Title: Light of Creation, Light of Awareness
Contents
light of creation, light of awareness
(2 Corinthians 4:1-6)
Today is the last Sunday of Epiphany. The Feast of Epiphany, the feast that commemorates the appearance of the Lord to us, is January 6th. The first Sunday after that is called the First Sunday of Epiphany, and continues until Holy Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. The length of the Epiphany varies from year to year. Last year it was four weeks, this year seven weeks. The reason for this change is that Easter is associated with the Jewish Passover feast, whereas Christmas, the root of the Epiphany, is associated with the general solar calendar. Epiphany is also called the “Festival of Lights”. It means that the Lord, who is light, appeared as light in a dark world.
Early Christianity represented Jesus as light. Christmas is also associated with light. December 25th, when the winter solstice, the longest night of the winter solstice, and the length of the day, begins to grow little by little, was considered the birthday of Jesus. The writer of the Gospel of John explained that Jesus is the true light, the light that comes to the world and shines to each person (John 1:9). This light was life. It means that the life in all things in this world was created through this light, Jesus Christ. As such, early Christians accepted light, life, and Jesus as a bundle of faith.
The fact that light is life was accepted not only in Christianity but also in other ancient religions. That is also evident in physics. At the very bottom of life is photosynthesis by light, carbon and water. Without light, life would be impossible. It could be said that water is more essential than light. Still, it is not wrong to say that light is an indispensable element in the phenomena of life. Especially for the ancients, light was absolute. The brightness and heat that light gave them were the absolute conditions of life. Early Christians recognized and believed that Jesus was just such a light and life. Is that perception correct?
light of awareness
In the text of today's sermon, 2 Corinthians 4:1-6, Paul clearly states this matter. According to Paul, God has shed the light of knowing it in our hearts. It means that the ability to know the truth comes from God. We usually think that we realize the truth because we know how to think for ourselves. It's reasonable to think that smart people and hard-working people get good marks on exams. But if you are smart, you can only calculate well, but you never realize the truth. Not everyone who is good at drawing becomes a great painter. Just as not everyone who speaks well is a great poet. The truth is not something that I try to learn, but rather comes from the truth.
The poem “Poetry has come to me” is contained in the poet Oh In-tae’s collection of poems called “Father’s House”.
never wrote a poem
Cigars have always come to me
The world's words are meaningless
So I let it all go and got one
Kill it, finally
An empty enemy like a horse's grave
the moon shining above
come down like the light
into the poet's body
it will get wet
irresistibly
cigar came to me
The expression “poetry has come to me” is in line with the biblical expression that the Holy Spirit has come to me or that a revelation from God has come to me. Paul called it the light of knowledge. It is not ours, it is God's light of our hearts.
Conversely, the reason we do not recognize the ultimate truth is because the light does not shine. The Gospel of John says, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it” (John 1:5). Look at the tree. Without light, it cannot grow. In total darkness, the tree dies. No matter how brilliant our brains are, we cannot see, understand, or perceive anything without light.
In general, people do not even know that they do not recognize the truth. A person who is accustomed to darkness is unaware that he is in darkness, nor does he take it seriously. Some people know that they are in the dark, but they are just frustrated because they do not know what the world of light is. It might be like Salieri from the movie <Amadeus>. It is said that he was a person who lamented his fate in front of Mozart because of his lack of musical talent given from heaven. Even in the world of faith, this often happens.
Paul explained it this way: It means that the god of the world has blinded their minds (2 Corinthians 4:4). This does not mean that there is no God and that there is no god of the world. It means that the god of the world here is an evil force that destroys people's lives like Satan who tempted Job or Jesus before the start of his public life. Its power is so powerful that it looks like a divine power. According to Paul, there is no reason for people to be obscured by the gospel unless it is such an evil power. They said that they were possessed by an evil god and became blind, so they could not be illuminated by the light of the gospel.
That's right. The reason why Paul mentioned the god of the world was that he could not explain the reason why the gospel was obscured by anything else. It wasn't looks, it wasn't knowledge, it wasn't family. Nothing gives an exact explanation for it. Conversely, today we do not have a solid proof of why God chose us or why He made us come to know Jesus Christ. We can only follow Paul's confession that God has shed light on our hearts to know it.
The light Paul speaks of is the light of creation. It was the light that started God's creative act. Only with that light is life possible, as well as the recognition of things. Objects cannot be discerned where the light is completely blocked. If God had created light last, creations before that would have been meaningless. What was not revealed would have been as if it did not exist. In this respect, this light is both the source of life and the source of knowledge. That same light shone upon our hearts. If not, Paul is right that we could never have recognized the gospel.
