Darkness And Light

Darkness and Light

John 1:1-18

Several years ago, we visited the Lost Sea Adventures in Sweetwater.

It’s a big cave that also has a body of water that you can take a boat ride on.

But it also has a number of rooms, and you can take a tour with a guide.

The tour includes turning off the lights, to show how dark darkness can be.

And boy, it is dark!

There was a little boy on the tour with us, and he had obviously been there before, we could hear him, in a quiet voice say to his sister, “Don’t cry. Someone here knows how to turn on the lights.”

Verse 5 of our Gospel Lesson for this morning affirms that there truly is Someone Who “knows how to turn on the lights.”

We could go so far as to say that the true power of the Christian faith is grounded in this Truth.

“The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”

This past Wednesday morning, on the first day of the New Year, we woke to the news that a truck had been driven through a crowd of people on Bourbon Street killing 15 and injuring many more.

It was a reminder that darkness still permeates our world as we enter the New Year.

It’s sad and it can truly cause us to lose hope.

What kind of darkness are you dealing with in your life?

There are two broad categories of darkness in this world.

The first is moral darkness; the second is what we might call situational, relational, emotional darkness.

We know moral darkness; we saw the results of it on New Year’s Day.

We also see it in mass shootings and in selfish acts that hurt others.

We feel it in circumstances that, again, leave us feeling hopeless.

There is the darkness we’re drawn to take part in when we are tempted to do things that will harm ourselves, our relationship with God or others.

The Bible talks about a good path we’re meant to walk on.

Our New Testament Lesson for this morning from 1 John calls this “living in the light,” and it has to do with whether or not we love others.

When we are living without love in our heart we are stumbling around in the darkness.

The battle between good and evil, light and darkness, is one of the major themes in human existence and it’s captured in history, literature, the arts and life.

And it’s not only a battle outside of us, it is a battle that is fought within us as well.

There is another kind of darkness found throughout Scripture: it’s situational darkness.

It’s associated with grief, sadness, despair, or the feelings of being lost or unloved.

People have told me: “I’m feeling overwhelmed by darkness right now.”

Folks who have lost loved ones have described the grief they are feeling as “deep darkness.”

We know what that means because we’ve all been there, in that darkness.

The Incarnation of God or the Word becoming a human being and living among us is God’s response to both forms of darkness.

John Chapter 1 is rooted in the creation story and aims to show us the cosmic significance of Jesus’ Incarnation.

Jesus is God’s Word to us; I’m not talking about the Bible—the Bible is a word about God—Jesus is God.

In Jesus we not only see the love of God but the light of God illuminating our darkness.

When I think about darkness and light I’m reminded of my the first apartment I lived in after college.

It was a single room in a very old building, and I slept on my boss’s army cot.

One night, after I had turned out the lights and had gotten into bed, I remembered something I had forgotten to do so I got up and turned the light back on.

What I saw was, shall I say, very illuminating.

The walls of the apartment had turned brown and were moving as thousands of cockroaches were quickly scurrying back to the dark cracks and crevices they stayed in when the lights were on.

John Chapter 3 tells us: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.

Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come to the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.

But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”

Our job is to accept God’s light, to allow it to illuminate our lives, to walk in this light and share it with others.