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The story of Thomas Merton, perhaps the most celebrated American Christian contemplative of the twentieth century, is a classic one of spiritual conversion. A brilliant and successful student who traveled Europe as a youth, excelled in his studies in Paris and at Columbia University, he lived life to the fullest, seizing every opportunity for pleasure and success. But he eventually realized it was all illusion and emptiness and he experienced a dramatic spiritual change that culminated in his becoming a Trappist monk. In the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky he devoted himself to a life of solitary prayer and contemplation.

Merton describes how in his early years as a monk he had an almost arrogant attitude toward those who still lived in the evil clutches of the world, while he embraced a life of withdrawal. He tells the story of a moment of transformation in which his feelings toward the world changed. On an errand to Louisville, "at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district," he had a mystical experience.

I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness.

Merton suddenly experienced a sense of solidarity with the human race – not simply in sin but in grace. He wrote, "There was no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun….There are no strangers! The gate of heaven is everywhere." In the scripture this afternoon, the author of the Epistle to the Ephesians says simply and powerfully, "Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light."

I would like to reflect with you today on three spiritual imperatives regarding this Christian understanding of the light. These are: wake up to the light; be the light; and hold others in the light.

First, wake up. There is a quote from Carl Jung taped to my desk lamp at home. It reads, "The greatest sin is to be unconscious." The simplest understanding of unconsciousness is to be asleep. The scripture today says, "Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." Understood metaphorically, this means that it is possible to walk around in daily life and yet be asleep; to go about the tasks of living, and yet be unconscious. Unconscious of what? Unconscious of ourselves and who we really are. Or unconscious to vast areas of our beings. That which is unconscious is in the darkness. What is in the darkness is not evil in and of itself. It is evil in that it is in the darkness. We need to bring it into the light, bring our total selves into the light. Bring the people around us into the light. Bring the world around us into the light. And that is waking up. That is rising from the dead.

I like Merton’s story because he sees his experience as waking up. Waking up to the light. Waking up to the reality that he was connected to all those strangers walking around. When we see those connections, because the light has shined on us and others, then there can be love. If there is much that remains in darkness, there is hate. I am struck that the official rhetoric of the war on terrorism continues to stress how evil our enemy is. We blithely refer to the Al Queda detainees at Guantanamo Bay as "really bad guys." Those holed up in the caves of Afghanistan are "truly bad men." We well know that such people are apparently filled with hatred for us. And they are very dangerous to us. But isn’t it enough to say that? Are we to be left with only two alternatives: kill or be killed? I am not suggesting we minimize the reality of evil. It’s real. Years ago, one of my duties as a chaplain at Bellevue Hospital in New York City was to visit patients in the maximum-security criminal psychiatric ward. You walk in the cell and they lock the door behind you, leaving just you and this criminally insane individual. I was, frankly, afraid at those times. But somehow I could not come to label that glaring and shackled man as evil. Dangerous, disturbed? Yes. But not evil as the sole defining label. Yet what is evil? Is it a force somewhere out there, residing in some devil or demonic energy? No, evil is really our capacity to tolerate darkness in our own souls and to find only darkness in the souls of others. It is a lack of awareness. But to wake up to the light is to walk into the light. The wonderful 9^th Chapter of John’s Gospel is an extended narrative on the meaning of darkness and light using the metaphor of blindness. Sit down and read that whole remarkable chapter on your own sometime. A man born blind is presented to Jesus by his disciples. They want Jesus to tell them who is to blame for this. The man himself? His parents? Their paradigm was "suffering equals punishment." But Jesus in his response implies that they are blind. God doesn’t punish like this. This man is all of us. We are all walking around blind. Unconscious. Asleep. It is our blindness that causes our suffering, not the other way around. And the Pharisees in their blindness would rather talk about whether Jesus was authorized to heal.

How is this man healed? He comes into the presence of the light. The light shines into him. And Jesus says (typical of the Jesus of John’s Gospel), "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." God is light. And the light was so strong in Jesus, himself so transparent to the light of God, that he became light itself. But how then is the man healed? Was it by accepting Jesus as his personal savior? Was it by agreeing to some doctrine of God or some correct theological teaching?

