Sermons

Sun, Apr 11, 2021

Light in the dark

Series:Sermons
Duration:13 mins

About a month ago…

I sat at my desk to plan the services for the Easter season…

and that process normally begins… 

with me looking at the readings that are set down in the lectionary.

Now, apart from the first Sunday or two after Easter…

when the Gospel reading is a post-resurrection story…

I have thought it’s a bit weirdly anticlimactic to be going back and reading stories from Jesus’ life…

when we have just lived through the whole Easter drama.

As a rule, then, for the Easter season, I tend to go with the readings from the Book of Acts.

That’s also because it’s the only time when they occur in the lectionary.

And I like the Book of Acts––

my honours thesis was on Acts… 

I wrote a couple of articles on Acts that were published in academic journals…

and I taught it at theological college.

So, it’s very much in my comfort zone.

But, every so often, I get bored trying to preach on the same stories over and over again––

and I decide to do something completely different.

Well, that happened about a month ago.

Following a rush of blood and bravado…

or maybe a glass of wine… 

I decided… 

for this Easter season… 

that I would preach on the lectionary readings from the First Letter of John.

 

But, as I sat at my desk, yesterday, to try to write this…

I sat for hours…

staring at a blank computer screen.

I really wasn’t sure what to do with this reading this morning.

I couldn’t think of a creative way to approach it.

I scoured the online newspapers looking for a story as a way in…

but nothing leapt out at me.

I couldn’t find a way to make it interesting…

without it sounding like a lecture, rather than a sermon.

So, I apologise in advance––

please bear with me.

 

In the late first century…

probably somewhere in Asia Minor, that is, modern-day Turkey…

scholars believe that there was a large community of Christians… 

whom they label as the “Johannine Community”.

This community gave rise to the literature attributed to John…

namely, what we know as the Gospel of John…

and the First, Second, and Third Letters of John––

although First John, clearly, isn’t a letter.

They had a slightly peculiar way of understanding the Christian faith;

one that relied heavily upon symbolic language––

symbolic language that frequently had double meanings.

We see this with words like birth, flesh, truth, bread, spirit, life, hunger and thirst, glory and grace.

They all have double meanings in the Gospel…

which, often, the characters in the stories don’t pick up on.

But there are also symbolic words with a double meaning that come in contrasting pairs…

in particular, sight and blindness… 

and especially, light and dark.

We’re familiar with many of these from the Gospel of John…

but the author of First John uses them as well…

but often in a slightly different way.

In the Gospel, Jesus is “Light”. 

Indeed, in the wonderfully poetic opening to the Gospel of John… 

Jesus is described as “the light shining in the darkness”, 

a light which the darkness could not extinguish. Darkness, in this sense, represents the power of evil…

but, also, the forces of evil…

and the efforts of ‘sinful’ humanity to snuff it out. 

Later, in the Gospel of John its author has Jesus proclaim: 

“I am the Light of the world; whoever follows me will never walk in darkness”. 

For the author of First John…

however… 

“God is Light”, rather than Jesus.

Furthermore, later on, he asserts that “God is Love”.

And the way that he flips between those two metaphors… 

suggests that he understands “Light” and “Love” to be synonymous. 

By implication, then, ‘darkness’ and ‘hate’ would also be synonyms. 

Now, by taking imagery that was used to describe…

and to understand…

Jesus…

and using it to describe God…

he’s implying that we now understand God through Jesus. 

And… 

in particular…

we now understand God through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

In his death and resurrection, Jesus demonstrated that love, not hate… 

and peace, not violence…

and the fundamental attributes or characteristics of God. 

 

And yet…

throughout religious history… 

we humans have projected our hatred and our violence back onto God. 

The God whom we have imagined…

the God whom we have worshipped…

has been one who both loves and hates…

who proclaims peace, and yet exacts and demands violence.

Throughout religious history––

indeed, throughout the pages of the Bible––

we have created a God in our own image. 

But… 

by his death and resurrection…

Jesus demonstrated that God is other than how we have imagined;

that God is other than whom we have worshipped.

So, in the sense that Jesus’ death was an atoning sacrifice for our sins––

as our author suggests that it was at the end of our reading––

then the god who was being appeased was a god of our own making.

In one sense, the god who was being appeased by the death of Jesus was us humans.

It wasn’t the God who is Light; 

the God in whom there is no darkness…

no evil…

no hate…

or no violence. 

God doesn’t demand sacrifices for forgiveness.

God doesn’t try to overcome our evil with evil…

our hate with hate…

or our violence with more violence.

Rather, as Martin Luther King jr once put it…

“Jesus eloquently affirmed from the cross a higher law…Although crucified by hate, he responded with…love”.

Thus…

the death and resurrection of Jesus demonstrated that God is other than we imagine.

But the death and resurrection of Jesus also demonstrated…

for us… 

another way to be human. 

Indeed, it’s the humanity of Jesus that the author emphasises here.

As children of this God, who is Light… 

we, too, are called to live in the light… 

to walk in the light…

as Jesus did.

We are called to incarnate love… 

as Jesus did…

and to put to death all that is not of love. 

 

And yet, as followers of Christ––

as those who are called to walk in the light––

too often we linger in the darkness.

Too often we struggle to overcome our natural tendencies…

toward hatred…

evil…

and violence.

Both towards ourselves and each other.

Too often, we fail.

But, the author reminds us… 

the God who is Light and Love forgives––

and forgives freely

because, after all, there is no darkness in God.

And our author also wants to affirm that…

through God’s Light…

through God’s Love…

we can know forgiveness when we fail…

and we can change.

 

And yet, he also affirms…

very clearly…

that that’s not going to happen if we choose darkness rather than the light.

It’s not going to happen if we do not confess where we have gone wrong;

if we do not confess where we have chosen the way of darkness…

hatred…

violence…

and evil––

and if we do not confess that both to God, and to each other.

As the old adage goes… the first step is admitting that you have a problem.

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