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.
We don’t know which meaning John meant, though. Did he mean that people didn’t recognize God’s light when they saw it? Did he mean that no matter what rotten things people did in order to avoid the light they couldn’t put it out? Both are true.
We can see God’s light in the created order, although not directly, by what is called natural revelation. But people don’t understand what they see. People interpret it in ways that don’t threaten them. The Apostle Paul says in his letter to the Romans that
What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and di-vine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things they has made.[Rom 1:19-20]
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it.
Neither the created world nor the written word was enough. People needed something else.
So now a new light was coming into the world, the true light, not a dim reflection, but the very light and life of God, in order to give light and life back to God’s people. But in disguise, so that people would be neither frightened nor blinded. How would people know to lift their heads and look? How would they know what they were seeing?
Someone had to tell them. That was John the Baptist, shouting, “Rise and shine! It’s morning! Time to get up!” And they looked out the window, and it was still grey, and some of them turned over and went back to sleep. Hard night, y’know. But a few got up and got dressed and made coffee and opened the windows. Because they wanted the dawn to come. They longed for the morning. They welcomed the light. And something about the message - or maybe about the messenger - rang true.
There’s a pun here to be made about morning people but I won’t do it because I’m a night person, myself, and it wouldn’t flatter me. Because those who didn’t heed John the Baptist’s call to come out to greet the new day were those who had come to terms with things as they were. They were comfortable, at home in the world, in the dark. Some were even profiting off of it. God’s light threatens anyone who is comfortable with things as they are - because God’s light is not safe. God’s light blinded Paul on the road to Damascus. It can knock us off our high horses, too, and put us flat on our backs in the dust, if we’re going in the wrong direction. As C.S. Lewis said about Aslan, the lion in the Narnia stories, “he’s good, but he isn’t safe.” God’s light changes things, and it’s frequently very uncomfortable indeed. It breaks into our safe, shuttered lives, strips off our masks, forces us to look at ourselves in a most unflattering way. The light of Jesus Christ is pure beauty; beside him, our lies, our self-importance, our pretensions are impossible to sustain, much less take pride in.
The great English poet John Donne wrote an extremely secular poem which begins “Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus, through windows, and through curtains call on us?” The light interferes with our pleasures, calls us to be up and about; it doesn’t let us rest.
But if we answer the call, and come into the light, we will not only behold his glory, we will be part of it. Because when the light of Jesus Christ shines through us, like sunlight through a prism, we his church become a living rainbow, a sign of God’s everlasting love and commitment to his people. The light breaks into a million radiant pieces, and can never be overcome.
