The Light of the World

The gift of Jesus, the light of the world, to us at Christmas is one of miracle and wonder. The Incarnation of Christ is a miracle unlike any in the Bible. The vastness of what it took, the immensity of that task alone, is enough to keep you in awe for a long, long time. At least, it should be. Personally, I never took much time to be in awe of God for the Incarnation. When I pictured it, I pictured a man no taller than my dad, a 6-footish being, dwarfing himself to the size of a baby fresh from his mother's womb. For me, the greatest miracle of the Incarnation had always been that Jesus was born of a Virgin; I mean, how awesomely bizarre is that in and of itself? But when I really stop to think of the immense task of the Incarnation, I realize it's a much bigger picture. Through a random assortment of numbers that left me slack-jawed for an afternoon, I tried to paint that picture.

God was when there was nothing; he set space on a boundless, seemingly limitless plane. Only he knows its beginning and its end. Can you even begin to fathom that? Thanks to God's gifting of knowledge through modern science, we can understand a few things. We know, for example, that our planet is only one of eight (nine if you, like me, still count Pluto), revolving around our singular sun in this one of countless galaxies. We know that within the known limits of our galaxy, there are billions of miles of space and objects. The Kuiper Belt, for example, is between 2 billion, 790 million and 4 billion, 650 million miles from our sun, with some objects within it having orbits that take them more than 9 billion, 300 million miles from our sun. Beyond the Kuiper Belt, which itself is largely unexplored, we enter the realm of hypothetical space-- that is, space we think is there within our solar system, but can only guess about. Part of that hypothesized space is the Oort Cloud, which is guesstimated at a distance of roughly a light-year from our sun; that's about 4 trillion, 650 billion miles.

That's only our solar system. Now, our solar system itself is housed in the midst of the Milky Way galaxy, which is only one of billions of galaxies in the termed "observable universe." Its approximate size-- and again, this is, and can only be, guess work-- is 100 thousand light-years in diameter. One light-year is approximately 63,241 Astronomical Units, or 5 trillion, 881 billion, 413 million miles. Add five more zeros to that number, and you have the approximate size of our galaxy. That's 588 quadrillion, 141 trillion, 300 billion miles in diameter. And that's just one galaxy.

We let our minds dwell on the infiniteness of our own galaxy, which dwarfs in comparison to the expanses of space beyond it. We speak in terms of the space we can mostly measure: the miles and distances between continents, our distance from the sun and other planets, and guesstimated numbers for the size of our little universe. We live in perpetual awe of space because it seems infinite.

But that's where our awe in human knowledge must end, and the awe in the mystery of God must begin. Because we like to think of space as infinite, but we also know that somewhere, far beyond our scope of sight, our solar system, our galaxy, our universe, all of space, ends. It's a frightening thing to imagine, there being a finite end to what seems infinite to us.

But it's also a beautiful thing, because it affirms for us the belief that God is bigger, mightier, so much more than any infiniteness we could ever imagine.

And there, in my mind, is the miracle of Christmas. The incarnation is the first miracle of our Christian lives, because it is the day that all that was infinite took finite form and, as John wrote, dwelt among us. It is the essence of another famous verse from John: John 3:16. Considering what I've learned about the finiteness of our world and universe compared to the infiniteness of our God, I look at Jesus' words to Nicodemus like this:

"For the infinite God so loved this finite world with its finite people, that he gave up his only son, begotten in eternity, into our hands, to be born in the here and now, that whoever believes in him-- he who is the miracle of fully God and fully man, one begotten in spirit and born in flesh-- will not die, but gain eternal life; the same eternity he left behind, the infiniteness of his heavenly home, to become finite and die by the hands of those he had come to bring new life."

John puts the miracle of the Incarnation of Jesus in terms of a light that came into this world to shine a way to the Father in heaven. That is one enormous task. John 1:9 describes Jesus as the light of the world, the "true Light that gives light to everyone." This is a beautiful image of the mission of Jesus Christ: the light-bringer, the one who illuminates. Through Jesus we see revealed the mission of God in a world shrouded in darkness: a mission of love, grace, and hope. In verse four of this same chapter, John writes that Jesus was life, and that life "was the light of men," a light that shone in the darkness, even when we who dwelt in darkness could not comprehend it.

In around 1853, a painter named William Holman Hunt created an allegorical painting he called The Light of the World, in which Jesus prepares to knock on a door that clearly hasn't been opened in a long time. The door is dark and covered with vines; Jesus stands outside bearing a light in his hand. While I was still thinking about the image of Jesus as the Light of the World, I came across this painting. For the time I spent looking at it, I managed to miss one of the most powerful images Hunt created. Hunt painted the ivy-covered door with no handle, which means the door can only be opened from the inside. It is meant to draw the mind instantly to the verse in Revelation that says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him." Critics say Hunt's depiction of the door represents the "obstinately shut mind", but I view it as a beautiful representation of the gift offering Jesus' Incarnation means to us. "If you are willing," Jesus said as he stood among us as one of us, "I would love to enter your heart, and let you enter my Father's family as his beloved daughter." He still offers that gift to us, and what an amazing gift it is!

It's an amazing, and humbling, thing to think of what God did in sending this great light into the world. But what's even more amazing is that Jesus went beyond stepping from heaven into human flesh, and in making us members of God's family, drew us into the fold of God's mission among us. Jesus said in John 9:5, "While I am in the world, I am the light of the world." We already know the mission of Jesus as that light to the world. But what's so remarkable is that Jesus also tells us, in Matthew 5:14, "You are the light of the world." And in verse 16, he makes this remarkable honor of being given the title that he bore himself, more than just a title; he makes it a mission. "Let your light so shine before men," he says, "that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven."

Perhaps more so at Christmas than at any other time of the year, this mission seems like both a privilege and a load of pressure. How can we shine the light that Jesus gave us, and share the Good News of the Gospel that he made possible, when we live in a society that glorifies a man in a red suit over a baby in a manger? But there it is: our mission placed before us in such simple terms, and given to us to carry out on Christmas and all the other 364 days of the year! Perhaps we can take this simply stated mission and find simple, small ways to carry it out daily. At Christmas, perhaps that could be reminding those we love that yes, a shiny new gadget, new clothes, and a dazzling display of lights might be wonderful gifts to receive. But as daughters of God, and as people of his kingdom, the most wonderful gift we will ever receive came in the form of a baby, born into a manger, a baby whose birth and death were foretold, whose birth brought us hope, whose death brought us life, and whose resurrection brought us life eternal. That is the true gift of Christmas. That is the light we are to carry forth into each and every day into a world shrouded in the darkness of hopelessness and doubt that hasn't yet seen the radiant light of a God who loved us so much that he gave up his only son to death, to bring us life. As we enter this season of Christmas, let's try all the more to remember to carry that light into the world, and be the beacon of God's light to others that Christ chose to become for us.