Fire
Brothers and sisters, walk as children of light – for the fruit of light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth – discerning what is pleasing to the Lord (Ephesians 5:8-10). The verb ‘discerning’ – δοκιμάζοντες (dokimazontes) – is a participle. Paul is saying, be walking as children of the light by discerning, learning, testing(!), what is pleasing to the Lord. And how can you be sure that you are in the light and learning what is pleasing to the Lord? By seeing the fruit of the light in you.
Galatians 5:22 says it clearly. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit….Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
Living/walking in the light is the same as living/walking in the Spirit – the Holy Spirit, not some ‘spirit’ in the modern non-churchgoing mentality – you know, “I’m spiritual, not religious.” Well, I’m not religious either, because Jesus did not come to establish a religion. He came to open the path to God because He Himself is God of true God, of one essence with the Father. In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God. And the Logos became flesh and pitched His tent among us.
The Logos is the name John uses in his Gospel to refer to the eternal Son of God who was born into human existence through Mary. That of course is Christmas. And as the saying goes, Jesus is the reason for the season. Jesus – NOT Santa Claus, or Kwanzaa, or neopagan Yule. The eternal Son of God is the Word/Logos of God through whom God spoke everything into existence. And through His logos and the logos of the apostles and the church, He brings us into fellowship with God the Father – and that is true existence, true life. Because in him was life and the life is the light of men and women. Jesus is the way to the Father, there is no other way. That’s why we don’t belong to a religion; we belong to the One who is Life.
Saint Paul says to us today: walk as children of light – take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness (Eph 5:11). The Greek says μὴ συγκοινωνεῖτε τοῖς ἔργοις τοῖς ἀκάρποις τοῦ σκότους. Interesting verb, that συγκοινωνεῖτε (sygkoinōneite). It comes from the noun κοινωνία (koinōnia) and the prefix συν (syn). So: communion/fellowship with. Do not participate in works of darkness, have no fellowship with works of darkness.
In modern Greek συγκοινωνία (sygkoinōnia) is the word that we use for mass transit. It makes sense, mass transit brings people together to the same destination. So Paul is saying, don’t have anything to do with darkness, because those who are in darkness have a different destination than yours! We make no judgment about their destination. All we know is that their destination is different: mē sygkoinōneite, don’t get on the same bus, you don’t want to go there.
So wake up, O sleeper, Paul says, and rise from the dead – just as Jesus rose from the dead! He died for you so you can rise from the dead; and Christ will shine on you. Christ IS the light, He shines on you and on your path. So get off the bus that takes you where you don’t want to go. Wake up and get on the bus that is led by the light of Christ.
Blaise Pascal wrote some famous words in his Pensées:
Year of Grace 1654
Monday 23 November, feast of St. Clement, Pope and Martyr
and others in the Martyrology.
Eve of St. Crysogonus, martyr, and others.
From about half past ten at night till about half past twelve,
Fire.
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
not of the philosophers and the learned.
Certainty, Certainty; feeling, joy, peace.
God of Jesus Christ
“My God and your God.”
Your God shall be my God
Forgetful of the world and of everything, except God
He is found only by the ways taught in the Gospel
Greatness of the human soul.
Righteous Father, the world has not known You, but
I have known You.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I deserted Him.
“They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters.”
My God, will you leave me?
Let me not be parted from Him eternally.
This is life eternal, to know You, the only true
God and Him whom You have sent, Jesus Christ.
This is life eternal, to know You, the only true
God and Him whom You have sent, Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ
I left Him; fled, denied, crucified Him.
May I never be separated from Him.
He is preserved only by the ways taught in the Gospel
Renunciation calm and complete.
Total surrender to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternal joy for one day of labor upon earth.
“I will not forget Thy Commandments. Amen.”
When you are in felllowship with the light, when you are traveling with Christ, the fire is lit inside you, and you are filled with the Holy Spirit, just as St Paul tells us: addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart (Eph 5:19). That’s why we gather at Liturgy, to learn how to speak to one another in words that come from God and return to God by way of each other. We become the συγκοινωνία for each other. And then we are able to do what Paul wrote to the Galatians: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” We bear each other’s burden because He came to bear our burdens. That’s where the religious leaders so often failed in the Gospel encounters with Christ. They attacked Jesus because He healed people on the Sabbath and thus broke the laws of Moses. You see, that’s religion right there: when religious laws take priority over compassion! That was not Jesus’ way. And it was not Paul’s way. As he said in his Galatians letter, the teachings of Christ are what Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit – and against these there is no law. Because you see, bearing each other’s burden is not something a religion can teach. It only happens between people who are συγκοινωνοί (sygkoinōnoi) with the light of Christ. When He, the Word/Logos of God, came among us to open the path to God, He lit a fire in the soul of humanity. Oh, how I wish for that fire to be lit everywhere Christ’s people meet in worship to hear the Logos speak truths of eternal life.