There is a story about a wise spiritual teacher who got tired of his disciples always talking about such matters as proving the existence of God or how to find God or if Jesus was really God. He knew that only through waking up – through spiritual awareness of the world and self-awareness would they find life.

To a group of people who asked him to speak to them of God, he said, "What you seek, alas, is to talk about God rather than see God; and you see God as you think God is, not as God actually is. For God is manifest, God is not hidden. Why talk? Open your eyes and see." He paused and then added, "Seeing is the easiest thing in the world. But thinking about God is making your thoughts like shutters. All you need to do is stop thinking and open the shutters and see."

Interesting. This was the problem of the Pharisees in this chapter from John. They would rather talk about God than see God.

This leads to the second aspect of this. We are called to be the light. We are called to recognize that we are the light, just like Jesus was. This is not simply living in the light. It is to affirm that to live in the light is to become light. "Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light." What a message! In the other gospels Jesus says, "You are the light of the world." "Don’t keep you light under a bushel." In our eagerness to see our church grow, we have been energetically exploring all sorts of new ways of getting our story out, using the media, becoming a truly inviting and welcoming church. That’s great. I’m all in favor of that and we should appreciate all those creative efforts, and let’s keep them coming. But at the same time, our message must be clear. Merton said, in the story I told earlier, "There was no way of telling people they were walking around shining like the sun. There are no strangers. The gate of heaven is everywhere." Our challenge is to find a way to tell them. The Truth, the reality is that each of you is right now shining like the sun. And every person out there in our community and in our world is walking around shining like the sun. There are no strangers. But that light, in here and out there needs to be revealed. We need to open our eyes to it. Isn’t that the message? That is the content. You are the light of the world. Right now. Just as you are. Just open you eyes. And importantly: to wake up to the light and become the light may have little to do with what you think you believe or should believe about a theistic God. Dag Hammarskjold wrote:

God does not die on the day we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.

A wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason. That is a good definition of God. That is Jesus. Wake up! You are light. And when we become aware of that, the gate of heaven is everywhere. Which means right in front of you.

Wake up to the light. Be the light. And finally, hold others in the light. Are there people who live in darkness? Yes. Are they dangerous? Yes. Do most people live at least partially in the darkness? Yes. Do they suffer because of that? Yes. Can that be helped? Yes. The most immediate way is to pray for others. It is to "hold them in the light" as the Quakers say. In your hearts lift them up to the light. In our Tuesday evening spiritual journey group, we talked last time about intercessory prayer, that is, prayers for others. One person asked a good question. "Who are we to pray for others? Isn’t it arrogant to think that we have the wisdom to know what is really best for them and to believe we have the power to make a difference?" Good question. While thinking about others is good, our tradition makes it very clear that we have a responsibility to prayer for others, trusting that such prayer really counts.

Let me share with you how I pray for others. I am not suggesting that this is necessarily the way for you to, but to encourage you to think about your own intercessory prayer. I begin by simply asking Jesus to fill me with God’s light and love. I do this by just repeating the name of Jesus, over and over for a few minutes. I ask that as I do this, I may be filled with his light, despite my own brokenness and sin and darkness. After this I ask that now that light and love may flow through me to the person I name. I then picture that person bathed in light. I might ask for healing for something in particular. Most often I just seek to lift that person into the light. Sometimes I hug them in that image or lay my hands on them or anoint them. There is a list of people each day that I do this with. My goal is to lift them up and hold them in the light.

I am convinced that the great religions of the world share some very important understandings. Among them is the idea of the sacred as divine light - light that illuminates our souls and kindles the sacred flame within each of us. Let me close with a few words from the Upanishads on what it means to be a spiritual human being.

One who consists of the mind, whose body is breath, whose form is the light of Consciousness, whose resolve is true, whose Self is space, containing all actions, containing all desires, containing all odors, containing all tastes, pervading this whole world, the unspeaking, the unconcerned; this my Self within the heart is smaller than a grain of rice, or a barley-corn, or a mustard seed, or a grain of millet, or the kernel of a grain of millet; this my Self within the heart is larger than the earth, larger than the sky, larger than the heavens, larger than all these words.

Let us tell the world that we are all walking around shining like the sun. There are no strangers. The gate of heaven is everywhere.

AMEN

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