The Light of Life

sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 4:12-23

Good … evil. Life … death. Day … night. Winner and loser, we live in a world full of dualities, full of words and ideas that would have no meaning if one of the pair did not exist to give definition to the other, and we seem to crave those polarities. Even as our ethics, our morality, and our faith live in the gray areas that fall between them, we seek out the absolutes that define our world as anchors and guides. How would we know good if we didn’t know evil? What would life be if there was no death? Would we even have a name for light if there was not darkness?

That last pair – light and dark – has been a preoccupation of humanity from the very beginning. From before we understood that the Earth spins on its axis and day will follow night for millions of years before the sun burns out, we have feared the darkness and been drawn toward the light.

We have built fires in our caves and wired our homes so that we can keep the darkness at bay. We have marked the dark of the moon and the shortest day of the year with religious celebrations and rites meant to placate the gods so that light would return. We have stacked gigantic stones on top of one another and built monumental pyramids in order to offer some degree of assurance that the cycle of the year is reliable. In one corner of the world, we built a mound designed with such accuracy that the light only reached into the inner chamber on the morning of the solstice.


As the days grew shorter and shorter, the fear increased. The powers of darkness were growing stronger, threatening the life of the very land itself. People began to wait anxiously, lighting great fires around and on top of the mound as beacons of hope. Priests and leaders spent nights in the great tomb as sentinels. The people began to pray as they watched each morning for the sun to rise, waiting … hoping that it would soon be time for the rites of light.

Slowly … slowly … the light of the rising sun crept up the tunnel until at last it reached the altar. The priests enacted the rites welcoming the new year, and the people waited anxiously around fires for one more night for proof that the sun was coming back. And when the light fell in just the right place the next morning, the celebration erupted with joyful singing and brave fire dancing replacing despair are and fear. Life and light would come again.

There is another meaning to the phrase “the light at the end of the tunnel” – one that we are more familiar with. The light at the end of that tunnel is the beacon of death, not life. It brings out both hope and fear in each of us, because we don’t know, can’t be sure what it means. At times like now, when we have just buried our sister Margaret, it poses a question of particularly poignant power. What comes next?


Once again, duality asserts itself. Death or life … fear or joy … hope or despair. What should we feel?


At one point in the movie “Shrek,” the title character winds up with an arrow lodged in his … well … “posterior?” after a fracas with Robin Hood and his Merry Men. When his friend, Donkey, sees the arrow stuck there, he goes into hysterics which are only brought under control when he is sent off on a useless errand, searching for blue flowers with red thorns. Having something to do gives him an outlet for his fear-driven energy, yet as he leaves on his mission, he calls back over his shoulder, “…and if you see a tunnel, stay away from the light.”

Those are the words of our fear … and our love. Stay away from the light. Don’t leave. Stay here with us. We love you. … And yet for Christians, the light at the end of the tunnel is a reason for hope. As we envision our loved ones walking out of the darkness of death’s valley into that light, we feel joy in the midst of our sadness because they are entering the arms of God’s all-encompassing love.

Here the duality ends for us, for it is not the wan, sickly light of decay. It is the light of new life, a litany of promise and a beacon to those who dwell in darkness. It is the light shining out of the tomb on Easter morning. Life or Death, Christ is the light “and that light is the life of the world.”

It may seem strange to be talking about this now when Easter is still almost four months away, but it is an inevitable part of our life. Not just because we will all die, but because we already have.

What does it mean to be a believer? What does it mean to be a follower of Christ? What does it mean to be called to the work of Christ’s ministry as a disciple?

It means different things for different people. For Peter and Andrew it was a simple and as complicated as dropping their nets. For James and John it meant leaving Zebedee on the shore mending nets. For all four of them, it meant leaving behind the relative security of life as they knew it – fishing each day, from time to time catching enough to sell for oil or flour or other necessities of life. It meant letting go of comfort and home and following Jesus farther than they had probably ever gone before – physically, spiritually, and philosophically. They left behind the simple dualities of life as fishermen and wandered/wondered about learning to be fishers of men.

What's the difference between fishing for fish and fishing for people? In a word, metanoia. Metanoia is the Greek word that gets translated as “repent” in the scriptures. It means to "change one's mind." In the Greek it has no religious connotation though it may be related to an Aramaic word that meant reconciling with God, and that’s the way that both John and Jesus seemed to use it.

In either case it has the sense of making a change in the direction of one's life: "Get yourself a new orientation for the way you live and then act upon it.” In Jesus’ proclamation, this new orientation was a response to the kingdom coming near, to the reality that the world was starting to look like it would if God were in control. Perhaps a more accurate translation of that line would be: "Turn your lives around, because here comes the kingdom of the heaven." I like that; it makes me feel as though God's promise of new life is bursting at the seams to catch our attention!

And for Peter, Andrew, James and John answering the call of that promise was just the beginning. When you fish, the primary objective is to shorten the life of those fish. On the other hand, when you fish for people – at least as Jesus seemed to have meant it – your primary objective is to bring them to new life. "Turn around; see things a new way!"

It would have been quite a major “turn around” for those four fishermen, bringing life to people without ending any. And it was a whole different kind of life. Apparently, they leapt at the chance though they couldn’t have understood all that offered and all that would be asked in return.

I wonder if they ever regretted the decision. In the midst of all the action or in the time between miracles when their feet were sore from unaccustomed walking and when they began to realize that they didn’t really understand what Jesus was about, did they think back with nostalgia? Did Peter and Andrew start to wish that they had nothing more complicated to worry about than how and where to cast their net to get the best catch? Did James and John long for simple scolding of Zebedee in place of the rancor and rebuke of the Priests and Pharisees? Did they feel like a part of them … maybe even everything they had been was dead and gone?

That’s how the apostle Paul talked about the kind of change they made. He understood from his own experience and that of others that it was so powerful, such a deep and fundamental transformation of all that we have been and all that we are that it is like dying. Dying to our selves. Dying to the ways of the world. Dying to our old desires, our old habits, and our old way of relating to each other.

It’s a terrifying prospect that transformation – that become what God most wants us to be. Sometimes aching and painful, sometimes confusing and disorienting, it squeezes and shapes us into something new. But it is only when we have put all the old things away, buried them deep in the earth that we can fully embrace the new life that Christ offers us. That’s the central reality of life in Christ – the guiding principle of discipleship.

It’s a long process even for those of us who jumped right in with all the enthusiasm of a fisherman. We begin to answer the call, and slowly, step by step, we walk into the darkness of the tomb. We lay our lives and our selves to rest, piece by piece, trusting in the promise we have heard and the love of the One we have chosen to follow … trusting but still at the mercy of fears that are generations old…. What will happen to us there in the darkness? What will become of us if we lay aside everything we have known? How do we live if not like this? How do we survive … raise our family … push back the chaos and confusion of the unknown without the fish that have sustained us?

As we wait there … feeling lost in the darkness of the tomb … light begins to creep in on us. Little by little, we become aware of its glow limning the edges of the crypt and highlighting the altar before us. Turning toward it, we see the path laid out before us, bright with the hope and bursting at the seams with promise of life returning – new life, abundant life, life redolent with the light and joy of God’s all-encompassing love.