Light Shining in the Darkness

​Our Gospel reading for this morning tells in brief virtually the entire biblical story, from creation, through incarnation, and on to life in the Church. It’s a hard reading. But it is definitely worth it.
 
The reading begins in the beginning, with the Word that was with God and was God. Quickly it moves to creation through the Word, who fills all things with life and light.
 
But then darkness enters the picture, setting up a struggle. John tells us that light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. More on that in a moment.
 
Then comes the Christmas part of the story. “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world….The Word became flesh and lived among us.”
 
Now the focus shifts to us, God’s people, who, thanks to the Word, the Light, have “become children of God, who were born not of blood or of the will of the flesh…, but of God.”
 
This is really beautiful stuff. But it is so poetic that it can be a little hard to take in.
 
So, I go back to the image that speaks most powerfully to me, light shining in the darkness. That’s a way of describing Christ’s ongoing work in our world.
 
Now, we all know spiritual darkness, which is the darkness our passage is talking about. We know the spiritual darkness of our world, which is all around us all time and can sometimes feel overwhelming. We know the spiritual darkness in our hearts when we fail to love or refuse to forgive.
 
But it can help to think about literal darkness.
 
We live in an electrified world. It is rare that we don’t have access to light at the push of a button.
 
But it happens. I remember a time when I was backpacking in the White Mountains. I decided to spend a night in one of the huts. But I was too cheap to pay, so I took advantage of an offer they make to long distance hikers—we could work for the right to sleep on the floor of the hut. A LOT of other people made the same choice that night.
 
This was a while ago, but recent enough that, unlike young men, I was going to be getting up in the night. I therefore staked out a spot on the floor right next to the door.
 
But the keeper of the hut told me I couldn’t block the door. And by that time, there was only one spot left on the crowded floor. In my new spot, I had someone at my head, my feet, and on both sides.
 
Then, my flashlight died.
 
Now, to get out, I would have to make my way through a crowded room of sleeping people in the pitch black.
 
I did not sleep much that night. Instead, I prayed, “God, let me make it to the morning without having to move!” In what counts as a minor miracle, God granted that prayer.
 
In fact, the stakes were low that night. The worst-case scenario was a bunch of irritated people who got stepped on while they were sleeping. But it made me appreciate how helpless we are in the darkness, and how much we need light.
 
Spiritually speaking, I live in the darkness I experienced on that backpacking trip. We all do. We live surrounded by darkness that is too powerful for us, including darkness that is in us.
 
Thankfully, we have the promise of our passage. Light, the light of Christ, shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome the light.
 
We can think about light and darkness in another way.
 
 
One thing people might do, in this cold and dark time of year, is go south. In Atlanta the sun rose even later this morning than it did here, but daylight there still lasts an extra hour. It will be another month before we’ll get as much light here as Atlanta gets today.
 
But my family and I are not going south.
 
Not long ago, my mother announced that seeing the Northern Lights is on her bucket list, so we are heading deeper into the darkness. A week from Monday, my parents, Carrie and I, and Nicholas will fly to Yellow Knife, a town in the northwest territories of Canada.
 
This is a crazy thing to do. Our trip will last a little over 100 hours, of which more than thirty will be travel time.
 
But travelling may well be the pleasantest part of the trip. When I last checked the temperatures in Yellow Knife, it went several days without getting up to zero degrees as the high. When we are there, the sun will rise after 10:00, and set about 3:00, giving us nearly nineteen hours of cold darkness. Yellow Knife makes Massachusetts look light and warm and sunny.
 
Our plan is to sit outside, in the cold, for something like four hours on each of our two nights, watching light shine in the darkness. I am doing this because I love my mother.
 
But this is another way to think about the light of Christ.
 
In that dark place where we are going, the light shines with such beauty that people travel from all over and put up with significant discomfort and inconvenience just to enjoy light shining in the darkness.
 
Human beings want and need the light of Christ. When people know where to find that light, I mean true light and life, the genuine presence of God, when people sense that light, they will flock to it, no matter what it costs.
 
The problem is that so many people are stuck in darkness. Many don’t believe true light is possible.  Even if they think it’s possible, many don’t know where to find it.
 
We are not the light they need.
 
But we can testify to the light because we know that light shines in darkness, and that darkness can never overcome the light. We have glimpsed the light in its divine beauty. And we can tell people about it.
 
I said at the beginning of this sermon that our passage tells virtually the entire biblical story. But it doesn’t tell the end. For that we have to keep going. And the image of light and darkness can help us do that, too.
 
This is the darkest time of the year. This morning, the sun rose at 7:18, and it will set at 4:27. That gives us roughly nine hours of daylight, which means almost fifteen hours of darkness. Balmy by the standard of Yellow Knife, but still a lot of darkness.
 
But the days are getting longer. Today we’ll have three more minutes of light than we had on the very shortest day of the year, eight days ago. And every day, for the next six months, we’ll get a little more light.
 
That’s a literal version of the good news of Christ. Our world often seems dark indeed. But the light of Christ shines, and it keeps shining and, even though we often fail to notice it, Christ’s light gets stronger all the time, as we edge our way, however fitly, towards God’s kingdom.
 
And this is how Revelation describes God’s kingdom. In it, people “will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:5). God’s light will shine always and everywhere.
 
But until that day when the kingdom comes, we thank God for the light of Christ. We ask that God help us testify to Christ’s light. And we pray that God’s light will shine brightly in us. In Christ’s name. Amen.