Jesus is Light and
Life
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Psalm 147
Galatians 3:23-25
John 1:1-18
Tim
Christoffersen
St. Anselm’s
December 29, 2002
The ‘Christmas
story’ in John is dramatically different than the traditional Christmas
story as told by Matthew and Luke. They present the story with all of its
human drama and signs of its spiritual significance. There is ‘no room
at the inn’ after Mary and Joseph have traveled to Bethlehem and Mary
is about to give birth. They end up with the animals in a stable where Jesus
is born and laid in a manger. Wise men and shepherds are drawn to the location
where Jesus is born by a shinning star in the east and angels.
But in John’s story we have none of the human actors on the stage (except
for a cameo of John the Baptist.) John creates for us a vision that brings into
union the eternal and the human in the person of the logos or, as we usually
translate it in English, the Word.
“In the beginning was the Word…through him all things were made.” We
are taken immediately in our mind to the opening words in Genesis. “In
the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” John elaborates and
says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God.” This is a paradox to our human mind. With our need for logical
categories, how can we say the Word was both “with” God and the Word “was” God?
A few verses later John gives us a little more insight and understanding. In
a translation of verse 18 he says, “No one has ever seen God. It is God
the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him
known.”
This is the point at which John’s story becomes the Christmas story. The
words in Greek are the only sentence I still remember from studying Greek in
seminary over 30 years ago. kai ho logos sarx egeneto kai eskenosen en hamin. “And
the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” “Pitched his
tent” instead of “made his dwelling” is a better translation
but it sounds a little awkward to our English ear. It would also more readily
call to mind, for early generations that still spoke Greek, the story in Exodus
when Moses is in God presence on Mt. Sinai and God commands Moses to make a tabernacle,
or tent, so that God’s glory or shekinah can dwell among his people.
In John’s Christmas story we don’t have a manager and a baby Jesus
that we put into a box and take to the garage at the end of the Christmas season.
It is about the reality of our lives as God intended them to be when he created
us. It is about coming to know God’s love for us in the person of Jesus.
Jesus is God’s glory, God’s presence among his people.
There is one image that is common to all three Christmas stories: Matthew,
Luke and John. Does anyone know what that image is?
It is light. In Matthew we have the light of the star in the east that
leads the three Magi to Jesus. In Luke the angel of the Lord appears
to the shepherds
at night and “the glory of the Lord shone around them”.
In John, Jesus is the light. “In him was life, and that life was the light
of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood
it.” John goes on to say that John the Baptist (in his cameo) came as a
witness to testify to the light. “The true light that
gives light to every man was coming into the world.”
The image of Jesus as light and life is, for me, the most compelling
in the New Testament. Life, as used here, is spiritual life. It
is believing that
God loves
us and that Jesus lived among us and died that we might come to
know and
have life as a child of God. Without the light we would be part
of the darkness of the world that did not comprehend or understand
the
light.
The light allows
us
to see the darkness in the world of which we are a part. Without
the light it is like trying to find the light switch when you get
up in
the middle
of
a moonless
night.
It is easy for those of us with a western education to think in
terms of a separation between our soul or spiritual life and
our physical
life. In the
same way, western
Christians often think of the “darkness” or the world in which we
live our daily lives as fallen or sinful. Our soul is somehow set apart or rises
above the ugliness and darkness of the world around us even though we still live
our lives in the world.
The core of John’s message is that the Word became flesh. I think we go
back immediately to God creation of man in Genesis. “And the Lord God formed
man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life, and man became a living being. The parallel is unmistakable. The creation
of man is told on two levels. The ‘breath of life’ gives physical
life but it also makes man a spiritual being. Spirit and breath come from the
same Hebrew word. John’s use of life has the sense of Spirit or spiritual
life. For unlike the story in Genesis we are born with physical life. But to
have spiritual life we must, in words from Scripture, be born again.
Jesus is the light and life that we accept to be born again
as children of God. We have already been born, in John’s words, as children of natural descent,
of a human decision. But this choice to be born was not ours to make. The choice
to believe that God loves us and Jesus is the light and life is clearly ours.
I am reminded of Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees question of when the Kingdom
of God would come. Jesus told them the Kingdom of God does not come when someone
says, “Here it is” or “There it is” for “the
Kingdom of God is within you.”
We may struggle with words when we say that Jesus is light
and life. But when we believe it in our hearts we know
it is a present
reality,
a present
relationship
in our lives. This is the kingdom of God and this is
eternal life. It is not a place or a future event. It is a relationship
we can
choose to have.
St. Francis of Assisi connects our present lives to the
future pretty well. “Remember
that when you leave this earth, you take with you nothing
that you have received-only what you given: a full
heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and
courage.”
AMEN.
