Post Tenebras Lux
In one of his most famous works, The Allegory of the Cave, the Greek philosopher, Plato, pondered what would happen if man were given sudden and profound knowledge of the world around him. In Plato’s allegory, he gives us the example of men in a cave, chained so they can only see shadows on the wall for their entire lives. Those shadows are their reality. But if you were to take someone out of the cave, and show them the fire and the sunlight that cast those shadows, and tell them that those things are real, their eyes would be pained and they would not believe it. Only after a considerable amount of time out of the cave, time enough to get acclimated to the light of the world, would they be able to accept that the shadows they had been used to were just faint images of reality, and not reality itself.
So it is with our journeys with God. We have the shadows of the world around us, tangible, and real in their own way. But they’re not the whole story. The ground we walk on, the houses we live in, the cars we drive, the people we meet… they’re one part of our reality together.
Yet we can have all those things and still live in darkness. Because the physical world around us is only part of our reality.
We’re not quite at the point of staring at shadows, but our senses – what we can see and hear and feel – aren’t giving us the whole story either.
There’s a light that is shown to us when we are people of faith. A light that reveals a reality that can’t be seen or touched, or even described. A reality beyond those things that our bodies and our senses can recognize.
In the scripture we read today, from the first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul describes people of faith as being “children of the light,” “children of the day,” “beloved, and no longer in darkness.”
I’d like to spend just a few minutes this morning, telling you about my own journey from darkness into light.
Now, you all know that I grew up like a lot of kids did – going to Sunday School, learning my Bible stories that way… then going off to college and leaving church behind for nearly a decade. That’s not an unusual story.
But today I’d like to tell you about how I came back. How I felt that light that had always been shining on me.
And for me, it comes back to a single prayer.
There were reasons I’d come back to church after my absent decade. Family reasons – when Sonia was born our families expected a baptism. And social reasons – when we moved to a new area we needed a place to meet new people and make friends. And of course, the Reformed Church we ended up in was a lot like the one I’d known as a kid, so it was all familiar to me. But I’d say that for all my reasons for returning to church, one of the biggest reasons was lacking. I didn’t have faith.
But that changed one Wednesday night at an evening vespers service. A prayer service in a dark chapel lit only by the candles we carried. We sang hymns without instruments. We read and meditated on the scriptures. And we prayed.
And at this particular service, it was just after I’d been offered a new job at the real estate office where I used to work. And so I offered a simple prayer of thanksgiving.
“Lord, I give you thanks for the opportunity you have given me.”
I remember those words well.
“Lord, I give you thanks for the opportunity you have given me.”
I remember them because of the feeling I got when I said them. Like a warmth, starting in my shoulders and radiating down through my entire body. It was a feeling of pure joy and complete peace. It was a feeling like my soul was suddenly connected into something larger, something so much greater than myself. And even though it was a feeling brand new to me, there was also something wistful about it – something nostalgic. Like it’s a feeling I had always known. Or perhaps should have always known.
For me, that was the moment that I came out of the darkness and into the light.
It was a moment when I knew that I prayer I had said, a prayer that had come from my lips, had been heard and accepted by our God.
The Sunday after that vespers service I spoke to my pastor. And he told me that what I’d described – that radiating warmth, that feeling of peace and connection – these were feelings that many people describe when their prayers are being answered. That what I felt is the sort of thing that Christian mystics spend their lives trying to experience, as much as they can as often as they can.
Now, I’m not a mystic. The vast, vast majority of my prayers, though I’m sure they are heard and God responds to them, do not give me that same feeling. I’ve prayed in thanksgiving since then. I’ve prayed those exact same words since then. I don’t know what it was about that prayer in that moment, that pierced the darkness I had been in and let God’s light pour into my soul. I wish I knew.
I can’t give you instructions on how to make that happen for yourself. I don’t have any special insight on how or when it happens.
All I can tell you is that the light is real. God’s love is real. Prayers are answered. And there is more to our world than what we can see and hear and touch.
