Laterna Absconsa

(The Sacramental Christian)

 

The sun shall no more be your light by day,

nor for brightness shall the moon give you light:

But the LORD shall be for you a light everlasting.

(Isaiah 60:19, KJV)

 

 

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the 19^th Sunday after Pentecost, October 7, 2007

Volume 2 Number 14

First United Methodist Church, 605 West 6^th, Mountain Home, Arkansas 72653

 

 

I’ve reproduced on the back page one of the most stunning images I’ve ever seen, a photograph of an event in deep space, 83 million miles away from earth, taken on Independence Day 2005.  This spectacular image is of a comet the size of Manhattan, named Tempel 1, sixty-seven seconds after NASA’s 820 pound probe, Deep Impact, slammed into the comet, releasing enormous energy with a bright splash of light.  From the impact site we see light streaming forth where there was none before.  The light was there, hidden deep within the energy locked inside that cold, dark mass.

 

Laterna Absconsa is a Latin phrase meaning, "Hidden Light."  Laterna evolved into our word, "lantern," and absconsa, meaning "hidden," is now seen in our word, absconded.  And with that bit of etymology I welcome you to this third installment of Oxymorons for Christian Living.  The oxymoron I share with you today, Laterna Absconsa, Hidden Light, is written specifically for World Communion Sunday with the intent that these words will enable us better to approach the Lord’s Table with hearts and minds prepared for this sacred moment.  Laterna Absconsa will remind us as Christians we are Sacramental persons, craving sacred moments of God’s Presence. 

To hide light is contradictory to its nature, which makes Laterna Absconsa an oxymoron.  Jesus says, “You are the light of the world . . . No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to the whole house.  In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16). 

 

Why light a lantern only to hide it?  Yet, ancient rabbinical tradition suggests God did that very thing.  “In the beginning,” when the world was without form and void, the Spirit of God moved (perhaps better, “sparked” or “energized”) over the face of the waters.  This spiritual movement was the Deep Impact that unleashed hidden energy. 

 

Rabbi Menachem Schneerson writes of one of the traditions surrounding the creation story, how rabbis, grappling with the confusing order of the creation story, handle the fact that the first thing created is light.  One must square this with the fact that, in the creation story, this creation of light occurs before the creation of sun and moon!   The rabbis suggested that, since that creation of light was inexplicably prior to the creation of sun and moon, that God immediately hid the light he had created, a laterna absconsa (hidden light) to be known only by the righteous in the world to come.  Hints of that laterna absconsa, say the rabbis, can be seen in the light radiating from the Torah.  

 

In Christian thought, the laterna absconsa is a light radiating from the Living Word, Iesou Christos.  Jesus affirms, “I am the light of the world,” and we confessed together this morning the words of the Nicene Creed, “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.”  Interesting phrase, “Light from light,” or, “Light beyond light.”  This is the thrust of our text from Isaiah and Revelation 22, that “there will be no night, no need of lamp or sun, for the LORD God will be the light everlasting.”  What is this but Light beyond Light?

 

Jesus also taught, “You are the light of the world.”  If so, our light is often a laterna absconsa.  The story of the Fall in Genesis 3 tells how light was hidden through sin, how the shadows overcame the light.  The apostle Paul, though, tells how the light was recovered by Christ.  “For it is God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” 

 

Paul goes on to say of this light, “We have this treasure in clay jars.”  We, possessing the light as our creative treasure, often can’t find it – it has become laterna absconsa.  Like clay jars, our lives seem not only void of inner light, but fragile and breakable.  How can light break forth from clay jars?   Can it be that divine energy pulses -- however deep within, however hidden -- through these clay jars, waiting to be released at some Impact Point? 

 

Listen again to the Apostle Paul as he writes to the Corinthian community of Christians.  Speaking of the process of dying, Paul suggests that as our bodies are losing energy and light, our spirits are increasing in light, that there is a mysterious releasing of hidden energy, hidden light.  “So we do not lose heart.  Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.  For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen, but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”

 

Through the eyes of faith, Paul teaches that as the clay jar of our body appears to be going dark, our inner nature, the light we have all possessed from our birth but that has been laterna absconsa, is rediscovered.  This, Paul suggests, is the eternal light, a light beyond light radiating with spiritual energy, transforming our end into our beginning, a moment when darkness becomes light, death becomes birth, and light streams forth where there was none before.

 

(Now standing behind the altar)

This table contains that mystery.  On this table are the symbols of one dead, the bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ. There is no life, no light, within the elements of this table.  The light of the world is, in these elements of the Eucharist, extinguished – hidden.  In these elements of break and wine, behold, Laterna Absconsa! 

In fact, the loaf looks somewhat like Comet Tempel.  It was Deep Impact that released the hidden light, the source of salvation.  Deep Impact -- the thorn of crowns, of the nails, of the spear –released a Light of Love into the world.

 

It is my joy to invite you now to this Table of the Lord, to share in that light.  I hope that as the bread is placed into your hands you will envision yourself as a lifeless clay jar, with Hidden Light ready to be revealed and released.  Perhaps you feel yourself formless and undone, spiritual energies dissipated, the glow of life growing weak, obscured by living itself.  Come to this table if you crave the light of God’s presence, the light of hope, the light of love.  Let his body and blood impact your own, deeply, so that as the bread is pressed into your palm, you will know a flash of heart, mind, and soul.  Today, through the sacrament of Communion, may light stream forth where there was none before!

 

Sources and notes:

 

“A Hidden Illumination,” an essay by Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson in PARABOLA (Summer 2001, Light).