Jesus, the Prism of God’s Light – Br. Keith Nelson

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2 Corinthians 4:1-6
John 14:6-14

How does Jesus show us the nature of God? One resounding answer is: as Light. Reflected light, shimmering into the world we see and know, igniting into conscious awareness. The primordial light shining in the darkness of John’s Prologue; the light that replaces that of sun and moon in the eternal city of the Revelation to John; the light of Christ we kindle at Easter; the “light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.”

Philip says to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Philip is done with all the poetry; all the elusive and allusive imagery John’s Jesus has woven to evoke, to awaken, to captivate, to bestow the relational knowing of God found in and through himself. Philip wants a clear shaft of light outlining a straightforward vision. Before Jesus leaves them, Philipp wants just a single flash of definitive truth.

But this is not the way John’s Jesus reveals God. Instead, the words and the works of this Jesus are like the sides and angles of a prism. The clarity of a prism enables a beam of invisible, light to pass through. But it also refracts that light into something new: the visible color spectrum. “No one has ever seen God,” we read again in John’s Prologue. “It is God the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, who has made God known.” Jesus refracts the Father’s invisible light, scattering constellated colors that draw our eyes toward their source. It is the interplay of the pattern that beckons us – through dots we can connect, the words and works of Jesus that reveal the truth in the measure we can receive it. Receiving the light is the long slow work of conversion, not epiphany.

The prophets speak in similar, roundabout patterns. In opening vision of Ezekiel, there are angels with the faces of lions and eagles, celestial chariot wheels within chariot wheels covered with watchful eyes, flashes of lightning, the roaring of water, the gleaming of fire within amber, a splendor like the refracted arc of the rainbow – of all this, the prophet says: “This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.”

In the same vein, the apostle Paul writes, “Let light shine out of darkness,” to give the light of the knowledge ofthe glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” This light bounces, ricochets, ripples outward in concentric circles, and finally, finds its target in us. It is in long, unhurried gazing into the face of love that we begin to behold the Father. The face of Jesus beheld in this way communicates God’s glory.

In Christian tradition, God’s glory is the visibly manifest, revealed, interpersonally mediated presence of God. Far from an abstract idea, it is something physical and available to our senses. It opens us to God’s loving gift of Godself, the “godliness of God,” the way light shining on a tightly-closed blossom causes its petals to open. It is a light we can bear. For us, Jesus Christ is the supreme mediator and embodiment of this glory. In him we participate in glory now and are being translated into greater glory as we follow the Way. Glorification is the slow work of God’s light in us – shining upon us, and shining from us into the world.

There is a demanding singularity to the encounter with God in Jesus: “No one can come to the Father except through me.” Even so, Jesus makes God known in myriad ways, beckoning through diverse images of glory: I am the light of the world; but also: I am the bread of life; I am the door; the good shepherd; the resurrection and the life; the way and the truth; the true vine. The risen Jesus says to Mary Magdalene, “Do not be holding onto me,” but to Thomas the same risen Jesus says, “Thrust your hands into the wound in my side.” In the resurrection appearances, there is something ambiguous and at first, not entirely recognizable in the person of the risen Christ. The light shines forth only through a familiar word or personal gesture like the breaking of bread or the calling of a name. Each disciple is called to pay attention in a new way.

Are there humble, ordinary gestures that the crucified and risen Jesus has used to show you the nature of God? Have you become distracted from the pattern of light by the dissatisfied ache for an epiphany? Jesus offers a profound reassurance and a further invitation to Philip, and to us, today: “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”

Year 2, Third Week of Easter
St. Philip & St. James, Apostles