The Community Beneath the Cross...

[John Becker]

Today in considering Jesus' proclamation that "you are the light of the world" in speaking to his disciples, I found a deep perspective from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in The Cost of Discipleship.

He asks, "What sort of light is to shine from the place where only the disciples have a right to be?  How are we to reconcile the obscurity of the cross of Christ with the light that shines?  Ought not the Christian life to be as obscure as the cross itself?  Is not the light exactly what they out to avoid? 

He answers: "Did not the cross become extraordinarily visible amongst all the darkness to the terrified spectators?  Are the rejection and the suffering of Christ, his death before the gates of the city on the hill of shame, not visible enough?

It is in the light that the good works of the disciples are meant to be seen. Men are not to see the disciples but their good works, says Jesus. And these works are none other than those which the Lord Jesus himself has created in them by calling them to be the light of the world under the shadow of the his cross.

Jesus does not say that men will see God; they will see the good works and glorify God for them.  The cross and the works of the cross, the poverty and renunciation of the blessed in the beatitudes, these are the things which will become visible."

I found this so helpful. . Being letting our light show through our good deeds we are not to draw attention or glory to ourselves. We are to live in such a way that we bring glory back to God - our lives are to point to our glorious Heavenly Father and to Cross by which people are saved.  And some how by our "poverty" our other-worldliness, the fact that we are enamored by some thing that this world can not give us, and live for that purpose and promise day in and day out, despite the shame, rejection, then somehow:

"It is by seeing the cross and the community beneath it that men come to believe in God. But that is the light of the Resurrection!"