December 20, 2015AWAITING THE ALREADY – 4. The Light in the Darkness

John 1: 1-5, 9-14

SermonI.

  1. Whenever I have a few moments to work on it, I’ve been converting all my old slides to digital photos. I have at least 25 carousels of slides, so it’s going to take a while. They date back to before our kids were born in 1976 and every time I process a slide and see the picture on the computer screen, I have the opportunity to relive the moment the photo was taken. It’s been fun.

It also takes me back to those days when cameras used film that had to be developed before you could see if your picture actually turned out or not. It usually meant waiting a few days before seeing your pictures. We have steadily removed the need to wait in our culture, inventing whatever is needed to reduce how long we have to wait for something to happen. In so doing, we have also reduced those moments of richness and fullness that only come with anticipation.

There was something special about waiting for camera film to be developed. There was in the waiting a unique tension between the past and the future, between an event that had already happened and the future reliving of the moment through the pictures. I think I was always eager to get that package of pictures so I could see those memories in a fresh, new way.

  1. The season of Advent is a lot like waiting for pictures to develop. It’s the season that best captures that dynamic tension between the past and the future in a way that fills us with hopeful anticipation in the present. Advent presents us with a chance to allow the fullness of God’s love to develop in our lives and to be revealed in glorious Technicolor!
  2. The photographers of this year’s Advent journey have been the four Gospel writers. Each take their pictures of the arrival of Christ from a different angle, panning and zooming and selectively choosing which parts of the narrative best capture their message.
  • Mark would want us to slow down, turn around, and prepare the way for Jesus.
  • Matthew would want us to confront, rather than ignore, the realities of this hurting world and to look for the Jesus who is already here as Emmanuel – which means God is with us.
  • Luke would want us to sing – songs of obedience, praise, faith, joy, and even silence.
  1. Today on this last Sunday of Advent, we’ll look at the fourth Gospel picture of the coming of God in Jesus Christ. What does John want us to know and do?

II.

  1. If the Gospel of John were a symphony, the first eighteen verses would be the opening overture – a grand and majestic beginning that captures the audience’s attention, sparks their imagination, and introduces the key themes of the rest of the composition. John does that with words rather than music, but my, what an impressive movement these opening words are. It begins with a wide-angle vision of the Word’s power and prestige and steadily narrows the focus to the Word Made Flesh.
  2. In many ways, the opening of John’s Gospel parallels the origins of creation itself as recorded in the opening of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. It’s John’s way of telling us that what happened when the Word became flesh was the beginning of a new creation and a new covenant through a new divine image in human form. As God created light in the first creation story, so now Jesus is the light in the midst of a dark world – a light so powerful that darkness cannot overcome it.
  3. This theme of light shining in the darkness introduced in the opening verses of John just keeps popping up all through John. In chapter three, Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus happens under the cover of darkness and Jesus describes those who live in truth as ones who come to the light. In chapter eight when Jesus teaches in the Temple, he calls himself the “light of the world” and soon afterwards heals a blind man – removing his darkness and opening his eyes to the light. Prior to raising his friend Lazarus from death and the darkness of the tomb in chapter 11, Jesus challenges his disciples to walk in the light of day so they will not stumble in the night. And in chapter 12, after Jesus enters Jerusalem to begin his final week, he calls his followers to believe in the light so that their lives might reflect that light.
  4. This is great news for people in Advent whose lives are engulfed or threatened by darkness. Sometimes the light is most visible in the darkness.
  5. There’s a story about Jim Lovell, the commander of the problem-ridden Apollo 13 space mission to the moon. He’s the guy responsible for the famous phrase: “Houston, we have a problem!” But many don’t realize that this wasn’t the first doomed mission he had to deal with in his life.

In the 1950’s Lovell was a Navy pilot and was flying a mission in his F2H Banshee night jet off the coast of Japan. Faulty instruments led him away from his aircraft carrier rather than toward it, and forced him to miss his rendezvous point by several miles. He felt lost as he flew circles over the dark Japan Sea. When he tried to turn on his cockpit light, all of his instrument lights shorted out and everything went black. His chances of survival grew dimmer by the second.

He scanned the water below, adjusting his eyesight to the darkness that engulfed him. Once accustomed to the darkness, he was able to spot a faint trail of phosphorescent algae, churched up by the propellers of his crew’s aircraft carrier. He followed the glowing trail all the way to a safe landing on the carrier. Were it not for the darkness that surrounded him, he wouldn’t have been able to see the radiant trail that was there all along, leading him to safety.

In the movie, Lovell says, “You never know what events are going to transpire to get you home.” Whether on a troubled flight in space or piloting a malfunctioning fighter jet, Lovell learned that sometimes one has to go through the darkness in order to recognize and appreciate the light.

  1. Suffering of any sort in like the darkness that surrounded Lovell’s plane. The darkness forced him to adjust his perception and see a new way forward. And it is the same for us. Our hardship can give us an unexpected chance to recognize a hope that’s been with us all along but not seen and therefore not claimed. It’s not that God wants us to suffer or that God’s causes our suffering. Instead, it reminds us that God is always present to offer us new life, even when we don’t recognize it. And sometimes, it takes the darkness of suffering to help us see the light.
  2. So let’s just acknowledge that for many folks, this lit-up season of Christmas feels a lot more like darkness. Christmas doesn’t feel very Christmassy. Sure, there are lots of lights, and music, and festivities… but we just don’t feel it, some of us. And it can be hard. Especially when we’re expected to celebrate this season with family and friends and we’ve buried a loved one this year and are still dealing with the loss.

