Listen

You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord, so live your life as children of light. Light produces fruit that consists of every sort of goodness, justice, and truth. Therefore, test everything to see what’s pleasing to the Lord, and don’t participate in the unfruitful actions of darkness. Instead, you should reveal the truth about them.

Ephesians 5:8-11

Think

We must consider (non-defensively if we can) the racist associations inherent to light and dark imagery in scripture (light=good; dark=bad). Our particular text today exhorts the faithful to walk as children of the light and avoid the consequences of darkness. If we want to argue that was unintended (given that the ancient writers were Semitic people of color), we can go with that. But what may have been inoffensive from an ancient person of color may be much less so from a person today.

So, what if we were to, as Jesus so often did, intentionally flip the script? “You have heard it said, ‘walk as children of the light,’ but we say to you, ‘walk as children of the darkness!’” With horizons brought in close and eyes not straining to see—with eyes more disposed to see dreams and visions—with ears and hearts more open to the nuances of story—not always presuming they are bad and wrong and we are good and right. Open our eyes, God, we want to see truly.

John Ballenger

Question to Ponder:

Why might we be willing or unwilling to engage the idea of basic scriptural imagery being racist or the idea that we might have some fundamental affirmations wrong?

Pray

Open our eyes to truth, God, even when it’s unfamiliar and uncomfortable, and let us choose grace in the ways we choose to speak of our faith and our God. For Jesus came in truth and grace (John 1:17). Amen.

Go

Go. God without the “d.”

Movement. Purpose (one hopes)—

direction—intention. Trajectory.

From all that brought us to this here and now,

we go—and maybe everything stays the same.

But maybe, everything changes.