Sermon: I am the Light of the World

What did Jesus mean when he declared, "I am the light of the world"?

In this message from John 8:12-20, Rev. Laura Johnson explores one of Jesus' most powerful "I AM" statements, spoken during the Festival of Booths while standing beside the massive lamps that illuminated Jerusalem. Through stories of caving in complete darkness and finding her way through a foggy campground at night, Laura invites us to consider how Christ's light guides us when life feels uncertain, exposes what we would rather keep hidden, and helps us see ourselves and others through God's grace.

This sermon examines the biblical background of Jesus' claim, the significance of the Temple treasury and the Festival of Booths, and how God's people were guided by a pillar of fire through the wilderness. Along the way, Laura reflects on spiritual discernment, the work of the Holy Spirit, self-examination, grace, forgiveness, and the church's calling to reflect Christ's light into a dark world.

Whether you're facing a difficult decision, navigating uncertainty, wrestling with fear, or seeking a deeper understanding of Jesus' identity, this message offers encouragement that we do not walk alone. Christ continues to illuminate the path before us and calls us to shine that same light for others.

Scripture: John 8:12-20

Topics: Jesus, I AM statements, Light of the World, Gospel of John, Christian discipleship, faith, spiritual guidance, Holy Spirit, grace, forgiveness, spiritual growth, United Methodist, North Raleigh UMC, biblical teaching, Christian living, darkness and light, prayer, church community, following Jesus, Christian sermon, worship message.

About North Raleigh UMC:
North Raleigh United Methodist Church is a welcoming church in Raleigh, North Carolina, helping people connect with God, grow in faith, and serve others in Jesus' name. Learn more at North Raleigh UMC

