Scripture John 1:1-16
A reading from the gospel according to John, beginning at chapter 1, verse 1.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
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. (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.’”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
Meditation
I love Christmas lights.
I really love the lights in my neighborhood. I live on the West Side of Binghamton, and while none of the displays I drive past every year is likely to show up in the news—nothing wild, no one trying to break any records or compete with anyone else—still, each year, they are new, fresh, a little different. And each year, as I’m driving home in the late November early darkness and I see a new installation, my heart lifts, it thrills, really, and I feel incredibly grateful for this gift my neighbors share with one another. Christmas lights are a gift to the community.
And don’t get me started about my Christmas tree. I’m a purposefully late Christmas-tree-putter-upper, because I want that tree to thrive into the New Year. I want to enjoy it each of the twelve days of Christmas, so I don’t go in search until around December 20th. This year our tree is short but gorgeously full. We don’t do anything fancy—my ornaments are more about memories and relationships than aesthetics. But when that tree is decked with globes and doves and apples and lights——honestly? It feels like an injection of happiness. My Christmas tree is a better mood-enhancer than coffee, and that’s saying something. My very favorite thing is to turn out all the lights except the ones on the tree. The lights shining in the darkness restore my soul.
What is it about light? If we look at the first creation story back in Genesis, the very first thing on God’s to-do list is light. First, we hear about an empty, chaos-filled void, darkness covering an unspecified deep, and nothing anywhere except for God’s spirit moving over the primordial waters. But then God speaks a Word, and that Word is “Let there be light.”
Light was transformative for the ancient world—specifically the ability to kindle light in the darkness. It was the beginning of civilization, when people figured out how to harness the power of fire—not just to warm themselves, or to go from everything sushi to sizzling rhinoceros steak—but also, the power of fire to add to their safety, by providing light in the darkness. Without light we cannot find our way. The darkness can be threatening and unsettling, especially if we are on the move, always in a new place. God’s first recorded words in scripture, God’s creative Word: Let there be light.
Our passage from the gospel of John this morning feels very much like an extension of that Genesis text: In the beginning was the Word—and the word was creative, and creating. John is speaking about Christ—the Christ who existed before all else, and in whom and through whom God’s creative power was unleashed on the world. Life came into being, the gospel tells us, and that life was the light of the world.
It's no accident that our celebration of Christmas comes just after the darkest day and longest night of the year—the winter solstice. One year a friend invited a group of women to share in a combination solstice/ Advent celebration at her home. To our surprise and puzzlement, we started outside, standing around an old tire which she had decorated with evergreen boughs. In the middle stood four pillar candles, and one of those tiki torches. We lighted the candles, and my friend led us in a responsive version of Psalm 139. We responded with verse 12:
… even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you. ~Psalm 139:12
Finally, she lit the torch, and we stood outside in the cold for a while, watching it—and listening to it—fight back both cold and darkness. Later, my friend shared a book with me, “To Dance With God,” by Gertrud Mueller Nelson, and then I understood what we had been doing. In the book, Nelson talks about ancient peoples who enacted a ritual of hope as the days grew shorter, and the nights grew longer, and they began to fear that the sun might be gone for good.
Pre-Christian peoples who lived far north and who suffered the loss of… life and light with the disappearance of the sun had a way of wooing back life and hope…Their solution was to bring all ordinary action and daily routine to a halt. They gave in to the nature of winter, came away from their fields and put away their tools. They removed the wheels from their carts and wagons, festooned them with greens and lights and brought them indoors to hang in their halls. They brought the wheels indoors as a sign of a different time, a time to stop and turn inward… slowly, slowly they wooed the sun-god back. And light followed darkness. Morning came earlier. The festivals announced the return of hope after primal darkness.[i]
It’s also no accident that we call Jesus Christ the Light of the World. Here in the northern hemisphere the celebration of Christmas comes into the coldest, darkest days of our year. We respond by lighting up our world, because our faith reminds us that with Christ as our light we don’t need to fear living in shadows anymore. While the gospels of Matthew and Luke give us a Christmas story that includes Jesus as a newborn babe, or Jesus as a child pursued by a murderous king, John gives us the Christ, shining in the darkness from all eternity, there before the beginning, and here—with us—from everlasting to everlasting, because the Word became flesh, and lived among us, dwelled among us, as the older translation had it.
That word, “dwelled,” is an interesting one. The original word is “tabernacle”—God tabernacled among us. But a tabernacle was a tent. So the Word became flesh, in other words, and pitched a tent among us. And you know what that means. It means that there is no place we can go, where God is not. Again, Psalm 139. The psalmist sings,
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast. ~Psalm 139:7-10
There is no place we can go, where God is not. God-in-Jesus is perfectly ready, willing, and able to follow us, to the world of the dead, to the farthest limits of the sea, to the depths of despair, to the summits of joy overflowing… everywhere, even when we cannot perceive it, God in Christ both follows us and leads us. Even then, even there, God holds us fast.
All throughout Advent, we prepared for this day by lighting candles. The darker it grew outside, the more candles we kindled. Here, this morning, we kindle lights again to remind ourselves and one another about the One who has come into the world. And when we leave here, the lights of our neighbors will be waiting to glow again tonight, to greet us, as reminders. The lights in our own homes, whether we have three hundred of them on a tree, three thousand of them on our eaves, or just the one that lights the room with the flip of a switch—they serve as our reminders. Jesus Christ, God’s Word made flesh, is the light of the world, the light no shadows can overcome or extinguish. This is our faith. This is our celebration. This is our hope.
Thanks be to God. Merry Christmas. Amen.
[i] Gertrud Mueller Nelson, To Dance With God (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1986), 63.