[John’s Gospel has 21 chapters. Today’s passage – the ending of the 12th chapter – concludes the public ministry of Jesus. The Last Supper begins with the 13th chapter, and continues for five chapters.]
Throughout John’s Gospel, there is the theme of light and darkness – an easily understandable symbol for goodness and evil.
Jesus says that people must choose between light or darkness. It is not pre-determined. It is a choice. If they choose light (goodness), then in their lives they reflect the light of Jesus. If they choose darkness (evil), they reflect the prince of darkness. When Judas and his companions come at night to arrest Jesus, John notes that they have “lanterns and torches.” They had rejected the “light of the world” and needed artificial light.
I wonder how different today (or tomorrow) would be if, in every situation, I consciously took two seconds to ask myself: “How can I be light, not darkness?”
Just asking that might make a big difference. Try it.
Henry David Thoreau graduated from Harvard in 1837 and became a schoolteacher. In 1845 he built a small hut on Walden Pond (near Concord, Mass.) and lived in it for two years. His reflections on this experience became the American classic, “Walden.” Thoreau said that he did not feel lonely, for he was surrounded by the company of nature: Every pine needle…befriended me.”
Thoreau was an abolitionist who said that he found it difficult to live in a country in which slavery was permitted. (Slavery was not abolished until after his death.)
”Most of his neighbors regarded [Thoreau] as a harmless crank, if not a social deviant. But by the end of the century his essay on civil disobedience had been discovered by the Russian novelist and moralist Leo Tolstoy. From Tolstoy it was discovered by the Indian Mahatma Gandhi. From Gandhi it was discovered by Martin Luther King, Jr., leader of the non-violent freedom struggle in the United States. So, by this route, the spirit of Thoreau returned to his native land.”Robert Ellsberg, All Saints