The Overcoming Light
John 1:1-18

During the 2008 presidential race, John McCain was asked by Time magazine to share his “personal journey of faith.” In his article he shared a powerful story of something that occurred while he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam:

When I was a prisoner of war in Vietnam…my captors would tie my arms behind my back and then loop the rope around my neck and ankles so that my head was pulled down between my knees. I was often left like that throughout the night. One night a guard came into my cell. He put his finger to his lips signaling for me to be quiet and then loosened my ropes to relieve my pain. The next morning, when his shift ended, the guard returned and retightened the ropes, never saying a word to me.

A month or so later, on Christmas Day, I was standing in the dirt courtyard when I saw that same guard approach me. He walked up and stood silently next to me, not looking or smiling at me. Then he used his sandaled foot to draw a cross in the dirt. We stood wordlessly looking at the cross, remembering the true light of Christmas, even in the darkness of a Vietnamese prison camp.

Light is one of the most prevalent parts of our celebration of the birth of Christ. But the light of Christmas isn’t the light of human goodwill and Christmas cheer. It isn’t the light of time with family and friends. It isn’t the light in children’s eyes as they see gifts wrapped under Christmas trees. Those lights are beautiful things, but they cannot dispel the darkness of this very broken world in which we live.

The goodwill of even the most patient of human beings and the Christmas cheer of even the most ardent fan of Christmas will eventually run out, as we grumble and groan and complain in overcrowded stores and streets and sidewalks. Time with family is, for many, forced family fun at best and at times spills over into resentments that build until families fracture and no longer celebrate the holidays together. Even the best of friends eventually get on one another’s nerves eventually. And in every community in every corner of the world, there are homes without decorations and gifts and trees because the people who live there cannot afford them.

No, the real light of Christmas is the light of Christ, for his light penetrates even the darkest and most oppressive of dark corners in this world. It illumines the halls of prisons and cancer wards, nursing homes with no visitors and lonely orphanages, brothels and crack houses. It illumines the darkest crevasses of our lives – addictions and illnesses, resentments and blind spots, traumas and brokenness and sin. But it illuminates these places not to embarrass and shame, but the cleanse and heal.

As we continue our journey toward Christmas in this series about the light of Christ shining in the darkness of this world, turn with me to John 1:1-18. The words of Scripture that are going to speak to us today are perhaps the most beautiful and theologically full and significant words ever written. Amazingly, the were written not by an educated philosopher or religious leader, but by a simple fisherman named John who, along with his brother James and his friends Peter and Andrew, also fishermen, followed Jesus. These words form the prologue to the gospel that John wrote. A cosmic introduction to the very earthy life of Jesus. We’ll start with John 1:1-2.

“In the beginning.” Do those words sound familiar? They should. They’re the same words that begin the book of Genesis, the first book in the Bible. They’re the words that open the Bible. “In the beginning.” “In the beginning” what? In the beginning, there was nothing. But there was God. Before there was anything – before there was light and darkness, sky and land and ocean, sun and moon and stars, God was.

But while Genesis begins with the words, “In the beginning, God …,” John begins his gospel with the words, “In the beginning … was the Word.” Who was “with” God and who “was” God at the same time. God … at the same time three distinct persons, or personalities, and yet one God. A perfect community. A trinity, or tri-unity. One, and yet three. But still one.

And while Mark starts his gospel with the baptism of Jesus, and Matthew and Luke recount the birth narrative and include the genealogy of Jesus – Matthew’s traces his ancestry back to Abraham, Luke goes back to Adam. But John does something else. He goes back to the VERY beginning, and places Jesus in eternity, co-existing and co-equal with the Father.

Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses both say that Jesus is now eternal, but was created by God before anything else was created, and that Jesus then created everything else. But that isn’t what John says. What John says is that “In the beginning,” Jesus, the eternal Son, already was. He was always “with” God. There was never a time or an eternity when he “wasn’t.” He is the eternal one.

Now, when the words “In the beginning” were written the first time, God created what? Light, right? The first thing God created was light. Not the sun, moon, and stars. Those didn’t come until day four. The things that define our concept of “day” in terms of a 24 hour period didn’t come until day four of creation. I don’t think God wants us getting stuck on arguments like a literal 24 hour day or a period of creative time. The creation narrative itself isn’t clear on the concept. He does want us to know him as creator. Source. The source of life and the beginning point of all that is.

So God spoke, and there was light. And now John takes us back to that point as he talks about the coming of Christ. Christ’s coming into the world is an explosive force of light just as significant as God’s initial creation of light itself. God’s voice is the creating source of the cosmos, and the coming of the Son, the eternal Word, is the re-creating source of life. God created, and just as significantly, in Christ God re-creates. Makes new.

Now, there’s a word we have to understand here, and it’s the word “word.” “In the beginning was the … Word.” Before he ever uses the name “Jesus Christ,” he calls the Son of God the “Word.” It’s the Greek word logos. And here’s what it means. Greek philosophers, standing on the shoulders of great thinkers and observers from other cultures who came before them, looked at the world and realized that the universe obeys natural laws … the laws of mathematics and physicals and reason and morality. There are things that are, simply because that is the way things are. And that makes some things in this world predictable.

They couldn’t predict earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and even big storms, but even for them, the overarching structure of the universe was predictable. Time, for example, is predictable. Days and months and years are predictable in their duration. Kids could throw and catch balls because gravity is constant, and thus the trajectory of something we throw can be predicted, even if we don’t understand the equations that prove it.

