Light Breaks

How many of you have watched a sunrise? It’s been a long time for me, I’m not a morning person, but I remember some spectacular dawns on camping trips. And years ago when I worked as a hotel night auditor, in Tucson, I often watched the sun rise over the mountains as I walked home in the morning. Sunrises can be pretty dramatic, especially if there are one or two clouds around to reflect the light. Even before the top of the sun creeps above the rim of the horizon, the bottoms of the clouds start to glow gold and rose, very faintly at first and then fairly blazing with anticipation. Once on a camping trip I heard a bagpiper playing the dawn in, across a cornfield to the east, sil-houetted against the sky. That was one of the best dawns ever. As you wait for the col-ors to brighten, perhaps you’ll hear a rooster crow. And soon a sliver of fire flickers at the edge of the world and slowly grows into a burning copper plate that streaks the whole sky with light. It seems to cling for a moment or two as if reluctant to let go of the earth. And then it springs free, and the colors fade, and it is day. That first morning light is clearer than spring water. And you can see again, and your attention leaves the glory in the sky and turns back to the world around you, for a new look.

It’s only if you’ve seen a sunrise like this that the words of the hymn, “Morning Has Broken” mean anything. “Like the first morning” the song goes on, the first morning when everything was still new and clean, and God said it was good, and the blackbird speaks his incredibly sharp, pure note, and we can almost smell creation springing fresh from the Word of God. Springing fresh from the hands of Jesus.

The Apostle John opens his gospel with a deliberate reference to the speaking of that first word and the making of the first light, and invites us to see the all too poignant contrast the difference between the clean, radiant beauty of the first creation and the dismal swamp that Jesus dove into in order to rescue us from the mess we ourselves had made.

Life itself was in Jesus, John tells us, and out of the overflow of that inexhaustible life force came every light - internal and external - by which we see. Our sun, that undistinguished medium-sized star that can burn our eyes out if we look at it too long, is just a small spark off of the blinding radiance of our God. We cannot look at God. Remember when Moses met with God on Mt. Sinai, and asked as a special favor for God to show him his glory. And God said,

I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name YHWH, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But ... you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live .... See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.[Ex 33:19-22]

We cannot look directly at the light of God. The people of Israel begged Moses to be their go-between, so that they wouldn’t have to come directly into the presence of God. And God gave them words to live by, the law, the Torah, because they couldn’t handle the light. And the written word was not enough, because it contained the will of God, but not the light of God.

We cannot look directly at the light of God. So the light came into the world in disguise. “In thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light,” says the carol, and all of our pictures show the baby haloed in soft, glowing light... But scripture doesn’t say that Jesus looked any different from any other baby. The light shone in the darkness, the darkness of human flesh, the darkness of human society, the darkness of human ignorance and oppression and fear.

And the darkness did not understand it.

But the darkness did not overcome it.

Some translations say one, and some say another. It’s the same word, in Greek, katalabenno, both for 'understand' and for 'overcome.' How odd, I hear you say. The same word for 'understand' also means 'overcome'? But it’s quite simple, if you think about it. In a way, if you understand something, you have conquered it. Ask anyone who has struggled with quadratic equations, or quantum physics, or Chinese. Of course, not everything works that way. But enough to make the connection.