Darkness into Light

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third book in the Narnian chronicles by C. S. Lewis (for those of you who have not been through the Wardrobe door), we meet a strange man named Ramandu. He is a star-gazer that Lucy, Edmund, and their cousin, Eustace, who has recently been “un-dragoned” by Aslan, meet on their voyage to the end of the world. Ramandu is mysterious to say the least, and as he reveals more about himself it gets even stranger as he tells the children he is a star that has retired. 

 

The kids question him about what it means to be a retired star in the sky. He explains that he is about to rise after being fed every morning by a bird who brings him a fire-berry. He goes on to say, “that he is not so old now as he once was” and will soon mount the galaxies and again join the great dance. It is the recently un-dragoned Eustace who, after listening to all this imaginative talk, says to Ramandu, “In our world, a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.” 

 

Wise, old Ramandu gently rebukes his utilitarian thinking, “Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.” This week we are talking about “light.” Light for John and the rest of the Bible is not just a physiological experience. For that matter, for all of us “light” is more than the brightness of the sun or the illumination we receive when we flip the light switch. No, like Ramandu, light and darkness are written in the liturgy of our bones. Light is about knowledge, salvation, illumination, and darkness is well—scary. There are moral overtones we can’t deny in these categories. 

 

The Apostle John says Jesus is light, and he came into darkness. This Sunday we will talk about what this means.

 

Blessings,

 

Jim