Age of Anxiety:
Overcoming the Creeps
John 1:1-18
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into
being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come
into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5The
light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He
came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through
him. 8He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9The
true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through
him; yet the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, and his own
people did not accept him. 12But to all who received him, who believed in his
name, he gave power to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood or
of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have
seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
15(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who
comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) 16From his
fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17The law indeed was given
through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No one has ever
seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has
made him known.
We had some
fantastic services over the Advent/Christmas season, didn’t we? The singing of
Christmas carols, the decoration of our church, the retelling of these ancient,
familiar, beloved stories of Christ’s incarnation. Is there anything more
enjoyable for Christians than Christmas?
In anticipating
this Sunday morning more than a month ago, I shared these words with you, “ever
feel anxious in the dark? Do you feel a
lot of darkness in the world?” Darkness
gives me the creeps.
There is a lot to
feel creepy about in the world today.
Not knowing what we know now about our world situation, I feel like the
darkness is closing in upon us. Violence
in Iran and Iraq, wildfires in Australia, another church shooting, you have
heard these stories and more.
As I shared those
words with you, I was not thinking as much about the global darkness as I
remembered experiences of darkness.
Walking into a dark room may give you the creeps. As you may have learned, I learned to slide
my hand on the inside of a doorway before entering a room when the room was
dark. Now, of course, I use the
flashlight on my cell phone to find an unfamiliar light switch. There was other darkness during my childhood
that was more than creepy. I remember.
I remember laying
in on a sleeping bag in a church in Washington, D. C. listening to the pop of
gunfire. I remember looking out on parts
of the city that were darkened by blackouts and seeing the glow of fire. In the morning, walking through a burned-out
street where riots had been. I remember
body counts displayed on the evening news.
I remember being on a bus and hearing about another political
assassination. To me, as a child, those
were dark times. Creepy
Here is the Good
News that was proclaimed then and is for us today! God has come and moved into our lives,
overcoming the darkness around us and in us that we might dwell richly in the
Light.
Remember, with me,
the book of Genesis. The books whose
name means, “In the beginning.” God says “light,” and dark chaos comes alive
with light. John’s gospel reminds us
that Jesus is light as the first light of creation. Later in this gospel, Jesus will call
himself, “light of the world” (8:12; 12:35).
John’s gospel does
more than simply announce the advent of Light. John also admits (1:5) that the
“light shines in the darkness and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.”
Jesus intrudes
into the world’s chaos and evil. The NRSV says that the darkness “did not
overcome” the light, a good rendering. The old KJV rendering is “the darkness
comprehended it not.”
John delights in
the use of double entendre; therefore, we are justified in both renderings as
either “overcome” or “comprehend.”
The darkness has
been unable either fully to comprehend or to overcome the brightness of the
Light of the World.
Even a big crowd in
church on Sunday morning is still a minority of people in town. Most of these
non-attenders are not hostile to the Christian faith; they just don’t get it.
For them, Christmas is a holiday, a grand time to eat and drink too much, to
spend too much, and to travel too far. When Christians gather to sing, “Joy to
the world, the Lord has come!” the majority of the world he came to save just
doesn’t get it. They “comprehend it not.”
God, having tried
to speak to us down through the ages, in the incarnation at last “spoke to us
through a Son” (Heb 1:2). But most people still look at Jesus and see only a
historical figure who said a few interesting things and then faded into
obscurity. They “comprehend it not.”
The world that the
Word created did not know him. He lived among his own, and his own didn’t
receive him. What a sad irony: God finally speaks clearly, decisively in an
embodied word, and the world comprehends it not.
John illustrates
what kind of light Jesus brought into the world.
For instance, John
introduces Jesus at, of all places, a wedding, more accurately, the bash after
the wedding. (John 2:1-11) During the festivities, the wine runs out. Jesus’s
mother anxiously tells him that the wine is gone. Jesus brusquely replies,
“What has that to do with us? It’s not our party.”
“Do whatever he
tells you,” Mary says to the servants. Jesus tells them to fill the stone water
jars to the brim.
The party is
shocked that the water turns to wine. John says this was “the first of his
signs” and that “many of his disciples believed in him.” The first of his
“signs,” his first wonder, produced 180 gallons of wine? What’s the spiritual
good in that? And what on earth did his disciples believe about him?
It is only the
second chapter of the Fourth Gospel; Jesus has not yet preached or taught. Whereas most of the people at the party
probably scratched their heads, saying, “How did he do that?” a few came away
from this weird moment believing in Jesus.
Questions remain.
Whenever the Light of the World is present, even at an allegedly secular
occasion such as a post-wedding bash, expect the unexpected. And expect
confusion. In all this, John surely wants to say, “Hold on to your hats.
Welcome to the world now that the light has come.”
It’s a marvel that
anybody encountered the Light and said, “This is God’s light shining on
us.” It’s a theme—listening but not
hearing, looking but not seeing—that recurs in the Fourth Gospel.
Jesus the Light of
the World shines, but people just don’t get it. “This message is harsh,” said
his disciples when he tells them that he is the bread come down from heaven
whom they must devour (6:60). “Give us a word,” asks the baffled mob in
Jerusalem (7:36), and Jesus says, “My word finds no place in you. You can’t
take what I have to say to you” (8:37, 43).
John says that
when you see the light, you are a new creation, Genesis 1 all over again. The
light does shine in the darkness for you. “But those who did welcome him, those
who believed in his name, he authorized to become God’s children, born not from
blood nor human desire or passion, but born from God.” (John 1:12-13)
Furthermore, if
you stay in the light: “If you remain faithful to my teaching...then you will
know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (8:31-32). These words
proclaim God’s gracious solution to the problem between you and God: “You have
already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you” (15:3 NRSV).
We can render the verse, “light
shines in the darkness and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light,” in yet
one more way than “comprehend” or “overcome.” It could also be, “The darkness
has not overtaken it.”
The darkness doesn’t “get it” in
the sense that the darkness doesn’t grasp the Light. In John 12, Jesus warns
his disciples to walk in the light lest the darkness “overtake you.” Same verb.
Talk with any person who works for
a ministry and is responsible for raising funds, like Eric Lane, at the Fellowship
Mission in Warsaw. If you ask, “How is
it going?” You may hear as the answer,
“We are always one step ahead of financial disaster.” That is all that it takes. The darkness has not overtaken the light.
Paul says in Romans 12 that we
should not “overcome evil with evil but overcome evil with good.” In other
words, we respond to evil in the world as God has answered in Christ. Let light
shine.
We don’t overcome evil with the
ways of the world—through force, violence, retribution, or lying. We overcome
evil as Christ—love showing up, light shining into our darkness.
Good news! The Light of the World
has come to us, has moved in with us, and nothing will overcome this light!
