The blackest black

Earlier this week the UK media reported a fight – another fight. This time it’s between artists – between a sculptor and all other artists combined. And it’s all to do with a new black.

Scientists at a Surrey-based company called NanoSystems have developed Vantablack. Vantablack absorbs 99.965% of all the light which falls on it. Only 0.035% of light falling on it is reflected off it - and only that tiny portion can be seen – the rest is pitch black.

Why the fight? Well, the sculptor, Sir Anish Kapoor, has cornered the market in this black of all blacks because, as he said, “It’s so black you almost can’t see it. It has a kind of unreal quality….. Imagine a space so dark that as you walk in you lose all sense of who you are and what you are, and also all sense of time.”

Apparently, when a 3-D object is wrapped in aluminum foil coated with this material the observer cannot see any shape at all – only a black hole….

 

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Could this new black illuminate the words of Jesus Christ (around AD 30) - words recorded in the first-century biography written by Luke?

He was trying to make abundantly clear the supreme importance of light. The light of which he spoke was, for sure, highly visible. He said that no one with a light would think of hiding it. So the light was there for all to see. What was it?

He then says, somewhat cryptically, “your eye is the lamp of your body.” Did he intend to draw attentuion to the fact that it is what a person sees that enlightens that person – that illuminates him or her inside?

That seems to be the case because he expands on this. “When your eye is uncorrupted, your whole body is full of light, but when it is evil, your body is full of blackness.” This raises some difficulties. What does it mean to have uncorrupted eyes? What does it mean to have evil eyes? The former results in one’s whole body being full of light. The latter results in one’s whole body being full of darkness – full of black.

Jesus was addressing the crowds – all of Jersey, as it were. He uses the imperative tense of the verb “to look”. His command to the crowd is that they now look. Why? It seems that a failure to look will have very serious consequences – pitch black consequences. He says, “Look! Lest the light in you be Vantablack.” The light inside you is Vantablack….pitch black.

Look at what? The crowds are mandated to look with their eyes – to perceive – because unless they do no light will come into their bodies. But what are they tolook at? What are they to see?

Going back a step – they are to see the light which is on a stand – which is there for all to see – there in clear sight, nothing hidden…..

 

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But Jesus is not content with the negative. He accentuates the positive. “If consequently your whole body is full of light, having not one part of blackness, it will be wholly full of light, as when a lamp with its lightening gives you light.”  How wonderful that a person who decides to see the light that is so clearly visible then has his whole body wholly full of light….

Wonderful? In what way? Thankfully Luke the biographer recorded in what way this “being full of light” would be like in a person’s experience and feelings. This describes it. It’s “as when the lamp with its [own] lightening gives you light.”

That lamp which you have seen, which you have perceived, becomes a torch – a torch whose light illuminates your pathways – even on the darkest of nights.