the Great Light! (Epiphany A3)

"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light." The Gospel gives the fulfillment of the prophecy. Even the place-the repopulated people near Galilee have seen the great light in Jesus and his ministry.

David declares the Lord is my light! With beauty and longing he says

"One thing I ask of the LORD ,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to seek him in his temple."

Paul is harder to figure out in the lectionary context. After talking about the baptism of the Lord and the aftermath, "he says I am glad that I didn't baptize" and "the Lord didn't call me to baptize." Eugene Peterson put it, the lord "didn't call me to gather a following for myself." That seems true to the meaning Paul was getting at. He apparently saw salvation effected through the gospel, not baptism. The message he preached was not one of logic and rhetoric, not one of sound philosophy, but a ridiculous truth that salvation comes through the torture and death of the savior.

Here is where we come back to the light of Christ. The wisdom of the world makes sense with all its logic and rhetoric, Socratic method and Platonic depth, but the wisdom that is out of this world must be experienced, must be gazed at, must light up our whole being brining to wholeness in its wake.