Walk while you have the light

‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’ The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to him.’ Jesus answered, ‘This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. The crowd answered him, ‘We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains for ever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?’ Jesus said to them, ‘The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.’

After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them.

- John 12:27-36

Jesus continues his statement in the passage from yesterday's reading, after he is told that some Greeks visiting the festival wish to speak with him. So, our setting continues; Jesus is speaking now as someone who knows that his word has gone out beyond his immediate surroundings of Jerusalem, into Greek-speaking regions, and will go out to the world.

So he continues, here, in his speech to the crowd about his final act - what will become the great Passion. Yesterday's passage recorded his words about a grain of wheat that must fall to the earth in order to bear much fruit. Today he addresses his own response to what he knows will be his death. He is prepared to meet it. As with his other acts, he meets death in the way given to him for the sake of the Father and the Father's will. "Glorify your name" is addressed to the Father. In these biblical understandings of the use of the word "name" in these contexts, a person's name is an extension of the person (or Person in this case). So he makes it clear again what his mission is and for whom this mission is accomplished. He wishes this crowd to know what he serves and why - and that it is for their sake.

He also speaks of Judgment - his death and resurrection will signal a new age, an age in which the Judgment itself will take shape and stand as a sign of "End Times." There are many theories of End Times and what they mean, and for my view of the scriptures I think we must understand time not in the sense of our every day experience of it, but as a multi-layered dimension of life. There is the time that we experience in our three-dimensional lives, but I think also there is the nature of time for that which exists beyond the world and the daily life we experience - and that time is eternal, it is beyond our own natures. In that sense, I believe that we must view "End Times" as co-existing with our own, that time is a double reality: there is the time that we experience and then there is eternal time, that of what is beyond our dimensional limitations. One need not be a theoretical physicist to understand this notion. As we are told in the Revelation that we celebrate our eucharist with the angels in heaven, so it is that Judgment exists in an eternal timeline while we experience time in our own way as a linear continuum which gives us the opportunity to make choices. So, for my perspective, the resurrection and the bestowal of Spirit allows these choices to be evaluated in the light of this bestowal - in response to this bestowal of something within ourselves. And that "time" has been continuing since Jesus' death.

For this reason I think he says, The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light. It is a caution about what is to come, a helpful teaching about awareness, just as the voice of the Father, Jesus says, is for the sake of the crowds.

So, as we walk now into Passion Week, I think it is important to think about what it means to walk in the light and to seek it - to come to understand that time exists in differing dimensional experience: we are always in the "End Times." We being limited have access to three-dimensional earthly life, but for a divine being there is a glimpse into what we can only term Mystery. That does not mean that we do not share in the Mystery - part and parcel of worship is to understand this doubleness of life, this spiritual and worldly, and that we are to seek our own ways to experience both as wholeness. Through prayer and worship we seek to add that light to our lives - to incorporate it into our choices.