Anytime I hear the words of John 1:1 read aloud, I am instantly taken back to the Sunday School classroom where a group of pre-teens were working on memorizing our weekly Bible verses. Like many perfectionist children, I loved being good at things, and John 1:1 was probably the one memory verses I got down the best. So, I would recite it often, and maybe this is even where my deep love for the Gospel according to John comes from. I love how John presents the Good News of God in Christ. I like that of the four gospels, John’s the one that sticks out like a sore thumb. I like how John presents the life and death and resurrection of Jesus in a way that seems to make sense to me; for John, it’s all about love and community.
And I like how the there is a tinge of metaphysical spin upon what it means for God to become incarnate. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. John does not begin his gospel with a genealogy of Christ like Matthew or Luke, but rather casts the net a bit broader and goes back all the way to the origins of the universe. That the Word, that Christ, was always with God and always was God. It’s a bit of mind bender that one can never fully wrap their head around, which is why, in my opinion, it is perfect, because who can ever fully grasp the reality of the triune God?
Of the all the apostles, it is only John that has been granted the title Theologian over the years by the Church. John’s life and witness is one that orients us not just to following Christ, but to the reality of the divine. John doesn’t wade into a shallow understanding of what it means to follow Christ, because he wants to not only point to how we ought to live, but why as well. John doesn’t just want to tell us how Christ was born to Mary in a manger, but also why.
Written sometime between the years 90-100AD, John’s gospel is the latest one written of the four, and it can be hard, I think, for us to understand the context. Many first century Christians thought that Jesus would come back in their lifetime. There were a growing hostility toward Christians and the Jewish leadership, and the Jewish temple in Jerusalem had been desecrated and destroyed by the Romans just a few decades before hand, the grief of which no doubt still lingered. It is not hard to imagine the hatred and violence that surrounded those who would hear John’s gospel read. It is not hard to imagine the Holy Land in violent turmoil, where hope has begin to feel like a distant memory. And then John says a line that is perpetually important, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. We live in a world where it is terrifyingly easy to be aware of how much darkness surrounds us. It is so easy to have a heart burdened with all the difficult things of this world, and sometimes, it feels like the only thing we can do to survive it is to tune it out, turn on all the artificial lights we can find. But, if I may push on that impulse, there is a way to stay tender to the pain of this world, but it requires that we trust what John says. That the light really does shine in the darkness, that we don’t need to add extra or artificial light, because the darkness will not overcome it.
Christmastide is not just time to celebrate the birth of our savior, but also to honestly see the darkness of the world around and celebrate that with Christ the darkness will not overcome the light. It’s a big ask, to imagine a world where we are not either numb to or in denial of the darkness around us, but the incarnation asks us to see God, and the whole world, differently. The incarnation asks us to imagine a God that so deeply loves humanity that God would not only come into this world as fragile child birthed by a young woman but would also be willing to live on this earth. The incarnation asks us to remember that Christ doesn’t stay a child meek and mild but lives a life of radical love that was such a threat to the status quo that humanity would rather try to kill God than live a life marked by compassion and love. John in his gospel asks us to imagine the origins of the whole universe that Christ was always with and a part of God, and Christmas asks us to hold close to the birth of hope. But John doesn’t let us stay in a metaphysical explanation of what this means for our lives, and neither does Christmas.
So my prayer as we go out into the world today is that may we hold closely to the hope of Christmas anytime we fear that the darkness creeping in. That we may enter this new year with a commitment to remaining soft and aware of the struggles of our fellow humans. And that we go out into the world renewed in our commitment and trust that the darkness will never overcome the light of Christ.
A sermon delivered to the people of Christ Episcopal Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky on December 31st, 2023 for Christmas 1B on John 1:1-18.
The image used in this post, “Christ in the Rubble” can be purchased for digital download from Kelly Latimore Icons.
Becca Kello 