[1] Isaiah 9:2
[2] Luke 1:78-79
[3] John 1:3b-5
December 26, 2004; The First Sunday after Christmas, Year A
The Rev. Harold "Skip" Comer, Rector
Light! What would we do without it? From the first cavemen who learned how to use fire for cooking and light, to Thomas Edison’s invention of the light bulb, we have used artificial light to dispel the darkness. And, what would we do without Christmas lights to decorate our Christmas trees and homes?
Christmas is a very appropriate time to brighten the inside and outside of homes and churches with light, because we celebrate the birth of God’s light coming into the world.
In Isaiah’s prophecies of the Messiah, he said, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them light has shined,”[1]
The priest, Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, spoke of the Messiah with these words, “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn form on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into he way of peace.[2]
As strange as the words of John’s prologue to his Gospel are, they capture the relationship of the Messiah and God’s light. “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”[3]
In Jesus was life. Life comes from life. Try as hard as they can, scientist have not been able to create life from nothing. Even though an embryo can be created outside of a woman’s womb, it takes live sperm and an egg from human beings to do so. Even though we have been able to clone animals, we have to use living cells from other animals to do so. When I stop to ponder where I came from, and I don’t mean my mother’s womb, science has not been able to provide a satisfactory answer. The “Big Bang” and evolution are only attempts to explain how life got to this planet. Where did life come from? The Bible claims that “life” came from God.
John appears to be stating in the opening words of his Gospel that life comes from God through his “Word.” Now this is no ordinary word. In this case “Word” is capitalized to express an identity. That identity is what we call the Son of God whose birth in human form as Jesus we celebrated on Friday evening. John is stating that before Jesus was born he existed in his divine state as the “Word.” One way this has been explained is that Jesus is God’s voice. So, in the beginning when God spoke to bring about the creation of this world and human beings, it was done by or through Jesus as he existed prior to his birth in Bethlehem. This is why we say in the Nicene Creed that Jesus was “eternally begotten of the Father” and not made. That “he became incarnate (or took on human form) from the Virgin Mary and was made man.” Life comes from God, through his “Word” or Son.
But there is another sense in which Jesus is life. Jesus came into the world to offer the life that he has – eternal life. Just as life can only create life, so eternal life can only be offered by the source of eternal life – God. Jesus came into the world for one purpose, to provide us with the opportunity to receive God greatest gift – eternal life. Even though we celebrate Jesus’ human birth at Christmas, John directs our attention to the true significance of that event – what has come into being with the birth of Jesus – God’s gift of life with Him in His kingdom.
“And the life was the light of all people.” We return to the imagery of light. The life of Jesus is a light because it gives us hope. The ultimate hope that the light gives us is that we will not end up in darkness. The darkness that John is referring to is death. The darkness of death did not overcome Jesus because he rose from the dead. The light we all hope for eternal life. Sometimes because we are afraid for ourselves, or others, we latch onto a belief in an all loving God who, in the end save everyone. This is not an entirely unfounded belief. What Jesus revealed to us about God is that he is a God of love and not vengeance. But the question lingers in all of our minds, is Jesus the only offer of salvation that God has given to the world? John believed that in Jesus was God unique offer of eternal life. The entire New Testament is based on this single fact – Jesus is God’s offer of salvation for the entire world.