Or we’re expected to celebrate the season with giving and sharing and we’ve lost our job, or our stock portfolio has plummeted, or our business has tanked.

Or we’re expected to celebrate this season of peace and goodwill among all and all we see around us is evidence to the contrary? Mass shootings. Threats of terrorism. Uncivil politics and civil wars. And the darkness of violence gripping our culture.

Or we’re expected to celebrate the season for love and what we see are bitter relationships, betrayal, mistrust and resentment.

With Christmas Day on the horizon, this is a chance for us to be honest. Times are tough for many of us, emotionally and otherwise. And it doesn’t help to give each other false hope, manufactured cheer, and shallow encouragement cloaked in friendly advice.

  1. But we can lift up what John’s Gospel makes brilliantly clear: “What has come into being in Jesus is life, and the life is the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish it.”

In John’s Prologue, it’s pretty evident that the writer is less concerned about how the Word became flesh and is more interested in why the Word became flesh. If we spend our time wrestling over how, exactly, God became human in Jesus, we’ll miss John’s point entirely. The point he zeroes in on is this: God touched the earth in the form of Jesus to save us from our suffering by suffering with us. Jesus wasn’t born into a world of holiday cheer, jolly displays and widespread goodwill. He entered a world of crowded city streets; inhospitable innkeepers; a paranoid, murderous monarch; and hopelessly oppressed citizens. And Jesus, also, would learn the sting of a loved one’s death, the heartbreak of a close friend’s betrayal, the fatigue of keeping up with a personal crusade, the vengeful backlash that comes with speaking the truth, and the agony of suffering that accompanied his own torture and death.

We light a candle called Power today, and we hold it up in our darkness, and we are illuminated by this truth – God has come to be here with us.

III.

  1. In the last verse of the Prologue, John wrote this: “No one has ever seen God. God the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made God known.”

The great gift of the Incarnation is that Jesus reveals the greatness, wonder, love and glory of God in a way that we can comprehend. He reflects God’s image to us in a way that we can receive it.

  1. But John would have us know that we, too, can reflect the light of Christ for others, so that those who walk in darkness can experience the light of God, incarnate (or made flesh) in us.
  2. In his biography of St. Francis, GK Chesterton describe the saint with these words:

St. Francis is the mirror of Christ rather as the moon is the mirror of the sun. The moon is much smaller than the sun, but it is also nearer to us; and being less vivid it is more visible. Exactly in the same sense, St. Francis is nearer to us, and being a mere [mortal] like ourselves is, in that sense, more imaginable.

This describes all the saints that have gone before us. They are for us what the moon is to the sun – a glimpse of radiance in a form that we can comprehend. There is a “great cloud of witnesses,” (to borrow a phrase from Hebrews) that can encourage us with perseverance and faith.

  1. But all of this is to say that we too, as Advent pilgrims, have the opportunity and responsibility to reflect that same light for others. We who recognize the light of Christ in our lives can share it with others, so that those who live in darkness can get a glimpse of the glory of God.

For those who live under the cover of darkness like Nicodemus in chapter three, even in the darkness of shame, guilt, addiction, we can reflect a light of forgiveness, grace and acceptance.

For those who are blinded by despair and hopelessness like the blind man in chapter 9, we can offer a light of hope and courage.

For those who live in the shadow of death, like Mary and Martha grieving over Lazarus in John 11, we can incarnate a light of comfort and a promise of the resurrection.

And for all of us who are awaiting the arrival of the light of Christ once again this Christmas, we can already offer that light to a world that has grown accustomed to darkness.

IV.

  1. Our Advent tour through the four gospels this year has given us a wonderful panorama of amazing Christmas vistas. And with some guidance from Magrey deVega’s book, Awaiting the Already, we have witnessed in Mark the urgency of John the Baptist’s message to prepare ourselves for the coming of Christmas. We have faced the cold, hard reality of Matthew’s portrait of life and emerged more confident because of a God who is here in the midst of it all. We have warmed up our vocal chords and sung the musical score of Luke’s Gospel, amazed by the uplifting possibilities of the good news. And in John, we have dared to hold a candle of hope against the darkness of the world. Four gospels, four perspectives, four pictures of the coming of Christ. And just like waiting for pictures to develop, this Advent season has been filled with expectation… waiting for that moment when we can do more than simply remember something that occurred in the past – we can relive the arrival of Christ who is already here with us.
  2. How do we await the already?
  • By slowing down, turning our lives around, and preparing a straight path for Jesus to come into our midst.
  • By trusting God even in our fear, and learning to experience God’s presence every moment.
  • By singing a song of praise, honoring the possibilities of being both blessed by God and being used by God to be a blessing for the world.
  • By claiming the light of God, which we sometimes see most clearly in the darkness, and reflecting that light for others.

Then slowly and surely, we can watch those pictures develop right before our eyes. And there we will see Jesus, in the splendor of his divinity and the fullness of his humanity, revealed for us in glorious color.