John 1:5

Sisters and brothers in Christ,

This evening’s Bible passage is John 1:5: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

John wrote his gospel several decades after Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension. It’s striking, therefore, that he uses the present tense: Christ, the embodied light, still “shines in the darkness.” The darkness not only failed to defeat the light during Jesus’s lifetime, but it has still not conquered it. This is no less true now, two thousand years later: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

There were several occasions during Jesus’s lifetime when the forces of darkness may have thought they had extinguished Christ’s light (or, at least, hoped they were about to). Herod slaughtered the innocents, hoping the infant Christ was among them (Matt. 2:16; cf. Rev. 12:1-6). Satan tempted Christ in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-12). The members of the Nazareth synagogue dragged Jesus to the edge of a cliff, intending to hurl him over the edge to his death (Luke 4:29-30). Peter tried to talk Jesus out of going to Jerusalem and getting himself killed (Matt. 16:21-23). When Christ was crucified, his disciples thought it was all over. But Christ rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and sent his life-giving Holy Spirit to Jew and Gentile alike. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Opposing forces still darken the world. War, plague, famine, persecution, and abuse of nature are just a few of the weapons wielded against the light. COVID-19 may be the latest threat. But the human race survives, the church continues to proclaim the love of God in Christ, and many (but not all) human beings, Christian or otherwise, display great kindness and a capacity for creativity, faithfulness, and joy, even under the stress of a pandemic. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Anyone who has read the Psalms will know that darkness can oppress even those who have embraced the steadfast love of God. The psalmist cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps. 22:1). So did Jesus (Mk. 15:34). But the psalmist recovered to praise God again: “I will tell of your name to my brothers [and sisters]; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you …  For [the LORD] has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him” (Ps. 22:22-24). Christ died, but was raised from the dead to shine into our darkness, not to condemn us but to illumine our path and to “lead [us] in the way everlasting” (Ps. 139:24). “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

The light of Christ has no end, but the darkness will one day be dispersed forever. The city of the New Jerusalem, in the new heaven and the new earth promised at the close of the Book of Revelation, “has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.” (Rev. 21:23). Christ, the Lamb who was slain and rose again, will himself be the undimmed light of our eternal life.

Your brother in Christ,

Max