Thread of Light
Thread of Light The Rev. Bingham Powell There is a thread through most of our lessons. Not in the Epistle, where there is a little insider stuff. The Epistle is rarely selected to match the other lessons, except on special days. Generally, we read through one of Paul’s Epistles, as we are working our way through 1st Corinthians now. The Epistle does not match the other lessons today, but the first reading, the Psalm, and the Gospel are selected to have at least one thread that connects them. There is a thread that is pretty clear in these readings today, and it is light. As we heard in Isaiah, “the people who walked in deep darkness have seen a great light. Those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shined.” And in the Psalm we hear “The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom then shall I fear?” And in the Gospel we heard Matthew quote Isaiah in a slightly different translation, “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. And for those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned.” We see this thread of light. This is the same thread of light that we have been seeing for the last couple of months. During Advent and Christmas and Epiphany, this thread of light is there through these seasons. I like to call these three seasons “The Trinity of seasons of light” because there is this thread through all of them. In Advent we heard about the coming of the light, and we lit another candle on our Advent wreaths each week as we anticipated the coming of the Light. Then at Christmas we have the birth of the Light into this world. As we heard in the Christmas season from the prologue to John’s Gospel, “The beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And all things came into being through Him. What came into being through Him was life, and the life was the Light of the world.” Jesus is the Incarnation of God’s light into this world. And now in Epiphany, the light is going out into the world as various people in their epiphanies have the experience of seeing the Light. The Magi, people at Jesus’s baptism, the people at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, the Disciples and their calls, the healings and teachings of Jesus, are all moments in which people see this Light in their midst. This thread of light isn’t just through these readings or just through these seasons. We see this thread of light through all of Scripture, from the beginning to the end. It is there in the very first chapter in the very first book in Genesis in the creation story. In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the first thing that God said is, “Let there be light, and there was light, and it was good.” That light continues on until the end of Scripture, the very last book. In the Book of Revelation we see the light again when God creates the New Heaven and the New Earth. There is no longer the greater and lesser lights, the sun and the moon. It is now the Lamb of God as the Light in the midst of the New Creation. This thread of light keeps showing up all through Scripture. It is in the story of Moses’s call: he gets called from the light of a burning bush. As Moses is freeing the people from their enslavement in Egypt, they are led at night by a light, a pillar of fire. We this light in many of the Prophets, and we see it in Jesus: the prologue of John, and in today’s Gospel when Matthew frames Jesus’s ministry by saying he is the coming of the Light. And, of course, Jesus himself taking it to the next step: I have light, but you also have light, and let your light shine. This thread of light that we see through Scripture is from the beginning to the end, and all in between. Why? Why is there this strong thread of light through all of Scripture? It is because the darkness has always been here. There has always been darkness in this world. Jesus himself was born into darkness, the darkness of empire that uprooted his family and made them, when Mary was nine months pregnant, go