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Well, our gospel reading today comes from the Gospel of John, chapter 8, verses 12 to 20. I invite you to hear now the word of the Lord. Again, Jesus spoke to them, saying, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Then the Pharisees said to him, You are testifying on your own behalf. Your testimony is not valid. Jesus answered, Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, because I know where I have come from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. You judge by human standards, I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is valid, for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. In your law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is valid. If I testify on my own behalf, and the Father who sent me testifies on my behalf. Then they said to him, Where is your father? Jesus answered, You know neither me nor my father. If you knew me, you would know my father also. He spoke these words while he was teaching in the treasury of the temple, but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come. This is the word of God for us, the people of God. Let us pray. O Lord, open our hearts and minds and ears to hear you speaking to us today. Might your light shine upon us to strengthen us, to guide us, to comfort us, to challenge us. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. So I once went caving, which is when you go underground into tunnels and caves. I did not do this of my own idea. It was a required outing as part of a pre-college orientation program that I was doing, and I was not really excited about this idea of going caving. Being below ground in this maze of dark tunnels just did not sound like my kind of fun. But I put on my bravest face, I popped on my helmet with its flashlight after turning it on and off several times and checking that the batteries worked. And then I climbed into the tunnels below ground with the rest of my cohort. And to my surprise, I was fine for most of this adventure. Everyone's helmet lights bobbed into the darkness as we descended and walked through the tunnels. I wouldn't call these lights very bright. It was more of like a soft glow that lit up around us just enough for us to see right beyond our hands. But it was light in the darkness, and our leaders surely seemed like they knew what they were doing. So I tried to enjoy myself down there in those tunnels, and all was going well until we stopped in this giant underground cavern, and our leader said, Okay, we're all gonna turn off our lights now just to see what real darkness is like. And I thought, uh, no, no, thanks. Nope, don't want to do that. But everyone started clicking off their lights, and so I didn't want to be the one to ruin the effect for everyone else. So I hesitantly clicked off my own light, and as the final light faded, the darkness kind of deepened around us, and silence settled, and it was unnerving. I'd never known darkness like this before. I couldn't see anything anywhere. I couldn't see my hand in front of me, and I started to worry about what might be like crawling on the ground toward me that I couldn't see, right? At the earliest service, there was a geologist, and he's like, I love that moment. And I'm like, I'm so glad somebody does. It wasn't me. I had been raised in the modern world, right? Like the flip of a switch, the click of a lamp, the button of a flashlight. I always had light at my fingertips. I'd never known true darkness like that. And I realized that in this darkness I couldn't do what I was used to doing. I couldn't see anything that might be approaching. Even the most minimal of light would help ease my anxiety. But there in the darkness of darknesses, all I could do was just stand still and wait for permission for the lights to come back on. Jesus said, I am the light of the world. This is one of seven statements that he made using that phrase, I am, which harkens back to Moses' encounter with the burning bush when he was talking with God through the burning bush, and Moses says, Well, what is your name? Who are you? And God responded with, I am. It became a divine name. And so here in the Gospel of John, Jesus uses this divine name to help explain who he is as the Son of God. And in John 8, he says, I am the light of the world. Now, this pronouncement was made before modern electricity. We live in a world in a city where there's so much glow of city lights and street lights that we don't know pure darkness, but Jesus' day knew it. Their day ended at sunset, it began at sunrise, and in the hours of darkness they would go inside safe from predators. We know darkness in a different way. We know that the world can be dark indeed, but Jesus' light promises to always illuminate and guide our paths. I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Now, the last verse of this section is almost so obscure that you want to just kind of cross over it, but it's actually really important to understanding what is happening in Jesus' pronouncement. We learn in verse 20 that Jesus was teaching in the treasury of the temple. Now, let me give you a little overlay of this giant temple complex in Jerusalem. The treasury was in this large walled courtyard called the Court of Women. It wasn't only available to women, it was available to all people. It was just the furthest women could go within the temple complex. So it was called the court of women. And it was a courtyard where people gathered to hear teaching and preaching, to worship, to pray. There was also a collection bin for people to make their offerings, which is why it was called the treasury. This is where Jesus found himself teaching. I am the light of the world, which is significant only because he was teaching this message during the festival of booths. Sometimes your Bibles might call it the festival of tabernacles. This is a festival that happened every fall, and it celebrated God's provision, recalling how God led the Hebrew people through the wilderness in the 40 years after Moses led them out of slavery in Egypt. During those 40 years in the wilderness, God fed them manna. We learned about that last week. He also guided them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Whenever the cloud or the fire went, they followed. And whenever the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire stopped, they stopped and they set up their camp. This they did for 40 years. And so this celebration, this eight-day festival of booths, was a festival remembering God's provision and guidance in the darkness of the wilderness until they reached the promised land. And on the first day of this festival of booths, they would go into this court of women and they would set up giant lampstands. Think of them as ginormous candelabras that went above the walls surrounding the courtyard, and the records tell us they were so bright that there was no courtyard in Jerusalem that was not illuminated by their flame. So they would set up these giant lampstands on the first day of the festival of booths, and then as the sun set that evening, they would light the lampstands and they would have a big party and celebrate and dance with torches, and then the lamps would stay lit throughout the entire festival, remembering how God led them as a pillar of fire. All right? So when Jesus said, I am the light of the world, he was standing in the temple treasury in the court of women beside these massive lamps that lit all of Jerusalem and reminded the people of God's guidance through the wilderness. So when Jesus proclaimed, I am the light of the world, he was proclaiming to be the embodiment of that light. Jesus was proclaiming to not just be the guiding light for all of Jerusalem, but for the entire world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Meaning, whoever follows where the light of Jesus shines, they are walking the path that leads to life. Last summer we were on sabbatical and we took a 45-day camping trip. And one evening we had been at this campsite for several days, and it was time to get ready for bed. So I made my trek to the bathhouse. I knew my way there and back. We'd been there for a while. But it was a dark night and fog was starting to roll in. As I exited the bathhouse to head back to the campsite, I realized it had gotten a lot darker than I expected it to. I started to walk, knowing that I knew where I was going. But as I kept walking, I realized that