“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It is a hallmark of “country living” that we are able to go to sleep in the relative darkness and quietude of our bedrooms, without street lamps, train tracks, a constant drone of police sirens or car horns disturbing the night’s peace. If I want my bedroom to be dark and quiet, I can make it very dark and very quiet. Spoken as a true country boy: “Thank God!”
But even for those of us who have not experienced the perpetual buzz, the perpetual “dim glow” of city living, in recent years we have probably been more familiarized than our parents or grandparents. How so? Well, I now sleep with a phone beside my bed. My wife’s nightstand hosts a baby monitor which emits a faint hum. My children’s rooms, our bathrooms, our upstairs hallway: all come equipped with a night light. We sleep in relative darkness, but not the darkness of a world before electricity, the darkness of a world before computers, and cell phones, and night lights. Imagine, if you can, lying down at night and extinguishing the last candle in the house, only to be rekindled the following evening. One would wait, of necessity, for the first light of day—and that light alone—to break the dark vigil. That kind of darkness is a darkness that most of us have never experienced: a darkness that is not readily and handily illumined.
In today’s Gospel Reading, if only for two verses, we hear from our Lord a brief metaphor of light and darkness:
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matt 6:22-23).
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.” A lot of interpretive liberties are taken with these two verses; understandably so, as they contain several single-use, Greek terms, that is, appearing as a singular instance in the Greek New Testament. “The lamp” that Christ speaks of would be a conventional, clay oil lamp. It is not a “lamp” in the modern sense of the word, certainly not electric, but also, without enclosure: no steel, no glass, no on/off-switch. It is a “light-maker.” We could just as easily substitute “light” for “lamp” in this instance. “The light of the body [i.e., that which ‘illumines’] is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.”
A second unique term in the reading is the word here translated “good.” If you know any Greek, it is not the term kalos, meaning, “good, beautiful, excellent in character, correct, healthy.” This term appears frequently in the New Testament. Rather, it is the term haplous, which appears elsewhere in ancient Greek texts, but not in the New Testament. The term most literally and woodenly means “without folds,” or “singular,” the antonym of diplous, that is, “two-folded,” or “double” or “compounded.” To be halpous is to be “singularly-focused”; whereas, to be diplous is to be “doubly-focused,” or better, distracted. Let’s rework these verses in light (no pun intended) of our word study:
“The light of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is singularly-focused, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness” (Matt 6:22-23; translation mine).
The second verse, v. 23, requires less study. The terminology is clear and amply attested in the Greek New Testament. Christ clearly says, “If your eye is evil [that is, ‘wicked, unlawful, unrighteous, profane’], your whole body will be full of darkness.” The term Christ here uses for “evil” is ponēros. It is notably not a mere antonym of haplous (we already stated: this would be diplous). Christ is not here setting up a simple, grammatical parallel. He is employing a much more extreme term, with effect. Ponēros, “evil”, goes well beyond “being doubly-focused, being distracted.” It is a term predicated of Satan, a term used substantively for the devil himself. From the Parable of the Sower, from St. Matthew’s Gospel:
“When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one [ho ponēros] comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path (Matt 13:19).
And from St. John’s First Epistle:
“We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one [ho ponēros] does not touch him” (1 Jn 5:18).
In the latter of these two short verses, Christ makes such a powerful statement. If our eye is not just bad, but filled with evil, filled with wickedness, profanity, vulgarity, lust, greed, unlawfulness, hate, envy, pride—all characterizations of the evil one—if our eye[s] are evil, then our bodies will be filled with darkness. And he concludes, saying gravely, “If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness.”
Let us return to my earlier analogy of peaceful, country slumber: a dark, quiet bedroom to repose in. How wonderful is this darkness, free of noise, distress, distraction. But imagine, if you can, that you did want to briefly, instantly, illumine your surroundings. You get up and need to go potty. You go to turn on the bedside lamp and… nothing. No light at all. Actually, curiously, somehow turning on the lamp has made the room even darker. You grab your cell phone, poke the flashlight icon, and… somehow… even darker! You begin to panic, run to the bathroom cabinet, find a BIC-brand hand lighter, and out of the tip: darkness, not just absence of light. No, the lighter is working, and it is sucking the faint light that does exist in the room into itself. You find a wax candle, a matchstick. You strike the match: darkness. You “light” the candle with the darkness of the matchstick, and now: a burning, palpable darkness. How great would such a darkness be! Not an absence of light, but a substantive darkness.
“The light of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is singularly-focused, [then] your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is evil, [then] your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matt 6:22-23).
Brethren, every day our senses are bombarded. In our modern, industrialized, fast-paced, hyper-connected world (by way of cell phone, e-mail, social media), the experience of solitude—of peace and singular focus—is a nigh mythological beast. We are being constantly informed, constantly molded, constantly “illumined,” or… “endarkened.” “The eye is the light of the body… .” What we see, what we allow ourselves to see, what we willingly look at, and how we look at these things; dispassionately or with lust, envy, covetousness; illumines and informs our souls. “The eye is the light of the body. If therefore your eye is singularly-focused…,” our Lord says, “your whole body will be full of light.” On what? On what must we focus, Lord?
“Again, Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life’ (Jn 8:12).
“Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2).
When we look to Christ, when we imitate Christ (cf. 1 Cor 11:1), we are illumined. When we are singularly-focused on Christ, we are illumined with the light of Christ. We are informed by Christ. We become like Christ. When we pray, when we worship, when we sacrifice, when we humble ourselves, we are filled with the divine Light of Christ. We are filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit of God. We heard these very words at Obadiah’s baptism yesterday:
“You are baptized. You are illumined. You have been Chrismated. You are sanctified. You are washed: in the Name of the Father, and of the. Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen!” (Baptism Service, OCA 2012, italics mine).
“You are illumined. … You are sanctified.” When Christ fills us we radiate light, as Moses did on Mt. Sinai (cf. Exod 24:16). When Christ illumines us, we walk in the light of Christ, that we may illumine others.
But… when our eyes are evil [ponēros], when we fixate on wickedness, are distracted by earthly cares, as St. John categorizes them, “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 Jn 2:16, italics mine), then we are filled with darkness. Our eyes—tools for sanctification, to see and to delight in the gospel—become the instruments of our condemnation. With our eyes, we may look to Christ, see him crucified, see him resurrected from the dead for our salvation. And with our eyes, we may view and lust after all manner of filth and shame. “If therefore, the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness.”
“O Christ the true light, who enlightens and sanctifies every person who comes into the world: let the light of Thy countenance shine on us, that in it we may behold the uncreated light” (Prayer of the First Hour).
Through the prayers of our holy fathers, O Lord, Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!