Plato’s allegory ends with the man who was brought out of the cave and into the light, returning back to the cave. And he tells the others – the people still staring at shadows – what he now knows.
And the man who has seen the light is rejected by those still staring at shadows. He brings them truth and they call him a liar. He says there is more to the world and they hate him for it.
Each of us in this sanctuary, we are here because we are people of faith. Because we each believe in God’s light in the darkness. Some of us have felt God answer our prayers. Some of us have seen God’s hands at work in our lives. Some of us have felt God’s calling in our lives, and his presence with us. And some of us, I’m sure, have yet to feel any of those, but wait patiently for our turn, because we hold onto faith.
When someone shares their faith, their experience of God’s light with us, we don’t reject them. We want to know more. We want to know how we can gain that experience for ourselves. In here, there is no hate for the knowledge of God’s light.
But we also know that the whole world is bigger than our church. And that there are some people out there who scorn what we know. Who not only haven’t felt God’s light, but would hate it if they knew it. Who might find it too big, too scary, too painful… and prefer to stare at the shadows.
I don’t begrudge those people. I was once one of them. I liked my shadows. I felt comfortable among them. They didn’t threaten me; ask things of me; they didn’t make me step out of my comfort zone. There’s a safety in staying inside the cave. I get that. And I don’t begrudge those people one bit.
But to them. And to you. I say there is more. There is a world beyond what we know. There is a light that casts out all darkness. There is a God whose goodness and mercy and kindness and love can penetrate into the deepest abyss, and radiate through the darkest of souls.
I know this. Because God has brought me out of the darkness and into his light. And I pray and I trust that if you don’t know this already, that you soon will. Ours is a great and generous God. To him be all glory. Amen.
Let us pray.
Holy Lord, for our knowledge of you, however you have shared it with us, we give you our thanks. We pray in gratitude for the light you shine into our dark world. We pray in thanksgiving that you count us among your children of day. Let your light and your love radiate through each and every one of us who gather in your name. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
In one of his most famous works, The Allegory of the Cave, the Greek philosopher, Plato, pondered what would happen if man were given sudden and profound knowledge of the world around him. In Plato’s allegory, he gives us the example of men in a cave, chained so they can only see shadows on the wall for their entire lives. Those shadows are their reality. But if you were to take someone out of the cave, and show them the fire and the sunlight that cast those shadows, and tell them that those things are real, their eyes would be pained and they would not believe it. Only after a considerable amount of time out of the cave, time enough to get acclimated to the light of the world, would they be able to accept that the shadows they had been used to were just faint images of reality, and not reality itself.
So it is with our journeys with God. We have the shadows of the world around us, tangible, and real in their own way. But they’re not the whole story. The ground we walk on, the houses we live in, the cars we drive, the people we meet… they’re one part of our reality together.
Yet we can have all those things and still live in darkness. Because the physical world around us is only part of our reality.
We’re not quite at the point of staring at shadows, but our senses – what we can see and hear and feel – aren’t giving us the whole story either.
There’s a light that is shown to us when we are people of faith. A light that reveals a reality that can’t be seen or touched, or even described. A reality beyond those things that our bodies and our senses can recognize.
In the scripture we read today, from the first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul describes people of faith as being “children of the light,” “children of the day,” “beloved, and no longer in darkness.”
I’d like to spend just a few minutes this morning, telling you about my own journey from darkness into light.
Now, you all know that I grew up like a lot of kids did – going to Sunday School, learning my Bible stories that way… then going off to college and leaving church behind for nearly a decade. That’s not an unusual story.
But today I’d like to tell you about how I came back. How I felt that light that had always been shining on me.
And for me, it comes back to a single prayer.
There were reasons I’d come back to church after my absent decade. Family reasons – when Sonia was born our families expected a baptism. And social reasons – when we moved to a new area we needed a place to meet new people and make friends. And of course, the Reformed Church we ended up in was a lot like the one I’d known as a kid, so it was all familiar to me. But I’d say that for all my reasons for returning to church, one of the biggest reasons was lacking. I didn’t have faith.