it was taking a lot longer than it should be. And so after a while, I found myself at a road that I realized was like the main road of the campground. I'm like, oh boy, I went way too far. So I took a deep breath and I opened up my phone, which did not have cell service, but it had a flashlight. So I turned on my flashlight and I held it low to the ground just so I could see the next step or two or three in front of me. And slowly, step by step, I made it back to the campsite where Kevin was like, What took you so long? I think of that night often when I think of faith. Sometimes in our lives, it can feel like we are walking a foggy, dark path, and we have no idea where the road is leading. Or it feels like we're walking a foggy dark path and we're not even sure we're on the right road to begin with, right? Jesus is the light of the world, and Jesus promises to be our flashlight, illuminating the next step to take, maybe even the next two or three steps to take. And sometimes we don't get the full road in the light of day. Sometimes we only get that next right step to go, but we're never left to wander the wilderness alone. This is the work of the Holy Spirit within us. It's illuminating the path ahead of us. The Spirit is giving us people to help us discern how God is calling us to go. The Spirit gives us the scriptures to guide us, to guide us in our decisions. The Spirit gives us our intuition, in which the Spirit directly speaks to us. I am the light of the world, Jesus proclaimed beside those giant lampstands. We can walk in the light of life because Jesus promises to guide our way. But it's interesting that Jesus' opponents in the Gospel of John did not find this proclamation inspirational or amusing at all. They were frustrated. Who was this man to compare himself to God? And so they went after him, insisting that if he's to make such a bold claim, he better have two witnesses to back himself up. And then Jesus insisted that he's his own witness and his father is the second. He, of course, was referring to God the Father and himself as God, but the religious leaders couldn't catch that. That's what's so frustrating about them in the Gospel of John is Jesus speaks on a spiritual level and they can't get past the literal one. They say, Where's your father? as if he's in the crowd somewhere. What we see in this interchange is that the ignorance and short-sightedness of these opponents condemn them as they stand in the light of Christ, the light that they can't even see. It's like they're trying to take out a magnifying glass to study any imperfection they can find in Jesus. But when you look at a bright light through a magnifying glass, it burns, right? This is another way we can interpret I am the light of the world. It means that in the light of Jesus' presence, every truth is exposed. All our misdeeds, all our distressing thoughts, all our ignorance and short-sightedness, all our hidden motives and hidden agendas. None of it can hide when we stand in the light of Jesus. And what it means to follow Jesus is that it means we allow God access to our internal life. We offer it to God, both the good and the bad, our thoughts, our motives, our desires, our regrets, all of it. We expose to the light of Jesus. And we take a good look at it ourselves as we're laid out in the light of Jesus. And we ask, who are we really? What really motivates us? What about us would we rather hide from God? What are we even hiding from ourselves? These are the things that the light of Christ invites us to consider, not so that we will wall in shame or guilt. Rather, everything is brought into the light so that we can be freed from shame and guilt and move into a brighter future. The light of Christ burns away all of our failures and misdeeds, all the extra unnecessary weight that we carry, but only when we hold it out for Christ to see. If this terrifies you, remember that things look differently in the light than they look in the dark. I don't know about you, but I have been awoken at 3 a.m. with panic and anxiety about a situation in my life, and I toss and I turn and I eventually fall asleep thinking this is gonna be the end of me. And then I wake up at 7 a.m. and I wonder why I was so worried. It wasn't nearly as dire when I considered it by the light of day. Or maybe you were like me as a kid when you're in bed and you had your covers tucked up and the lights went out and you looked around your room and you saw the dragon there, right? Or the witch there, or the something hiding in that darkened corner, and then you switch the lights back on and you see the chair that looked like a dragon, and the clothes that looked like a witch, and the darkened corner is not dark, and it is clearly empty. The things that we fear in the dark don't always look as bad in the light, especially when we bring it into the light of Christ, which is full of grace and mercy and hope and love. Bringing our deepest darkness to Jesus in the light of prayer is as important to our spiritual health as vitamin D is to our skin. It is essential for our souls. There's a third way we can interpret the phrase, I am the light of the world. And to do this, we need to think about light for a minute. Light is fascinating because its point is not itself. Think about any light. The ones in the ceiling, the sun coming through the stained glass, the flashlight in your phone. You would not open up your flashlight and hold it to your eyes, right? Light is not something that you look directly at because it hurts. Do y'all remember the solar eclipse a couple years ago when they were selling the eclipse glasses and there were warnings everywhere? Do not look at the sun. It will hurt you. Light is not meant to be admired for itself. It is admired because of its ability to light everything around it. Light's superpower is its ability to reflect. Everything you see in here is because light is reflecting off of it. People, the floors, the chairs, the pews, all of this, we see because everything is reflecting light. When Jesus says, I am the light of the world, we can take that to mean that when we look at the world with the light of Jesus, we can see everything rightly. Sure, we can see things without the light of Jesus, but when Jesus' light illuminates our eyesight, we can see everything with a new depth of spiritual truth. One another. Friends and enemies, the poor and the marginalized, ourselves. When we see things with the light of Christ, the enemies become people that we are to pray for. We can learn to see ourselves as flawed yet beloved children of God when Jesus' light illuminates our view. You see everything different when the light of Jesus' teachings illuminates everything around you. And perhaps more importantly, you are a reflection of Jesus' light. In other gospels, Jesus tells his followers, you are the light of the world. This is because we are reflections of Jesus' light. We soak up Jesus' light and love, his teachings and his priorities, his mercy and his grace, and we live in such a way that it shines through our words and deeds and lights up the world around us. I think back to that pre-college caving trip at that moment of standing in the absolute darkness and how eternal it felt. But eventually we were invited to turn our headlamps back on. And I had a brief moment of panic. What if all the batteries died? What if they don't turn back on? What if we're stuck in the dark forever in this cave? But pretty soon the lamps started to click on one after another. And what had appeared to be a very soft glow before now seemed like the brightest light I'd ever seen. And I noticed how it reflected off the walls and how it reflected off of the other people around me. And I realized that if the light of the person beside me had run out of batteries, mine would shine for her. And if mine had died, there were 15 other people and their lights that would shine for me. That is the gift and the calling of the church. We are reflections of Jesus. We shine the light of Christ onto all the paths that we're walking to light it up for one another. So that when we can't see the path in front of us, or whenever the light within us dims, we have the light of Christ shining through each one of us, leading us on the path that leads to life. I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Thanks be to God. By the grace of Jesus Christ, his light shines upon us and shines through us so that we might know the way to life. Amen.