Children of Light

The lectionary epistles text this week includes that powerful admonition from Paul that suggests who we are must impact what we do. In Ephesians 5:8 we read, “For you were once in darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of the light.” (NIV) Light is never neutral – it always dispels the darkness.

In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, Life Together, he begins his wonderful reminder of what living in Christ must look like by saying “It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes.” (page 17)

Most of us who have been a part of the church for a while recognize how easy it is to live “in the seclusion of a cloistered life.” I’ve heard it said that once an outsider becomes a believer, he or she will quickly have only “insider friends.” The safety and comfort of being among insiders is both a blessing and a challenge. The blessing, of course, lies in the fact that it is in that fellowship of the body of Christ that we have opportunity for what Paul describes in Romans 1:11-12 as “the mutual encouragement of our faith.” The challenge is that such fellowship can become so addictive that we end up isolating ourselves from the world that so desperately needs what we have discovered. But the world that needs what we have discovered is increasingly less likely to simply wander into the fellowship of a church building to discover it.

Light needs to be light. We are “light in the Lord” and our commission is that we “live as children of light.” It isn’t that Paul wants us to participate in what he describes later in this paragraph as “deeds of darkness” but without the light, those deeds can never be exposed. The model for our life, as Bonhoeffer so eloquently describes, is Jesus – who typically lived life “in the midst of his enemies.”

All of this seems helpful in the context of learning to speak more clearly with “we” instead of “I” in describing our efforts to “live as children of light.” It is in the mutual encouragement of our fellowship with one another that our strength, our courage, our commitment to being “light” can find its strength. Exposing the “deeds of darkness” is never a one-person job. And even if, in some circumstances, an individual happens to be the source of light that exposes darkness – the strength of the light is never “I” but “we.” Of course, that “we” includes Jesus who has declared that we are “children of light.”

In this Exodus-like journey called the Christian life, we live in the paradox of knowing that we have been set apart as the body of Christ, yet we have been called to expose the deeds of the darkness. In that body we find strength, and in our efforts to expose darkness we risk our safety and comfort.

We can’t do that alone. It will always be “us” together.