Friends, in our Gospel today, Jesus announces who he is: “I am the light of the world.” In John’s Gospel there are a series of “I am” statements: “I am the bread of life”; “I am the good shepherd”; “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” And here he issues another of those powerful claims: “I am the light.”
Christianity is, above all, a way of seeing. Everything else in Christian life flows from and circles around the transformation of vision. Christians see differently, and that is why their prayer, their worship, their action, their whole way of being in the world have a distinctive accent and flavor.
And Jesus is the way to see. When we are grafted onto him, when we assume his mind and his attitude, when we live his life, we are able to see the world as it is, and not through the distorting lens of our fear and our hatred.