That’s one reason why driving at dusk is so dangerous, without sufficient light from the sun and with not enough contrast generated by your headlights, the landscape fades into a kind of sameness that makes it difficult to discern hazards.

Some religious traditions even make use of this phenomenon to demarcate when a day has truly ended. In some versions of Islam, the daily fast during Ramadan happens when you can no longer tell the difference between the leaves and the trees—a sign that the light of day is truly gone and night has set in.

II. TEXT

I got thinking about all of this because our biblical texts today both feature light at the heart of each message—one explicitly, one implicitly.

In the passage from Isaiah, another of the “Servant Songs” detailing the call and ministry of the Suffering Servant of God, we find the following:

And now the LORD says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the sight of the LORD, and my God has become my strength— he says, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

“I will give you as a light to the nations.” It’s such a beautiful vision and poetic. But it is not the only mention of light and vision in the passage: “for I am honored in the sight of the LORD” and “Kings shall see and stand up….”

Our New Testament reading comes from the Gospel of John, a gospel that begins with a hymn:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through the Word, and without the Word not one thing came into being. What has come into being through the Word was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1:1–5 NRSV)

This is a deliberate echo of the creation narratives found in the book of Genesis, in which God begins the work of creation through the creation of light. John’s gospel continues:

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. (John 1:6–7 NRSV)

Here, we have the identification of John the Baptist as one who is tasked with testifying to the light that will illumine everyone.

And so it is that in the passage we read earlier from John’s gospel, we find John doing just that:

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

—and—

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”

While we do not see explicit mentions of light, there are references to vision and seeing: “And I myself have seen and have testified…” “What are you looking for?” and “Come and see.”

We see that light is central to or provides the background for these passages, but how are we to understand what they mean for us? It’s important, as always, to look at the context for the text.

III. EXILE AND MISSION

The “Servant Songs” of the Book of Isaiah comprise four different passages found in chapters 42, 49, 50, and 52–53 that describe the Servant of God who is called to the mission of God’s justice and righteousness, but who will do so peacefully and will likely suffer for the sake of God’s mission. The songs themselves are part of passages of the book that likely date from well after the time of Isaiah of Jerusalem to near the end of the Babylonian Exile.

In the early sixth century BC, the Babylonian army, led personally by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, conquered Judah and destroyed Jerusalem, including Solomon’s temple. They carted off everyone who could conceivably exercise leadership into exile in Babylon and left Jerusalem a ruin and Judah a land desolate with only a population of poor peasants.

In the midst of this Exile some extraordinary things happened to the religion of Israel and it underwent a profound transformation.

The first extraordinary thing that happened was that it survived at all. See, in the ancient world, when two nations went to war, the nation that won did so because it had the stronger God. This was just common sense and would have made sense to the Israelites, too. After all, they had been liberated from bondage in Egypt because their God was stronger than the gods of Egypt. And so, it would have been perfectly natural and understandable if, in the wake of the Exile, the people of Judah had decided that Yahweh wasn’t really getting it done after all and that Marduk, the god of Babylon, was the better bet.

But they didn’t do this. They insisted that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was still more powerful and also, was the only God. (Careful analysis of the Biblical text suggests that prior to the Exile, the Israelites might have believed other gods existed but understood that they were to worship only the Lord.) And not only that, that this One God had actually used the Babylonians to punish Judah for its lack of faithfulness to the covenant, its constant return to idolatry, and its failure to do justice and take care of the poor and needy.

When faced with Babylonian taunts that their God was weaker than the gods of Babylon, they responded, in effect, “What, you think your god did this to us? No, your god didn’t do this to us—ours did.” There’s a Hebrew word that describes this theological perspective: chutzpah.

It is an audacious claim. Your nation has been utterly conquered. Its royal line ended. Its capital and sacred temple destroyed. Its land left barren. And yet, you claim that your God has the upper hand, even over your conquerors, and that they too are under the power of your God, whether they know it or not.

It’s hard for us on this end of 2,500 years of ethical, universalist monotheism to see what an astonishing shift this was. For one reason, had they not done so, there would have been no Judaism to give rise to Christianity in the first place and we wouldn’t be here to talk about it. But also, because it represents the opposite of what we’re inclined to do.

These passages from the Book of Isaiah, these Servant Songs, represent this astonishing new direction for the religion of Israel in the Exile and the emergence of the Judaism that we recognize. Speaking from the midst of Exile, the vision found in these Songs presents the people with something they had not really had before: a mission.

Oh, to be sure, the children of Israel had always had things to do but the purpose was not as clearly remembered. But now here, in the midst of Exile, that purpose comes into stark relief: to be a light to the nations.

In many ways, this should have been clear all along. Abraham was told that through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. The prophets continually reminded the people that God’s story was bigger than theirs alone. And, God had led the people out of captivity in Egypt not to some isolated island in the middle of the Mediterranean, but to a land at the crossroads of the world, the meeting place of three continents, a place surrounded by “the nations of the earth.”

This realization of mission is all the more surprising when you take into consideration the tendency for any victimized people to turn inward. In the wake of the suffering of the people under Babylon, it would be easy to excuse their desire to take care of their own. “Don’t we have enough problems of our own? Let’s just get our own house in order. Why do we have to worry about anyone else? Let’s just take care of our own.” And indeed, after the Exile, there were a lot of people who argued that they should do just that—we find their point of view in books like Ezra and Nehemiah, which focused on restoring Judah to its pre-exilic glories by rebuilding the walls of the city and people getting rid of their Babylonian wives.

But here, the prophet reminds the people of God’s true calling that transcends their desire for an inward-looking mission, however understandable it might be:

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel;

“It is too light a thing…” (Other translations render it: “not enough” (CEB), “a small thing” (D-R), “it is litil (little)” (Wycliffe)). That’s astonishing. Raising up the tribes of Jacob and restoring the survivors of Israel is too easy. You can easily imagine the people saying, “Too easy? That’s enough! That’s a lot on its own!” But the prophet reminds the people that there is a greater calling beyond that one:

I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

“I will give you as a light to the nations…” The people are called to be that Suffering Servant. To be that light to the nations that God’s salvation may reach to the ends of the earth. That kings may see and turn to the light of God.

But what does it mean to be that light to the nations?

IV. TESTIFYING TO THE LIGHT

In John’s gospel, when John the Baptist—the one who came as a witness to testify to the light—identifies Jesus as the Lamb of God, the text accomplishes two things. First, it identifies Jesus with the Passover Lamb, through whose sacrifice the sins of the people are atoned for—an ancient association that the earliest Christians made about Jesus. But second, it connects him with the Servant Songs, especially the reference found in Chapter 52:

“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”(Isaiah 53:7 NRSV)