What a plight it would be if in its folly the human race ended, as Pope’s ‘Dunciad’ ends, with the line ‘And universal darkness buries all.’ Here in a mock-heroic poem celebrating human dullness is the ultimate confusion, the final obliteration of all that is worthwhile. Milton’s hell, similarly, was a place of ‘no light, but rather darkness visible’, something that served ‘only to discover sights of woe’. Francis Bacon put darkness and death in double harness when he said ‘Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark’.
Darkness, like death, is not something we would choose. It is natural for us to pray ‘Lighten our darkness’. We ask God for grace to ‘cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light.’ We affirm with the psalmist ‘Yea, the darkness is no darkness with thee.’
We live in the light. We sleep in the dark. We accept the waxing and waning. These are unavoidable factors in the terms and conditions on which we see our days through on planet earth. We cannot contravene these limitations. They are as much part of us as our stature, our need of food and drink, our short-term lease that defines our period on the terrestrial landscape.
Light is good. Darkness is bad. Plants know this and they go about their task of photo-synthesis during every minute of daylight. Animals know this and they hibernate when light gives way to darkness.
Humans have had the good fortune to develop substitutes for daylight. We have thereby consolidated our dominant position amongst the animals and vegetables that can do no such thing. And light is so determinative of our existence and our understanding of man’s destiny that, as C.H. Dodd put it, ‘light seems to be a natural symbol for deity.’
Jesus took up this point when he is recorded as commenting on our experience of light in somewhat gnomic words (Matthew 6.22,23). This line of thought is mulled over in the fourth Gospel, beginning with the first chapter. It is a key-word in that Gospel and it merges into the word ‘life’ in the process. When we think of God, we think of light, not darkness. We also haves to consider the words of John 3.19 when he said that in God’s Son ‘light has come into the world.’
PIE AND PEA
The last time I had a pie and pea supper was many years ago in St Helen’s parish church, Lancashire. On that occasion it was a reward for preaching to – if I remember correctly – quite a substantial congregation of men. The Pie and Pea tradition is still alive and well in Selby, where the men’s group of Selby Abbey do the rounds of local hostelries for p and p.
Selby Abbey is of course a majestic building. It has had its ups and downs (expensive ones) and is perpetually having to raise huge sums of money to keep it in being. It had overhauls by George Gilbert Scott and his son John Oldrid. It had a devastating fire in 1906. It was washed all over in 1973. It has always enjoyed great support from people in Selby and further afield. Leading the ministry team is John Weetman.
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