2nd Sunday after Christmas - January 4, 2009

The Light Brings Life
John 1:1-18
Christmas 2 – January 4, 2008

One of the things that I always notice when I go visit my family in northwestern Pennsylvania is how big and bright the stars are. You go outside on a clear night, and there seem to be a million of 'em hanging right over your head. Way more than you can see here or any of the other urban areas I've lived in.

But I guess that's changing, because when my parents were up here this week, my dad was talking about the problem of light pollution. Lights from the college nearby, lights from the prison that's been built since I moved away, lights everywhere. Of course, the security light my parents put up in the yard next to the driveway doesn't help much either.

But this talk about light pollution got me thinking about why it is we have so many lights. And I guess it has to be that we, like so many children, are afraid of the dark. It's almost instinctive, this fear of the dark, because we don't know what lurks out there where we can't see it hiding. As kids, we may have worried about monsters under the bed or behind the closet door. But even as we get older, we try to stay in the light – we know well to avoid those dark alleys or poorly-lit parking lots, afraid of evil people with evil intentions.

And so, as much as we can, we try to light up the darkness. We try to push it back with our security lights and night-lights, motion-sensor lights and street lights, lights on our bridges, lights in our parking lots, lights everywhere – all in an attempt to keep the darkness at bay so we don't have to be afraid of what's out there, because we feel more safe and secure in the light.

But the problem is, even with all of the lights we have set blazing, we can't keep the darkness back, because dark isn't just something outside of us; darkness lurks even within us. Even in the brightest light of the noonday sun, we carry darkness with us... the darkness of our guilts and regrets; the darkness of our sorrows and fears, the darkness of anger and violence and war – all signs and symptoms of our sinful selves, the part of us that would rather turn away from God and stay in the dark, because as much as we fear that darkness, there are things about us that we would rather not have brought out into the light.

Today's gospel talks about that darkness, the pitch-black-ness of the world that Jesus came to. Then as now, the world was a dark place, filled with the results of selfishness and greed, of pain and sadness, of evil and sin and death, a world filled with all of the ways that people rebel against God and try to keep God at arm's length, trying to hold back the darkness on our own instead of coming into the light.

This darkness was nothing new. It was there almost from the very beginning, when Adam & Eve heard God say not to eat that fruit, and then did it anyway. It was humanity's darkness that caused God over and over again to send witnesses to the light. God sent Moses with the Law, to shine God's light into their lives, to show how people should live with God and each other. The ever-creeping darkness is why God sent the prophets, reminding the people of how God created them and the whole world to be, reminding them of what it looked like to live in the light. And each time, the people came to that light of God, but before long, they always forgot, and turned back to the darkness.

And so, in the fullness of time, God took a new and drastic step. Instead of sending messengers, bringing candles borrowed from God's light, God came down to earth in person. God sent the only Son, the source of all light – the eternal Word who was in the beginning...

In the beginning – when God created the heavens and the earth.

In the beginning – when the earth was still a formless void

In the beginning – when darkness covered the face of the deep

In the beginning – when God said, “Let there be light” and there was light!

In the fullness of time, God sent the true Light, Light coming into a dark, dark world to enlighten all people. The true Light, who brings hope to the hopeless, comfort to the grieving, courage to the fearful. The true Light, who shines in the darkness of our souls, revealing the things that are broken, the things that have gone desperately wrong and then works to repair and restore them. The true Light who brings life even out of death, because the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it!

This is the mystery of the Incarnation, the wonder that we celebrate each Christmas season and every time we gather. This is the good news – that God the Father sent God the Son, the Word who became flesh and lived among us, so that we might hear and touch and see this God who no one had ever seen before, that we might know face to face this God who loves us so much that God wouldn't leave us alone in our darkness.

The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Jesus is that light, the light that will never go out, the light that shines constantly like a beacon, calling us to come out of the darkness, to leave behind doubt and fear and sin and live in the Light of his love, to receive from him grace upon grace – God's love overflowing into every corner of our lives, and from us, into every corner of the world.

The truth is, left to our own devices, we would be trapped in our darkness forever, because even with all of our lights, even with our light pollution, we can't hold the darkness back on our own. Those external lights are just substitutes for the real thing. God sent the true Light, the only Son who is close to the Father's heart, to make God known, to give us power to become children of God, children living in the Light, called to share God's light and love, called to carry it into the darkest places of our world, to go rejoicing as we say: “The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Amen.