December 26, 2003
Light
John wrote about Jesus as light. “The light shines in the darkness,” he wrote, “and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1.5).
It’s safe to say that John knew from nothing about Heisenberg’s quantum uncertainty principle that says light is either particle or wave, either fixed or in motion, that we can’t be certain about where it is and where it’s going at the same time.
Something like this seems to be true about Christmas. The Feast of Thomas, the Apostle, comes handily around the corner from Christmas each year. It was he who asked Jesus to show him the way. He wanted some certainty in the midst of all the chaos. What he got was uncertainty, not a road map, not a catechism, not a systematic theology. He got a person and all the holy ambiguity to go with it. “I am the way,” Jesus said, “the truth, and the life.”
Some, these days, seem simply not able to say enough about orthodoxy, even to be willing to split the church right down the middle because of it. The old Anglican oxymoron “ordered freedom” is simply not enough, all together too frustrating, yet something like that seems pretty much what Jesus offered Thomas… and us.
To claim absolute certainty about the Bible or God or, above all, ourselves, sounds pretty much like idolatry to me. On the other hand, Jesus brightens up that darkness, and under those conditions, darkness of whatever kind doesn’t stand a chance.