AIRPORT THEOLOGY

I wrote the following reflections on my way to Ukraine. This was on Tuesday morning, September 22, 2009.

I am sitting at a table for two by the railing on the second floor in Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, eating my McDonald’s breakfast (typical American that I am). I look down and I see a pretty little girl, maybe four years old, walking in the light of a spotlighted advertisement for the perfume/cosmetic shop close by. The store proudly beamed their name and specialties onto the floor with a moving spotlight mounted in the ceiling of the airport’s wide walk-way. The little girl would walk into the light that was moving around on the floor. She would be in the light and then out of the light. Her fun-filled task was to chase the light and stay in the middle of it as it moved.

Chewing on a tasty bite of egg mcmuffin, I thought, “The little girl is walking in the light.” Now for us more theologically- and pastorally-minded, my thought had a familiar Johannine ring to it. (Johannine simply means things written by the Apostle of Love: John).  “If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another” is in John’s first letter. I have known this phrase—“walk in the light”—for many years; I even translated it from the Greek as a student at Moody Bible Institute. For some odd reason I have always considered the light to be static, stationary. It never crossed my mind that the light might be moving. But watching that little girl in the Amsterdam airport, it hit me in a startling way–-the light moves! Even in the rest of 1 John 1, we are immediately introduced to Jesus–the Light–and believe me, he moved! Jesus was a walking-around kind of teacher. The disciples were invited, “Follow me!” Jesus was (and is) on the move. For the disciples to walk in the light, they had to tag along with Jesus in Galilee, Perea, Samaria and Judea, and even over into Decapolis if they wanted to stay in the light.

An older Deliriou5 song states, “We can see God that you’re moving…” God moves, and God is light. How many of us just want to stand still or lie on the couch or sit in the pew and pretend we are walking in the light? God is not like a street lamp riveted in one spot. God is more like a comet, a shooting star, on the move. One of the favorite New Testament words for the Christian life is “walk.” It implies movement, energy, travel to a destination. “Those who claim to live in him must walk as Jesus did” (1 John 2:6).

As I continue to watch, the mother finally calls the little girl. It was time for them to move on, so she skips away from her play with the moving light. I sip my coffee pondering how an advertisement for a perfume and cosmetics shop can be transformed into sacred text blowing out the edges of my thinking. In the hymn “This is My Father’s World” we sing, “In the rustling grass I hear him pass, he speaks to me everywhere…” I found it to be true in Schiphol airport in a McDonald’s.

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