Today’s hymn is “In our darkness light has shone” by Timothy Dudley Smith, another Epiphany season hymn describing Christ as light coming into the world. The benefits of this for humankind are listed in the last lines of the four verses: “light and life of all the earth”, “grace and truth divine”, “we his name and nature share”, and “he shall lead his people home”. It’s a logical progression: in him we find enlightenment, through his grace we are led into truth, we become more like him, and finally come ‘home’ to eternal life.
Having said that, to me this is a surprisingly abstract and limited statement of Christian faith: Christ (the title of the ‘anointed one’) is mentioned once, but there is no mention of his human name (Jesus) or his life on earth. There is no hint here of the need for Jesus to suffer death in order for his mission to be accomplished. It smacks of ‘docetism’, the heresy of thinking of Jesus as only a manifestation of the divine, and not fully human. I’m sure that the hymn’s author, a well known Evangelical, didn’t mean it like that. But it’s a reminder that just like the Bible, the hymn book must be heard in its entirety to make sense of Christian belief and experience, and not quoted selectively.