say that there is resistance is an serious understatement. Jesus’ hearers are stunned, shocked, offended by his words. “Who do you think you are?”, they shout red-faced at him. “What gives you the right?” And worst of all, “Who are you to tell us we don’t know God? We are God experts, we are black belt in God, we have PhD’s in God! You, on the other hand are a nothing nobody from nowhere!!”
This was because Jesus pokes them with a sharp stick, trying to get their attention, and they don’t like it. They are trying to take him to court, to follow the legal rules of witness and testimony. He says, I’m not here for that. “I judge no one,” isn’t an abdication of his role as the Lord of Lords, but an indication that he isn’t here for rules right now, but for relationships. It’s not time for rules, it’s not time for courts, for trials and affidavits - if it was you’d be in even more trouble than you are right now.
He gets a little heated, it seems to me. Because they threw in his face the standard line from any who would oppose us, who would stand in our way, who would challenge our word and our faith: “Prove it!” Arghh, I hate that line. Whether I get it from my kids, or the pagan down the street, or the seeker in the pew, or the soul lost in the darkness of his own making, or of her circumstance. Prove it. And what makes this question so daggone frustrating is that I find it on my own lips, in my own heart from time to time. “Prove it, Jesus.” Prove you are who you say you are, prove it to me so that there is no shadow of doubt, no dark corner of suspicion in the worldly part of me, prove it so that I never waver in my allegiance, never stray from your path, never lose my grip on that strong hand folded around mine. Prove it. Please.
If you take out the verses at the beginning of Chapter 8 here in John (a story which many say is in the wrong place and messes up the order of things), and look back to the beginning of this long debate, you’ll discover that Jesus is in Jerusalem for the Festival of Tabernacles. Like all the great festivals, this one is marked by ritual and ceremony, by tradition and celebration. On the first night of the festival, four lamps, or large torches were brought out to the court of the women, one of the outer courts and lit up to chase away the darkness. It was said that when these torches were lit there was no courtyard in Jerusalem that couldn’t see the light. In the light of the these festival lamps, the leaders and the followers, the wise and the foolish, the saints and the sinners, the rich and the poor would dance. It was the very Presence of God that brought them through the darkness of the exodus, so what else could you do but dance? It was an expression of Joy, bubbling forth from the least and the greatest, made equal by the grace of that light.
It was in that light that Jesus said “I Am the light of the world,” the source of true joy, the fulness of life. You can’t prove it, you have to experience it. You can’t prove it, you have to accept it. If he did prove it for us, he would remove from us the opportunity to choose. Or as Maddie shows me, He holds out his hand and gives us the grace to accept the invitation to dance. He gives us the opportunity, the joy of saying yes. The only proof he allows for those who still walk in darkness is the dance of those who have said yes. We are the proof, our lives lived out in joy and hope and sometimes terrifying desperation.
I don’t know Oscar Pistorius. But when the news broke of his alleged crime my heart sank. What keeps coming to mind, however, was the photo of Oscar the blade runner holding the hand of a little girl in a pink dress and two tiny replicas of those prostheses. Her look of pride and hope and confidence learned from a man who had overcome a disability just like hers spoke volumes. It was a dance in the light for that moment. No, of course, that moment does not excuse whatever crime he may have committed. But then neither does that darkness take away the power of that moment of light. Any more than our repeated failures diminish the good that we can do when we walk in the light, when we prove Jesus is the great I Am by how we live our lives, when we dance with joy in the presence of the light of the world.
The media plays tricks on us, making us feel as though we know someone by presenting them “up close and personal,” telling their story as though they were next-door neighbors or long lost brothers or sisters, inviting us to care about them. Not a bad technique, frankly. It works so well that we are stunned when this person we know so well does something that seems out of character, when this person falls from the pedestal we’ve put them on.
I don’t know Oscar Pistorius. I don’t know what he has done, whether the emotion displayed in that South African courtroom was the ravages of guilt for an heinous act or the despair of an individual caught in an unimaginable circumstance that he was helpless to control. I don’t know. I don’t know whether to be angry, or to feel sorry or cynical about people in general. I don’t know. What I do know is that Oscar Pistorius was walking in darkness.
Duh. I’m sorry, you’re thinking, that’s the best you can do? In the face of this international tragedy you fall back on banalities? You trot out cliches that sound marginally pious but don’t say anything other than the obvious. I mean, come on. You can do better than that, can’t you?
Well, no, I don’t think so. Except perhaps to say something like there is darkness in the world. And the darkness is really dark. Therefore, it should be our strongest desire, our deepest passion to seek the light. And not just any light. But a light that gives life.
