Light Reading
When you are on break, such as spring break, you might choose some light reading. Set aside that academic journal. No Emmanuel Kant or other philosophers allowed. Even the circuitous plot line of that spy novel might be too heavy. It is different for everyone. Every person has their impression of what reading goes with relaxation.
The Epistle lesson for the Fourth Sunday in Lent this year is light reading, but not in the way just described. Sorry if this feels like a bait and switch. The passage we anticipate in our liturgy, Sunday speaks of “light” as a noun in a spiritual way, but its message is quite heavy. It is something of a wake-up call for Christians to “live as children of light,” because our conduct matters. Coming to Christ has implications in the work we do to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Here is our passage from the New English Bible translation:
Though you were once all darkness, no as Christians you are light. Live as children of light. Live like those who are at home in daylight, for where light is, there all goodness springs up, all justice and truth. Try to find out what would please the Lord; take no part in barren deeds of darkness, but show them up for what they are. The things they do in secret it would be shameful even to mention. But everything, when once the light has shown it up, is illumined, and everything thus illumined is all light. And so the hymn says:
Awake, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine upon you. (Ephesians 5:8-14)
The New Testament as a whole puts forth something of a balancing act concerning faith and works. Grace matters greatly, and human effort matters enormously too. Those who want to say that Christian belief and practice are only about divine grace, eclipsing the obligation to strive for holiness, find passages to the contrary even in the letters of Paul, as shown above. Those who want to say that personal actions build the highway toward righteousness will frustrate themselves in their own occasions of missing the mark. Our work and Christ’s gift of sanctifying grace operate together. We will the good through our own effort, and we lean perpetually on the grace of the Holy Spirit, as the true sanctifying element. Divine gifts and the human will work together.
There is a phrase from the tradition of Augustine of Hippo: “Love God and do as you please.” At first glance, it looks like a libertine recipe for spiritual disaster. The wise core of it, however, is that if you love God truly, that love will entirely influence what pleases you. What you desire will turn toward the will of God. In Augustine’s sermon on 1 John 4:4-12, he maintains that loving God is a transforming process.
This shows some correlation to what Paul is emphasizing above: that there is a path for Christians to live as people of light. What Christ makes of us, with our cooperation, does not match up with darkness. We are made to be light, and in this transformation, the good things such as justice and truth are the things that fit with us. May we all wake up to this, rise and absorb the light of Christ. Heavy as it might be, this light reading is quite beneficial.
