LIGHT, LIFE, AND ENLIGHTENMENT

Summer is a season of sun worshippers. In the Northern Hemisphere millions of sunbathers will make their way to the beaches to "soak up the rays." Northerners from winter grey Scandanavia, Belgium, Germany and France will press southward for the glistening beaches of the French, Spanish and Italian Rivieras. Russians will push toward the Baltic and New Yorkers by the thousands will migrate to Long Island beaches to soak up the sun for that healthy summer look. Yes, despite warnings of skin cancer, sun worshippers by the millions will rub on sunscreen and yield themselves again to the heavenly "deity,"--El Sol, old Mister Sun.

If we worship the sun primarily for aids to beauty, our ancestors worshiped it for far more serious reasons. The sun was a god to many people--a god who rose from the netherworld in the morning and sank again in the evening. Varieties of myths and religions ascribe special powers to the sun. In the childhood of humankind, the sun was thought to die daily in the western depths. But even more fearful to the ancients was the impending annual death of the sun and its waning light in autumn and winter. Thus, many religious festivals were associated with prayers and sacrifices to induce the sun to come back to life to give life and light to the earth.

Christian worship has been influenced by the sun. Lighting candles on a Christmas tree is a remnant of an ancient rite to guide the sun back to life. St. Peters in Rome is placed directly east and west so that on the vernal equinox, at sunrise, the great doors can be thrown open to let the morning light penetrate the nave and illuminate the High Altar. And many Christians through the centuries have been buried on their backs facing east, because in the Second Coming, Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, will come from the East to call his own to the Great Resurrection.

If we humans have been sun worshipers of one kind or another across the centuries, it is for good reason. We rightly associate the sun with light and life. In profound ways we have sensed and then scientifically demonstrated, that we are dependent upon light for life and enlightenment. But reverence for the sun is not enough, for in the Biblical view, the sun itself is a "light holder," not the source of the light itself.

All our activity is fueled by solar power--solar power which by photosynthesis grew the foods we consumed. And we breathe the light, because the plants, by photosynthesis, take in the carbon dioxide and produce the oxygen for our metabolism.

But having said all this, we are not hereby calling all people to a revival of sun worship. Rather we are calling all people to a humble awareness of our total dependence upon light. And that light comes not ultimately from the sun, but from God, Maker of heaven and earth. For the Bible does not say that the sun is the light. Instead, it says that the sun is a light holder, and that "God is light and in him is no darkness at all." (First John 1.5)

Solar idolatry is alien to the Biblical religions. Moses warns his people, "take care when you lift your eyes to Heaven and see the sun, the moon, and all the stars, you be seduced." (Deuteronomy 4.19) We all might be seduced to "sun worship" for the summer tan. But in our summer and winter awareness of solar power, let us be renewed in our worship of God who is light, and the giver of light.

This brings us next to consider light and enlightenment. The word "enlightenment"' has had a good history in our past. We have grown accustomed to our history which spoke of the "Dark Ages," when learning and advancement seemed to be at a standstill. The Italian Renaissance of the fourteenth century, the rebirth of the classics and the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, led eventually to the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--a time when new discoveries and new knowledge shed more and more light into the sometimes-darkened minds of people. The Enlightenment, then and now, sought to overcome the twin evils of ignorance and arrogance.

The Greeks used to think light came from the eyes to the object. Now, of course, we know that light comes from the sun, and that the color of a daffodil or rose is not in the flower itself, but in its ability to reflect yellow or red from those colors in the spectrum of light.

All color is in the light, and not in the object. However, in the Biblical religions, the ultimate object for the light of God is not daffodils or roses, but the human being--the man and woman fashioned in God's own image. And if the human being is dependent upon the light of God for physical life, he or she is even more dependent upon the light of God for intellectual and spiritual enlightenment.

The beautiful thing about sunlight is that we do not have to produce it. It is a gift, a gift of God's providential grace. Likewise with light for the mind and soul. It has been given to us in revelation, especially the revelation of the Son of God, the Logos (Mind) of God, the Light of God, the Light of the world. We did not have to climb to heaven to drag the Son down, as it were. Instead, the Son came down to us, in recognizable human form, to reveal the essential truths of God, and to give us eternal light and life.

God not only creates the world in light and with light, but he also recreates it in mind and spirit with the grace and truth of his own Son in human form. Physically speaking, we are creatures of light. We eat it, drink it, breathe it. About that we have no choice. But spiritually and intellectually, we do have a choice. For it is possible for our minds to be darkened by arrogance or our souls to be misled by evil. We can close ourselves off in ignorance, indifference and small-mindedness. But if we believe, if we have faith, if we humbly seek spiritual and intellectual light and enlightenment, God is pleased to grant it.

For as John's Gospel says: "To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God." (John

1.12-13) "