OK, I can hear your eyes rolling from here. Take a look at the text for this week while I consider how to say this in a way that doesn’t sound like something you’d read on a bumper sticker.
John 8:12-19 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life." 13 Then the Pharisees said to him, "You are testifying on your own behalf; your testimony is not valid." 14 Jesus answered, "Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. 15 You judge by human standards; I judge no one. 16 Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is valid; for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. 17 In your law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is valid. 18 I testify on my own behalf, and the Father who sent me testifies on my behalf." 19 Then they said to him, "Where is your Father?" Jesus answered, "You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also."
I could have simply chosen verse 12 as the text for this second week of Lent. That is where the “I Am” saying is found. So, we could have read one verse and then all nodded our heads and gone home. Yep, Jesus is the light. Got it, thanks.
The purpose of the subsequent verses is to show us that this isn’t as easy as it first seems. This isn’t a throw away that Jesus just tosses out one fine afternoon. This isn’t just one more metaphor being presented to help us wrap our minds around the reality of Jesus. Or rather it isn’t just that. It is, instead, an offer. It is an invitation to enter into a relationship that takes us to whole new reality, a different way of being alive in the world.
To say that there is resistance is an serious understatement. Jesus’ hearers are stunned, shocked, offended by his words. “Who do you think you are?”, they shout red-faced at him. “What gives you the right?” And worst of all, “Who are you to tell us we don’t know God? We are God experts, we are black belt in God, we have PhD’s in God! You, on the other hand are a nothing nobody from nowhere!!”
This was because Jesus pokes them with a sharp stick, trying to get their attention, and they don’t like it. They are trying to take him to court, to follow the legal rules of witness and testimony. He says, I’m not here for that. “I judge no one,” isn’t an abdication of his role as the Lord of Lords, but an indication that he isn’t here for rules right now, but for relationships. It’s not time for rules, it’s not time for courts, for trials and affidavits - if it was you’d be in even more trouble than you are right now.
He gets a little heated, it seems to me. Because they threw in his face the standard line from any who would oppose us, who would stand in our way, who would challenge our word and our faith: “Prove it!” Arghh, I hate that line. Whether I get it from my kids, or the pagan down the street, or the seeker in the pew, or the soul lost in the darkness of his own making, or of her circumstance. Prove it. And what makes this question so daggone frustrating is that I find it on my own lips, in my own heart from time to time. “Prove it, Jesus.” Prove you are who you say you are, prove it to me so that there is no shadow of doubt, no dark corner of suspicion in the worldly part of me, prove it so that I never waver in my allegiance, never stray from your path, never lose my grip on that strong hand folded around mine. Prove it. Please.
If you take out the verses at the beginning of Chapter 8 here in John (a story which many say is in the wrong place and messes up the order of things), and look back to the beginning of this long debate, you’ll discover that Jesus is in Jerusalem for the Festival of Tabernacles. Like all the great festivals, this one is marked by ritual and ceremony, by tradition and celebration. On the first night of the festival, four lamps, or large torches were brought out to the court of the women, one of the outer courts and lit up to chase away the darkness. It was said that when these torches were lit there was no courtyard in Jerusalem that couldn’t see the light. In the light of the these festival lamps, the leaders and the followers, the wise and the foolish, the saints and the sinners, the rich and the poor would dance. It was the very Presence of God that brought them through the darkness of the exodus, so what else could you do but dance? It was an expression of Joy, bubbling forth from the least and the greatest, made equal by the grace of that light.
It was in that light that Jesus said “I Am the light of the world,” the source of true joy, the fulness of life. You can’t prove it, you have to experience it. You can’t prove it, you have to accept it. If he did prove it for us, he would remove from us the opportunity to choose. Or as Maddie shows me, He holds out his hand and gives us the grace to accept the invitation to dance. He gives us the opportunity, the joy of saying yes. The only proof he allows for those who still walk in darkness is the dance of those who have said yes. We are the proof, our lives lived out in joy and hope and sometimes terrifying desperation.
I don’t know Oscar Pistorius. But when the news broke of his alleged crime my heart sank. What keeps coming to mind, however, was the photo of Oscar the blade runner holding the hand of a little girl in a pink dress and two tiny replicas of those prostheses. Her look of pride and hope and confidence learned from a man who had overcome a disability just like hers spoke volumes. It was a dance in the light for that moment. No, of course, that moment does not excuse whatever crime he may have committed. But then neither does that darkness take away the power of that moment of light. Any more than our repeated failures diminish the good that we can do when we walk in the light, when we prove Jesus is the great I Am by how we live our lives, when we dance with joy in the presence of the light of the world.
So, keep dancing, no matter what, just keep dancing.
Shalom,
Derek
Shalom,
Derek
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