The Light Life
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
August 6, 2023
James 1:16-18 (MSG)
16-18 So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.
I found it ironic that this year’s theme for Western Yearly Meeting was “You are the Light of the World” and we at First Friends had just come off a week of VBS and Meetings for Worship that were all about shining Jesus’ light.
While leading a workshop with Rachel Doll O’Mahoney, the pastor of Valley Mills, on supporting and attracting young-ish adults, I was reminded of a story from my time in campus ministries that had to do with exploring in more depth another aspect of the light of God we were talking about. I have shared this story on several occasions, but I think it gets to what I want to talk about this morning.
When I first arrived at Huntington University as the Assistant Director of Campus Ministries sixteen years ago, I was asked to lead an in-depth Bible Study for the students on campus - every Friday for the entire school year.
After discussing what books of the Bible, I would consider studying, I told my campus ministry team that I was thinking of facilitating a study on the book of James.
At first the team was excited but then paused as if I was going to say something more. Finally, one person asked, “James is a very short book of the Bible, what other books are you going to cover throughout the year?” (If you are not familiar with the Book of James, it happens to have only 5 chapters and takes up about 4-5 pages in the Bible – that is depending on the translation.)
Now, I had decided every Friday we would simply take a word-by-word explorative journey through the book of James - unheard of, for such a short book.
But I knew the book of James held a lot to discuss and ponder, and I looked forward to the challenge. So, for about two thirds of that school year I met in an auditorium with a couple hundred students every Friday. It was just a little bit larger than Seeking Friends here at First Friends.
Yet, it was one of the most engaging and challenging studies I have ever attempted. And yes, I was able to keep it to only studying the Book of James for the entire year.
I share that story, because in some ways, teaching that class was a centering time for me before entering a very interesting time of my life.
You see, not only was I a husband, a father of three young children, and now, a member of the campus ministry team at a Christian college, I had just come through a difficult time of church planting as well as church closing in the Anglican Church in the Detroit area.
We had just moved to Indiana from Garden City, Michigan, and we would continue to own our house in Garden City for the next two years because of the recession.
At this time our young family of five was forced to live with my parents in New Haven, Indiana. Not only was this a challenging time, but the things we had gone through were teaching us to see the world, our faith, those around us, and even God in a new Light.
As I mentioned I was entering a very interesting time of life.
By the end of that year and study on James I was considering starting doctoral studies at George Fox Evangelical Seminary (Portland Seminary, today), and Huntington University had decided to enter a year focused on diversity and issues of race. My mind had a lot to process.
Upon arriving at Huntington, I had been asked by the university to create a Facebook profile – not knowing that this would be my new way of communicating to the college students for the rest of my time there. (Ironically, Rachel and I were just sharing our technology “firsts” this weekend in our workshop at Western Yearly Meeting – like when we bought our first cell phone, when we emailed for the first time, and even when we started using Facebook – all things that young people today have come to assume we have had forever.)
I also at this time found myself moving away from being an Anglican priest, and a new friend and colleague in my life, a progressive Mennonite was teaching me about pacifism, the living/historic peace churches, and nonviolent resistance.
Not long after this, my family and I would join a group of peace-minded friends each week to discuss and encourage each other in this work. Still, this was all yet to come.
So, let’s return to that Bible Study…
One Friday, we had a rather packed auditorium – I was hoping it was because my engaging teaching, but I think it was because students needed to get their chapel credits and it was the end of the semester.
That morning, I started our class with a blank large dry erase board on the stage. To encourage student’s participation, I asked them to name words that described God and wrote them on the dry erase board.
For the next several minutes, we filled the board with a plethora of words from loving to wrathful and everything in between.
I then asked the students where they learned those descriptors and they shared the typical places – church, Sunday school, parents, VBS, etc.… (remember, it was a Christian college).
I then made what I thought was a natural transition to the text we were to discuss (which happens to be our text for today). So, I read,
So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.
Immediately a hand went up…and I called on a young man who had attended every Friday and always engaged in the conversation in a meaningful way.
This week, I could see he looked rather disturbed. He then said, “I have a hard time with these verses. My dad left my mom when I was young and has nothing to do with me or my family.”
At that point you could hear a pin drop. He then went on to explain how he has struggled with the view of God as Father. As with all good discussions, immediately hands went up and we started a much deeper conversation. Some of the challenges came because…
For some God must be male.
For some God must be a parent figure.
For some God had to be a disciplinarian, and yet…
For some God seemed absent much like this young man had explained.
