Light That The Darkness Cannot Overcome

So Christmas is finally over, and we’re into Epiphany for real, and there’s only five weeks till Lent. If you were wondering. You can take your tree down now, and throw it by the side of the road, which seems a fitting gesture for what comes next in the gospel.

Just like the Shepherds showing up to examine, and then to worship, the baby in the feed trough feels like an alarming moment more than a warm and cozy one, the arrival of dignitaries from a far distance, which then precipitates a sudden, anxious journey leaving behind terrible carnage and wickedness, is not really the sort of warm beautiful time I prefer to imagine. But it is the perfect portrait for what the Christian should expect out of life–anxiety and suffering bounded by light.

Truly, its nicer to think of the manger and the gifts and the star, than to think of the visitors late at night, the possibility of death, and the sudden flight to Egypt. But that’s where so many Christians find themselves around the world–desperately poor, weeping like Rachel for her children, downtrodden, beset by constant trouble of every kind.

Take, for example, a little Christian pre-school in a slum in Africa, the poverty of which you cannot possibly fathom. This one room with teacher, cook, and students was in operation until the end of December. The children would come during the day and learn letters and numbers and songs and bible stories, and the teacher and cook would feed the children and bring them along, giving the least of these the meager blessing of a little knowledge. Day after day the two women helped along 30 little ones into what will be an impossibly difficult life for each one of them, difficulty such as you would not even want to imagine.

Now the school is closed, because it doesn’t inspire very many people to ambition or interest. And the children are scattered about in the slum during the day, either alone if their parents are working, or at the feet of a poor and often ill mother. The teacher and the cook–good, kind, hard working, Christian people, are trying to think about what to do now.

There was nothing warm and cozy and comfortable about this school, even when it was open. It’s tin walls and roof were unpainted. There were no windows, no nice materials, no proper floor. But it was remarkably Christian. It was distinctively Christian. It was an impoverished outpost of the gospel hemmed in by yards of muddy sewage and hopelessness. And I think it, in its emptiness now, is a nice invitation to all Christians everywhere–but especially those of us who, this morning, are probably feeling way too cold, and testy, and like God isn’t blessing us enough, isn’t giving enough good things–to wonder about the purposes of God, and what it means to be a Christian at all.

When you fix yourself to Christ, what do you think is going to happen? Most of us expect some kind of temporal reward for our clever realization of our own sin, and then our repentance and trust in the God of the universe. We don’t go on thinking of ourselves as needing to go on repenting, or needing to be constantly weak and dependent, hardly able to put one spiritual foot in front of the other. We are the good ones. And when God doesn’t bless us, especially materially, more, he is the one that’s wrong.

Whereas, the light shines in the darkness, and though the darkness does not overcome it, the darkness is very great, even for Christians. The sudden flight of Mary, and Joseph, and Jesus–the in the nick of time escaping violent death for the infant savior of the world, the living in anxious obscurity lest danger discover them, the shamed life in Nazareth, the cross–these are the portion and cup of those who follow Jesus. If they aren’t you’re portion, it’s not that God loves you more and loves those little children in that tin shack school less. It’s not that he has blessed you and not them. It’s that we here, in the heated comfort of the west do not really know and understand the perimeters under which God acted to save the world.

The light shined in the darkness. And the world is very dark. The human heart is very dark. So dark that it’s not comfortable to look at it very closely. The corrupting darkness of this world is so varied and pervasive that I find I am constantly surprised by it–evil in myself, evil in other people, evil in the halls of power, evil in the heart of a little kid on a school bus, evil in systems, evil in the church, evil in places where you least expect it because the outside looks so functional and bright. It is everywhere, and no one can escape from it. Though we are always trying, either by doing good, or by closing our eyes.

The light came and shined in this darkness and it seemed for a while, and certainly does seem this way every day, that the darkness certainly will overcome it. So many people saw the crucifixion. It was brutally public–a display of consequential power and primordial corruption. And then darkness literally fell. And all those people went home then and got on with their lives.

Which is what you do, even if you have seen the light. You carry on, even with the darkness crowding in and threatening all the time.

But, says John, the darkness did not overcome the light. It didn’t, though so few were there on Sunday morning to see it. It might as well have been a regular church service there in the garden–some women, the men show up late and leave early, and God, whom they cannot even recognize. This light shines all the time, even in the church, even when you can’t see or understand it. Your darkness, and the darkness of the world, cannot overcome it. It will outlast all the injustice, corruption, poverty, and violence of our estate. And eventually everyone who didn’t see it then, and doesn’t see it now, will see it forever.