But that changed one Wednesday night at an evening vespers service. A prayer service in a dark chapel lit only by the candles we carried. We sang hymns without instruments. We read and meditated on the scriptures. And we prayed.
And at this particular service, it was just after I’d been offered a new job at the real estate office where I used to work. And so I offered a simple prayer of thanksgiving.
“Lord, I give you thanks for the opportunity you have given me.”
I remember those words well.
“Lord, I give you thanks for the opportunity you have given me.”
I remember them because of the feeling I got when I said them. Like a warmth, starting in my shoulders and radiating down through my entire body. It was a feeling of pure joy and complete peace. It was a feeling like my soul was suddenly connected into something larger, something so much greater than myself. And even though it was a feeling brand new to me, there was also something wistful about it – something nostalgic. Like it’s a feeling I had always known. Or perhaps should have always known.
For me, that was the moment that I came out of the darkness and into the light.
It was a moment when I knew that I prayer I had said, a prayer that had come from my lips, had been heard and accepted by our God.
The Sunday after that vespers service I spoke to my pastor. And he told me that what I’d described – that radiating warmth, that feeling of peace and connection – these were feelings that many people describe when their prayers are being answered. That what I felt is the sort of thing that Christian mystics spend their lives trying to experience, as much as they can as often as they can.
Now, I’m not a mystic. The vast, vast majority of my prayers, though I’m sure they are heard and God responds to them, do not give me that same feeling. I’ve prayed in thanksgiving since then. I’ve prayed those exact same words since then. I don’t know what it was about that prayer in that moment, that pierced the darkness I had been in and let God’s light pour into my soul. I wish I knew.
I can’t give you instructions on how to make that happen for yourself. I don’t have any special insight on how or when it happens.
All I can tell you is that the light is real. God’s love is real. Prayers are answered. And there is more to our world than what we can see and hear and touch.
Plato’s allegory ends with the man who was brought out of the cave and into the light, returning back to the cave. And he tells the others – the people still staring at shadows – what he now knows.
And the man who has seen the light is rejected by those still staring at shadows. He brings them truth and they call him a liar. He says there is more to the world and they hate him for it.
Each of us in this sanctuary, we are here because we are people of faith. Because we each believe in God’s light in the darkness. Some of us have felt God answer our prayers. Some of us have seen God’s hands at work in our lives. Some of us have felt God’s calling in our lives, and his presence with us. And some of us, I’m sure, have yet to feel any of those, but wait patiently for our turn, because we hold onto faith.
When someone shares their faith, their experience of God’s light with us, we don’t reject them. We want to know more. We want to know how we can gain that experience for ourselves. In here, there is no hate for the knowledge of God’s light.
But we also know that the whole world is bigger than our church. And that there are some people out there who scorn what we know. Who not only haven’t felt God’s light, but would hate it if they knew it. Who might find it too big, too scary, too painful… and prefer to stare at the shadows.
I don’t begrudge those people. I was once one of them. I liked my shadows. I felt comfortable among them. They didn’t threaten me; ask things of me; they didn’t make me step out of my comfort zone. There’s a safety in staying inside the cave. I get that. And I don’t begrudge those people one bit.
But to them. And to you. I say there is more. There is a world beyond what we know. There is a light that casts out all darkness. There is a God whose goodness and mercy and kindness and love can penetrate into the deepest abyss, and radiate through the darkest of souls.
I know this. Because God has brought me out of the darkness and into his light. And I pray and I trust that if you don’t know this already, that you soon will. Ours is a great and generous God. To him be all glory. Amen.
Let us pray.
Holy Lord, for our knowledge of you, however you have shared it with us, we give you our thanks. We pray in gratitude for the light you shine into our dark world. We pray in thanksgiving that you count us among your children of day. Let your light and your love radiate through each and every one of us who gather in your name. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