Emotions raised quickly, and for the first time I went and grabbed a chair and sat on the stage just listening.
For several minutes, students aired out the issues they had with their dads or parents, others defended the views they had been taught by their churches, and some just sat very silent.
What all this was landing on was one word from our text that for them was such a strong and polarizing word – Father.
Now, there was a good chance that I was the only father in that auditorium that day, but as I listened to the students talk, I began to think about my own views of God and being a father.
Even though I have a caring, quiet, and rather passive father whom I can relate to my understanding of God, it was clear from the student’s angst and frustration this was not the case for everyone.
Actually, for these students, the father descriptor and metaphor seemed almost problematic. Either God was not living up to their understanding of being the proper father in their life or their physical father was not living up to being a godly example.
Interestingly enough, for the next several years, I personally began wrestling with the idea of God as father, but it wasn’t until about four years later that I returned to this particular scripture.
I, like many of my students, and many other Christians had focused so much on the role of the father and its example for earthly fathers (such as myself) that I completely put the focus on a standard that was too high to humanly attain. No wonder so many of my students had wrestled with this.
As I started my doctoral studies, I was introduced to feminist, Black, progressive, and other unique and challenging theologies and spiritualities – and that included the one I landed within - Quakers.
I believe it was because of that conversation on fathers at Huntington University that I began to notice how often Quakers referenced the “Father of Light” in our teachings, as well as early and current documents. This description is referenced in our own faith and practice and seems to be a rather Quakerly descriptor of God.
I probably should have seen it when reading our scripture for today – the way Eugene Peterson translated this text is almost speaking directly to Quakers.
Peterson’s translation of James’ words even starts by addressing his dear “Friends” and then he gives a warning.
Don’t get thrown off course.
But let’s be honest…that is so easy to do whether reading scripture or just trying to process life. That is exactly what my students did 16 years ago – they had been thrown off course by struggling with their own images of father.
Yet, I see it still happening during this crazy time in our world today with our desire to be right and others be wrong, polarizing politics, and the all-consuming technology. We can easily get off course. We too can get hyper focused and miss the bigger point. But what is that bigger point?
If we continue in our scripture, we might see a completely different picture.
Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven.
The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light.
Let’s be honest - we all love receiving gifts – especially desirable and beneficial ones – but what if we were thrown off course and were missing the gifts before us?
What if instead of seeing what God was offering, we were caught up in thoughts or beliefs that were throwing us off course?
The weeks following that conversation with the students, I did an exegetical study on what was meant by the descriptor “Father of Lights.” Boy, was that a study.
God is Light.
God is the creator of light.
God is the creator of the heavenly lights.
And then I read God is the author or originator of the Light - the Light God has placed in each person.
Father was both a patriarchal and humanly way of translating what should have been more appropriately author or originator of Light. That light which is found in each one of us.
That light as Peterson so poetically described is “cascading down” from the Originator of Light – through or over what is it cascading? – YOU AND ME.
What James was trying to say was one of the most beautiful and Quakerly things in scripture. The Originator of Light, who is not deceitful, not two-faced, not fickle is cascading through each of us – it is the Light within us.
The Light that helps us dispel the darkness of our world.
The Light that helps make us be better fathers and mothers, partners, siblings, neighbors, and friends.
The Light that, if we connect to it, will help us not be deceitful, two-faced, fickle…and we could probably continue to add even more relevant descriptors like racist, homophobic, misogynistic, narcissistic, abusive, arrogant, naive, and the list goes on.
And James goes on as well to say, “He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.” Let me restate it to make a bit more sense for our current condition.
The originator of Light has given us life (birthed the light within us) and has shown us how to live. When referencing the True Word – James is talking about Jesus who has taught us the way to live this Light Life.
And finally, James makes the point that each and every one of us (no matter if we are Fathers, Mothers, Siblings, Partners, Children, Neighbors, Friends) are special to the Originator of that Light within us all.
So going back a couple of weeks, that means we need to Shine Jesus’ Light, or as we heard at Yearly Meeting this week, “YOU are the Light of the World. However you want to say it – to make a difference in our world it takes living the Light Life!
So, let’s go live out that gift from the Originator of the Light Life, today!
To help us continue to process these thoughts, I have some queries for you to ponder as we enter waiting worship:
1. What descriptors or attributes that we have given to God do I have the hardest time relating to? And why?
2. Has something “thrown me off course” and not allowed me to see the good gifts of God in my life?
3. How might seeing the Light of God “cascading down” through my life and the lives of those around me help me to value each person and see that of God in them?