The explanation so far may sound too abstract and ideological to some people. Now, according to Paul's teachings, I have spoken of the source of knowledge. It is important that God's light first illuminated our hearts before our efforts. Specifically, think of it like this: Here is a spoiled child. As you get older, you have to grow older. Being mature means becoming aware of the fundamentals of human relationships. However, there are children who are born early, there are children who are a little late, and there are people who do not grow up until they die. Why does this difference happen? It depends on whether the light of truth shines on the child's heart or not. Recognizing the gospel is possible only when the light of God and the light of creation that God has done illuminates our hearts.
The face of Christ, the glory of God
I said that religious awareness is similar to growing up in everyday life, but that does not mean that the two perceptions are on the same level. The knowledge of faith is far more fundamental and essential. A much more fundamental and essential reason is that that knowledge is to know the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6). It is because we recognize that Christ is the image of God (2 Corinthians 4:4b). How can we perceive this as our intellectual capacity?
No matter how detailed you look at the face of Jesus, it is difficult to find the glory of God. The glory of God is not tattooed or engraved on Jesus' face. Just by looking at it, Jesus does not look like God. A long time ago, a British scholar reconstructed a real figure of Jesus with a computer. It is an estimate of a typical Jewish man around the age of 30 who lived as a laborer in Jesus' day. It was a different picture from the usual portraits of Jesus. The portrait was an attractive white man with long hair, full of intellectual and spiritual flair, but what the computer found scientifically was of a very ordinary ancient man. Even in the days of Jesus, no one saw the face of Jesus and believed in him. But why does Paul say that the glory of God is in the face of Jesus?
Jesus' face here refers to his person, not his appearance. Personality refers to all of his life. His teachings, his deeds, his beliefs, and his destiny are all called the face of Jesus. The glory of God points to salvation. To say that the glory of God is in the face of Jesus means that God's salvation was carried out in Jesus. It means that God's salvation is present in Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of God and His resurrection from the dead.
Recognizing and believing this fact is not easy. So Paul said that it is possible only if God, who created light, gives the light of knowledge. Does it sound strange? It's not like that. Jesus' proclamation of the gospel that the kingdom of God is imminent, return to it was rejected by many. In particular, they were severely rejected by Jewish religious leaders who claimed to believe in God. Why? The answer to the reason is surprisingly simple. The kingdom of God that Jesus preached did not require any conditions. You just have to turn around there. That's metanoia. The Pharisees and scribes would have thought such a belief as childish. They thought that God's salvation only came to sinners and those who lived a life separate from the publicans. It requires hard work and heavy burdens. Because they were bound only by their own traditions, they could neither recognize nor acknowledge that the kingdom of God began in the person of Jesus.
It is perhaps not surprising that Jesus' proclamation of the gospel that there are no conditions required to enter the kingdom of God was not accepted at that time. At that time, the Pharisees who were opposed to Jesus or those who were opposed to Paul did not think that there was something wrong with them. They were rather amicable and well-rounded people. In their view, there was no objective evidence that Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of God was correct. Until now, there was no way to confirm that Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of God was correct in terms of the level of faith they thought and experienced. Even today, Jews insist on giving evidence that Jesus is the Messiah.
Now that we believe in Jesus well, you might think that we are different from those who rejected Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of God. I think so. I hope so, and it has to be. These are the people who saw the glory of God that fell on the face of Jesus through the light of God. But whether we really are or not should be asked more seriously. What the hell do we believe in Jesus? They may also believe in their own religious traditions and religious desires, just like those who on the surface say they believe in Jesus, but in reality refuse to proclaim Jesus' kingdom. If so, we do not know if the light of creation has not yet been shone in our hearts, or, worse yet, those whose minds are still obscured by the gods of the world. Or maybe it's a mix of all these things. It means that we either know or do not know the mystery of salvation through Jesus. Does this mean, then, that the light of creation and true knowledge dims our minds?
You must change your whole thinking to recognize the glory of God in the face of Jesus. Just as conversion is to turn toward the imminent kingdom of God and its future, conversion is to change our whole thinking. That is the evidence that our hearts are illuminated by the light of God. At its core lies life. It's about changing the way you think about life. It is to change the way we think about trying to achieve perfect life. Life is not something we can possess or deal with, it belongs entirely to God. What does this mean?
Last Friday, Cardinal Suhwan Kim's funeral mass was held with the mourning of the people. Rarely has the death of a religious leader had such a repercussion.