A week or two ago, I picked up the last string of white Christmas lights on the shelf at Target, and spent an hour or so rigging a way to hang them in my street-facing window downstairs.
I’ve never been especially enthusiastic about hanging Christmas lights before, but this year I really felt the need to put up lights that other people could see; a need to reach out in the dark evenings and mornings with a little light of seasonal cheer.
And judging by the scarcity of holiday lights available online and in stores, I’m not the only one.
The light shines in the darkness, John says, and the darkness did not overcome it.
That’s the promise of Christmas, that the light of God can come into any dark place, and cannot be extinguished.
Not just any light, though. The “true light”. The light that gives life.
You and I, here at the end of 2020, probably have a very different relationship with light and darkness than John did.
A different experience of darkness and light than John’s first hearers, or most of humanity for 1500 years or so after John wrote those words.
Because we live in a world of artificial light, and have to go far out of our way to find serious darkness – wilderness camping, mostly. Occasionally, though, we might find ourselves in a place where the stars are extraordinarily visible, but can’t help you place your feet, or tell if the person next to you has moved. A place and time where the darkness feels deep, textured, and strong.
Instead, you and I are immersed, most of our days and nights, in a flood of artificial light: streetlights, house lights, TV and phone and computer screens. We live in a world where, most of the time, natural darkness can’t even gain a foothold and light seems to be at our beck and call.
There’s so much light it’s actually hard to see, sometimes.
The power of light and darkness is different for us now, but we can still understand the one thing about darkness that’s most important to John.
It’s not that darkness by itself is bad. Or that light itself is good.
It’s just that, in the darkness, without light, you can’t see.
And for John, seeing is believing.
Now, John doesn’t care whether we “see” with bifocals on our nose, or braille on our fingertips, or average eyeballs. What John cares about is that we have the direct experience of God that Jesus brings, the experience of our “eyes being opened”, of the reality of God being revealed directly to our senses.
John uses “seeing” and “sight” to describe that experience of the closeness, the realness of God, which transforms our sense of the world around us, so that we perceive the glory of God here and now, well up with living water, and notice miracles and love in what used to be ordinary.
That closeness of Jesus in our senses transforms our sense of self so that we can never again experience ourselves as alone, or disconnected, but rather as one with each other, part of God’s heart.
“Seeing” God among us, in us, moving into our neighborhood, is believing: living a life that is full of the joy, forgiveness, service, love, and abiding peace that Jesus lived and shared.
That’s what John means, that the light came to give us power to become children of God. That experiencing God in the midst of this world transforms us so that our connection to God can never be broken, cut, or shaken.
That’s why God comes into the world.
The baby comes, the fully human Jesus comes, to put a face on God, make it easier for us to imagine the realness, the concrete presence of God. The eternal light comes, the true light, to help us “see”: to show all of our senses the evidence of God at work in the world.
To show us love and miracles in Christmas gifts and masks and vaccines and lights in the window. To show us the best of ourselves and of our co-workers, family, neighbors, and even politicians, in spite of all the frustrations and errors and irritations and general sins of everyday life. To show us joy when the world around us insists on anxiety; trust when the world shouts doubt; possibilities and power when the world insists on zero-sum answers.
The noisy light we live with here and now can obscure the true light just as much as darkness can.
But just like darkness, artificial or noisy light cannot overcome the true light.
Instead, the true light gives life; life abundant, vibrant, and unstoppable, in the midst of strong darkness or bright noise.
In a Zoom meeting, where the artificial light shows the shadows under your eyes or the mess on your desk, the true light shows the life-giving human connection that can be built in spite of distance and distraction.
When stress or fear, conflict or pain, darken our lives, the true light keeps shining love into us, until we perceive it and can respond.
When the noisy light of news and entertainment, of alerts and stories, show a world of urgency and competition, the true light shows the solid foundation of trust and peace that God builds for us in the midst of it all.
When boredom, indifference, and distraction close our eyes to both human need and human capability, the true light keeps showing us compassion and wonder, strength and hope, woven into every human life, and every human question.
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. … And to all who received him, he gave power to become children of God…who believed in his name.
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