So the Greek philosophers saw this order and reason and knew that there had to be some kind of divine mind behind it all. Where there is order and reason, there is a mind. For them, this mind was an impersonal divine mind, and they called it the “logos.” The word. John took that concept and said, yes, there is a divine mind behind everything, a creating and sustaining force, but it isn’t impersonal. In fact, it is hyper personal. God became human, and lived among us, as one of us. Look at Vv. 3-8.

In our culture, people have no trouble believing in Jesus the man. They have trouble believing that man was God. In John’s world, they had the opposite problem. They had no trouble believing that Jesus was God. What they had a problem understanding and accepting was a God who would dare to sully himself by becoming human. Jesus challenges both groups, because he is both.

The babe in the manger, visited by shepherds and magi, isn’t just any baby. He IS a baby, fully human, totally dependent on his mother for protection and sustenance. But that defenseless, helpless baby is the one through whom and for whom all things were made (Col. 1:16).

In two of his recorded sermons, the great theologian St. Augustine used these beautiful words to describe the coming of Christ into the world:

Our Lord came down from life to suffer death;
the Bread came down, to hunger;
the Way came down, on the way to weariness;
the Fount came down, to thirst.

He so loved us that, for our sake,
He was made man in time,
although through him all times were made.
He was made man, who made man.
He was created of a mother whom he created.
He was carried by hands that he formed.
He cried in the manger in wordless infancy, he the Word,
without whom all human eloquence is mute.

Now, I want you to notice the nature of the darkness here. Because the darkness of this world, as John describes it, is not a passive darkness – simply the absence of the light, a situation easily remedied by turning on the light. No, this darkness is an aggressive, oppositional darkness. It is a darkness that wants to resist and stamp out the light. This world is a world of remarkable unbelief. We resist the light of Christ that comes to save us, cleanse us, heal us. The darkness dares, daily, to try to overcome the light, but it cannot.

Look at Vv. 9-13. The word “world” appears several times in John’s gospel. 18 times to be exact. Occasionally, it has a positive or at least neutral feeling associated with it, but usually it’s a very negative word for John. He isn’t usually talking about the world as simply a place. He’s talking about the world as a dark force that is opposed to, and actively resisting, the goodness of God. He’s talking about the world in active rebellion against God.

Look at Vv. 10-11. He is the creator. And yet we as his creation have rejected him. His own people, the people of Israel, rejected him. That is the love of God. God loves even those who are aligned with one another against him. Christ came to die on a cross even for those who nailed him there. Romans 5:8 says, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” While we were still God’s enemies, Christ died for us. He didn’t come to love and redeem only those who are easy to love. He came to love and redeem any who would come … those who had once spit on him and those who hadn’t.

But this world doesn’t always seem dark to us. The darkness of this world often seems almost light to us. St. Paul tells us that “even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14). As dark as the darkness is, it is a subtle darkness. It doesn’t want us to see it as darkness. It wants us to see it as light.

It twists the truth but doesn’t contradict it outright. It appeals to our pride and sense of self preservation and security. It doesn’t come to us in the scary masks of Halloween, but in the greed and materialism of Christmas spending, and in the misrepresentations of others and seemingly small compromises I’m willing to make to climb the ladder at work so that I can make more money and take better care of my family. See the twist there?

But what God is offering in the light of Christ is a rebirth, just as dramatic as his initial creating work. A rebirth into his family and his kingdom. God doesn’t want to fix your old life. He wants to recreate you and allow you to live a new life. And this happens at his initiative, not ours. This is his work, now ours. Our job is to receive him. To believe in his name.

And that is when his transforming work begins. Look at Vv. 14-18. The eternal Word didn’t just appear to be human. He BECAME human. He BECAME flesh. That line literally reads he “became meat.” And yet he was full of the glory of God. He revealed the glory of God in a way the cosmos itself, as majestic as it is, cannot. He revealed the glory of God in a way that no expanse of ocean, no mountain vista, no galactic display, no sunrise or sunset or rainbow can. He revealed the glory of God … by becoming flesh. Human. By translating God for us. In John 14:9, Jesus says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” But he didn’t just become flesh. He became flesh, and then he suffered and died in our place. THAT is the glory of God fully revealed. Not the wood of manger or feed trough, but the wood of the cross, the eternal, creating, revealing, and transforming Word, light itself, hanging on it. In our place.

He revealed the glory of God, full of grace and truth. He came and did what he came to do in spite of the world’s hostility and rejection. Our hostility didn’t stop him. Our rejection didn’t cause him to say, “Fine. Go to hell.” No, he kept going in spite of it. That’s grace.

He is the self-disclosure of God. God’s chosen profile picture. God translated so that we can maybe begin to understand him. And yet, we cannot. Not fully. The eternal Word become flesh? Fully God and fully human at the same time. That’s not something we can fully understand. But it IS something we can receive.

Joshua Bell emerged from the Metro and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. By most measures, he was nondescript – a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money and began to play.

For the next 45 minutes, in the D.C. Metro on January 12, 2007, Bell played Mozart and Schubert as over 1,000 people streamed by, most hardly taking notice. If they had paid attention, they might have recognized the young man for the world-renowned violinist he is. They also might have noted the violin he played – a rare Stradivarius worth over $3 million. It was all part of a project arranged by The Washington Post – “an experiment in context, perception, and priorities – as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste. In a banal setting, at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”

Just three days earlier, Joshua Bell sold out Boston Symphony Hall, with ordinary seats going for $100. In the subway, Bell garnered about $32 from the 27 people who stopped long enough to give a donation.

The babe in the manger, born to a poor father and mother, is the Eternal Word become flesh. Fully God and fully human at the same time. That’s not something we can fully understand. But it IS something we can receive. And I’d like to give you the opportunity to do that right now, if you’d like. Let’s pray