No Darkness At All

1 John 1:1-10
I have to admit, when it comes time to sleep nothing beats a dark room. It is also easier to watch a movie if the screen is the only source of light in the theater. Astronomers work best when they are well removed from the ambient glow of population centers. For those who still remember pre-digital photography, a darkroom is necessary for developing pictures. These are all reasons why we should approach one of the metaphors used in 1 John 5 with care. “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). Does this mean that in the presence of God there is no shade to be found? Is there no relief from the constant, penetrating glare of light? Or does this verse really point to something else?

The dichotomy between light and dark is one of the most common in scripture rising, in large part, from the Bible’s pre-industrial setting. Darkness––especially nighttime––caused fear because it was so all-pervasive. Candles or lanterns or torches were of some help in pushing back the gloom, but there was finally nothing to be done but to wait for the sunrise to illuminate the world. So darkness was perceived as evil while light was considered good. To this extent, the metaphor is apt. “God is goodness and in God there is no evil at all,” we might say. But there is a flaw in this reasoning as well. According to Genesis 1 God did create light on the first day, overcoming the darkness of chaos. But God also created evening and morning and called them both good. Night was understood as a necessary contrast to day, allowing for rest and for rejuvenation throughout creation. To this extent, the metaphor is problematic because darkness is a natural part of the created order.

But what if we take 1 John 1:5 more or less literally? What if we assume that God really is light as opposed to darkness? What does that tell us? It tells us that just as light is the source of growth, and daytime is the setting for so much of human accomplishment, God, too, is a source of growth and home to what humanity can and does achieve. And in God there is no ambiguity, natural or otherwise, no grey areas, no blurred edges, no overlapping. God is what God is: light as opposed to the absence of light; energy as opposed to a lack of energy; as central to our existence as the sun is to our being.

God is light the way that God is love, or that God is three-in-one. When we try to approximate God with words, there will always be limitations. But then we step into the glow of inspiration, the illumination of knowledge, and we begin to better understand who God really is: light without any darkness at all.

Prayer: Lord, help us to be illumined by your word and by your will, that we may dwell in the light by which we bless all people. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Of Darkness and Light (and Of Shadows, Too)

John 3:16-21
According to the gospel of John from which we have read this morning, the world is divided into two types of people, those who do evil and therefore shun God’s light in Jesus Christ for fear of being revealed, and those who do what is true and therefore accept the light and what it makes clear. John puts it this way, “For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God” (John 3:20-21). John seems to suggest that the world is made up of clearly defined areas with sharp lines of contrast in between. You either do what is wrong or you do what is true and right; you either sin against God, or you don’t. And depending on your actions you either cower in the blackness of anonymity or you stand confidently in the sunshine of righteousness. I wish I thought it was that clear in real life. It’s not that I want to do what it evil, or that I don’t do what is true, it’s just that all too often I get muddled up somewhere between the two and the results are not what they should be. I love the light, I just can’t always seem to get there. Is there no place for me? Is there no grey area, no area of shadow or shade, maybe not completely in the light, but certainly not completely in the dark either?

Actually, I think that taken as a whole the gospel of John has quite a bit to say about living in those grey areas between sin and righteousness. “Indeed,” says John, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (v. 17). It is true that the light of God in Jesus Christ is a source of judgment as well as grace, but Jesus has been sent, first and foremost, to offer salvation to the world, which I take as a word of hope for those of us standing in the space between light and dark. Jesus is our hope. Jesus is the means by which we strive to leave our sinful ways behind and step into the glow of the coming reign of God. The light of God will defeat the darkness of the world. And by grace, we will find ourselves bathed in the glow of the righteousness of God.

Prayer: God of light, help us as we strive to step out of the darkness and to embrace your will for our lives. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

A Word to the Wise

Isaiah 59:15b-21
Perhaps you’ve heard the expression, “You took the words right out of my mouth.” It means that someone has said what you were thinking but had not had time to express for yourself. Our reading from Isaiah today offers the opposite perspective, literally along the lines of, “You put the words right into my mouth,” and God is the one doing the putting. “And as for me, this is my covenant with them, says the Lord: my spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouths of your children, or out of the mouths of your children's children, says the Lord, from now on and forever” (Isaiah 59:21). What does it mean for God to put words in our mouths? And what does it mean that these words will not depart the mouths of three or more generations of God’s people? Good questions.

