This Life Was the Light Of the Human Race 這生命是人的光

The Nativity of the Lord, Year A
Theme: This Life Was the Light Of the Human Race 這生命是人的光

Our resources are finite and limited. If we continue to consume in the present manners and are unable to develop newer modes of production and consumption, one day we’ll deplete most of the natural resources on earth. There will be no more clean water to drink and pristine air to inhale. Not only will we live in poverty, we might even barely survive. In other words, there is no free lunch under the sun. As an aphorism goes “No pain, no gain”. Athletes have to undergo rigorous and even hellish trainings in order to win gold medals in the Olympics. By the sweat of their brows, farmers eat bread (Genesis 3:19). When emperors built their Babel Towers, royal entombments and Great Walls, thousands of slaves were toiled to death. All in all, we must pay for the affluence, comfort, convenience or glory we’re enjoying, whether we pay them ourselves or our offspring repay for us. In the latter case, it is immoral of us to leave a mess behind for our children to clean up in the future. In short, when we enjoy happiness which we don’t earn, someone else has to pay for us.

Christmas is a festive and joyful season. We greet each other “Merry Christmas”. However, from what we have discussed above, have you ever thought about who has/have paid for our merriment and/or our happiness in Christmas? Caesar Augustus decreed a census. Many people had to travel around to return to their native towns to enrol (Luke 2:1). Normal productions came to a halt except for tourism and hospitality. Whatever benefits Augustus had had in mind to gain, an economic price had already been paid. Matthew saw this as a fulfilment of a prophecy about the birth of the Messiah (Matthew 2:5-6). Then who had paid or would pay the price for this prophecy? Joseph and the pregnant Virgin had to travel afar from Nazareth in the north to Bethlehem in the south, not to mention other travellers on their way to enrol. The inn had no room to house Joseph and Mary such that the new born king was laid in a manger (Luke 2:7)!

Though I’m a man, I can imagine how painful it is for a woman in labour. In ancient time, delivering a firstborn could be fatal to both the mother and the infant. Though we believe that with special graces, the BVM was exempted from Original Sin at conception, that might not necessarily exempt her from the pain of giving birth (Genesis 3:16) in the first Christmas. Moreover, her pains did not stop there. Simeon prophesized she would suffer alongside with her child unto the end (Luke 2:35). Therefore, we owe our happiness to the BVM and St. Joseph. Wait a minute! Hadn’t some Magi come to adore the Holy Infant and offered the Holy Family precious gifts, viz. gold, frankincense and myrrh (Matthew 2:11)? Well, at least the Holy Family had gained a small fortune, hadn’t they? I doubt very much carpenters were able to make use of the gold or frankincense which they were not supposed to possess! Those gifts would incriminate them! Indeed, those precious gifts are more symbolic than pragmatic!

I would not spend more time on the Nativity story of Matthew which everybody knows is unsettling further down. It’s high time we return to the gospel text on Christmas Sunday. The text is John’s attempt to rewrite Genesis in light of the Incarnation of the Son of God. I would like to meditate upon. “All things came to be through Him, and without Him nothing came to be. What came to be through Him was life, and this life was the light of the human race” (John 1:3-4). John had spent some sixty years to reflect on his three-year encounter with Jesus Christ, the Son of God. At the beginning of his gospel, John identifies this Son of God as the Word of God which God the Father uttered when He created this known universe (Genesis 1:2). While the author of Genesis populated the seven-day-week cycle with different creatures and crowned the human race with the “image of God” on the sixth day (1:26), John is more concerned with the eternal life in God. To John, the Creation was an outburst of life: human beings, animals, plants and the heaven bodies. That’s what John tries to convey when he says, “What came to be through Him was life” (1:3b-4a). Then how should we understand the next half of the verse, “and this life was the light of the human race” (1:4b)?

The meanings of words evolve through ages. There is the obvious example of “Suffer little children and forbid them not to come unto me …” (Matthew 19:14, KJV) Here, “suffer” means “allow”. Nowadays, “light” usually symbolizes “enlightenment” and “truth” etc. I suspect this philosophical flavour might have been popularized since the Age of Enlightenment when “knowledge” was equated with “power”! I think during the Apostolic Age, “light” symbolized something else because “this life was the truth of the human race” doesn’t make sense to our understanding. Furthermore, John uses the word “truth” when he refers to the truth. E.g. “But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God” (John 3:21) Therefore, John does not use “light” as a synonym of “truth”. Then how is “life” connected to “light” in John? Perhaps we may find the answer in Matthew who says, “Your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father” (Matthew 5:16).

Risking over-generalization, I opine that during the Apostolic Age, Christians made use of “light” to refer to charitable works. This makes perfect sense in John’s theology. For John, God is love (1 John 4:8). As a Jew, John would not have a chimpanzee in mind when he thought about men as an image of God. Ancient theologians would vaguely associate human souls to God’s image, and further refined the concept to pinpoint creativity, intelligence and the use of languages etc. It was good enough to differentiate humanity from animals during the Middle Age up till the Industrial Revolution. However, when chess grandmasters were defeated by Artificial Intelligence, where else can the human race find a defining criterion for humanity? At the moment, no computer programmers would create “self-awareness” software for A.I. Even if they do, nobody would write “self-sacrifice” programs because it will lead to self-destruction of robots. That’s contradictory and doesn’t make sense for the A.I. industry. Therefore, I opine that charity, not intelligence, is the defining criterion for humanity.

Since human beings were created in the image of God, we are able to love to some extent and in different degrees because God is love. Due to our different upbringings, some of us might only be able to love a little, loving only themselves and other lovable people. On the other hand, some of us might be able to love until it hurts for the good of others, even for our persecutors!
Brethren! Life comes about from love and love pays the price of happiness. Christians should therefore be generous because the Christian God is infinite. There is no scarcity of love in Him. “And the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us, and we saw His glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The Son of God has paid the price on the cross to redeem us all so that we may partake in the eternal life of God. Our happiness is guaranteed! Therefore, be generous!
God bless!
2016 Reflection