I think of it this way, that there are many positions we might take in life on a variety of issues, a number of perspectives we might embrace and then share with others. Like quasi celebrity endorsers, we might pass along all types of information to our friends and our neighbors, and all manner of rumors or pieces of gossip sometimes stated as fact. According to the prophet, however, God’s word is to become our word, God’s glory the subject of our speaking, God’s actions the topic of our conversations. The days are coming when we, our children, and our children’s children, will speak the truth of God’s love and be known by that speaking and no other.

The charge to speak God’s word, of course, removes from us the opportunity to share the half-truths and hurtful innuendos that pass for communication in much of our world. I suspect were this to come to pass in a literal sense that Twitter and Facebook would become vastly different places and that reality TV would die a quick and ignoble death. What replaced them would not be the stodginess of what too often passes for religious talk, but the grace-filled and life-giving words of hope and peace that God has always used to create and to restore. Here’s hoping.

Prayer: Lord, may we learn to speak your truth in all we do. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

More Than One Light?

John 3:16-21
According to Genesis 1 God created light on the first day and God saw that the light was good (Genesis 1:3-4). I have to think that in a pre-technological world light was almost always considered a good thing. It provided safety, the ability to work, warmth and much more. But we who live in a modern world know that light, like everything else that God created, can be perverted and made evil. One glance at Los Vegas at night is enough to know that not all light leads to God or to God’s will. That’s one of the factors that makes our reading from John 3 so challenging.

“For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light,” Jesus says, “so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God” (John 3:20-21). The light in this case, of course, is the light of God and God’s will for humanity. But what about all the other lights? As Simon and Garfunkel so famously sang, “And the people bowed and prayed/to the neon god they made…”. Truth is, some light in our world attracts evil like a candle attracts moths. Evil may even covet light, like the glare of publicity or notoriety or fame. This type of light has done little to help Charlie Sheen or many others like him.

So part of the struggle for us is not only living in the light, but determining which light we should live in: the light of God or the light of human sin and ambition. Left to our own choices we would probably all too often stray toward the sinful glare of the neon sign. But this is where Jesus comes back into the story for us. John has already told us that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (1:5). By the same token the human glare of sin cannot overcome the light of the world created by God and found in God.

So when making choices in life it is important not only to listen to God, but also to reject the evil that confronts us regularly. May God bless us in this effort.

Prayer: Lord, you have created a good world full of joy and peace; help us to live as you intend us to do and to turn away from false prophets and the glare of sin. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Realm of Light

Zechariah 14:1-11

Zechariah’s vision of the day of the Lord with an end to darkness is a familiar image. “And there shall be continuous day,…not day and not night, for at evening time there shall be light” (Zechariah 14:7). Among other places in scripture that we find this notion expressed is the book of Revelation. “And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light…” (Revelation 22:5). What strikes me about passages such as these is how fundamental a change they represent.

“Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God call the light Day, and the darkness he called Night” (Genesis 1:3-5). At the very beginning of creation God had created Day and Night and had set them apart from each other. Of course only the light was called “good” because it stood over and against the darkness of the void, but this rhythm of day and night had been essential to human life from the very beginning. John’s gospel adds a new dimension to the story by associating light with the Word of God and saying, “The light shines in the darkness (present tense, on-going), and the darkness did not overcome it (past tense, once and for all)” (John 1:5, with author’s comments). All of this is to say that in Zechariah we find an end to the rhythm of day and night and a new reality where light—God’s Word—is at last established. And the light that God first brought into being at last overwhelms the darkness, fills the void, and God’s kingdom arrives in its fullness.

As we enter the season of Advent this Sunday, we will be entering a time of renewed emphasis on light. We are awaiting the time when darkness will finally be pushed back and light will prevail. In the meantime we work hard to focus on the light, on the Word of God, and on living as God intends us to live. Zechariah’s vision has not been realized…yet. But we know that it will be, for the light shines continually, and that the darkness was unable to put it out the one chance it got.

Prayer: Lord, as we draw near to Advent, help us to welcome the light and to live in it as your people. In the name of the Light of the world, Jesus Christ. Amen.