Early January always feels like a fresh start. The Christmas whirlwind has settled down. We still have a fighting chance to keep our resolutions for the new year. Cartoons always depict the New Year as a baby, full of possibilities and innocence. We hope that with a new year we can leave the baggage behind us, stretching toward a brighter future.
The gospel of John begins when everything was new, before the creation itself had any baggage. John begins when the only thing that existed was the Word. We cannot do full justice to the complexity of John's thought just in this opening sentence. We could spend all of our sermon time for this year trying to bring out all of the nuances of this opening phrase from John, "In the beginning was the Word." John drew here on Greek philosophy, in which the Word (Logos) was the ordering principle of the universe. He drew from the book of Proverbs as well, where personified Wisdom said, "The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth" (Proverbs 8:22-23). We can say that, in John's mind, at the very beginning of everything, there was order, purity, goodness, and wisdom.
This Word, this manifestation of goodness and order, was not static and unchanging. The Word was creative and dynamic. This Word brought into being the world and all that exists. As abstract as this language sounds, it helps us to hear that our world has meaning and purpose. God created the world; it didn't just happen.
Something happened to God's creation. Darkness crept into God's world, polluting the goodness, the order, and the purpose. Darkness is John's word here for the evil in God's creation. Those of us who love dark chocolate know that dark is not always evil. John uses it to contrast with the light that Christ brings into the world. This darkness is a mystery in God's creation. John doesn't explain it or tell us where it came from. The darkness just seems to pop up in verse 5. It sounds almost like a virus that somehow gets past the best filter. John's silence about the origin of the darkness seems appropriate. Despite the best efforts of the best minds, we don't know why evil exists or where it comes from. It is just there. That's the way John says it. The darkness is just there in verse 5.
If we don't understand this darkness, we still recognize it. We have seen it in the rest of the gospel of John. Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, the darkness that represents doubt struggling to find faith. Jesus' encounter with Nicodemus leads to John's declaration that "the light has come into the world, and the people loved darkness rather than light" (John 3:19). The blind man in chapter 9 becomes the symbol for the spiritual blindness of Jesus' opponents. Even though they could see physically, they still walked in darkness. When Judas goes out to betray Jesus, John summarizes the evil about to be unleashed with the simple statement, "And it was night" (John 13:30).
We recognize this darkness today in our world. John understands the darkness as that which has invaded God's good creation. We know of the ways evil corrupts what should be good. Evil always plays the role of spoiler. A friend once returned home from a vacation to find that his refrigerator had broken down sometime during the trip. The freezer part of the appliance was full of bugs. The eggs embedded in the meat had hatched. That's the evil of the world: waiting for the right conditions to bring it out to do its damage.
We see the evil of creation in things that happen naturally. Tsunamis kill thousands. Millions die from drought and famine. Tiny babies battle cruel cancer. Alzheimer's eats away at a person's mind until only a shell is left. Surely, these things are part of the darkness of creation. They are not part of the order and goodness God intended.
We cannot help but see the darkness in society and politics. If we start small, we could mention the bickering between the parties that leads to cynicism. Surely, there is more common ground and ways to work together than the politicians seem to be able to find. If we move up the scale, we encounter the drug war, fueled by human weakness and spread by the callous indifference to human life. The darkness becomes nearly pitch black when we talk about terrorism and the genocides of Rwanda and Darfur. How can people, created by God, loved by God, become so full of hatred and violence?
As if the problems in nature and human interaction were not enough, too often the two manifestations of evil work together. AIDS, caused by a virus but spread with the help of human irresponsibility on multiple levels, threatens to wreak havoc on the entire continent of Africa. The desire for sexual gratification teams up with government arrogance and passivity to block the light from reaching the darkness. AIDS affects more than those who die directly from it. Innocent children by the millions have been left orphaned. So many of the adults are dead or sick, that no one is available to grow crops, adding to the misery.
We see the darkness in ourselves. We have tempers we exploit, prejudices we indulge, and weaknesses we ignore. We hurt the ones we love. We undermine our own growth and progress. We become our own worst enemies.
Most tragically, we see the darkness in the church. The media blare out our stories of corruption and arrogance. On a smaller scale, we hurt each other in the church by our insensitivity and pettiness. With diminishing influence, we seem to stand on the sidelines wringing our hands at the pain, violence, and hopelessness of the world.
I know it is beginning to sound as though I wrote this sermon intending to crush any optimism for the new year. It is important that, however gloomy I have made things sound, we look squarely at the darkness. We cannot turn away from it if we are to grasp the full significance of what John says. John knew the evil of the human heart, the corruption of politics, the cruelty of disease. Nevertheless, he declares, "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it" (John 1:5). The grammar of the sentence is important. The light shines — present tense. The darkness did not overcome it. The darkness tried but failed. As is typical of John, who uses words with multiple meanings, the Greek word for "overcome" can also mean, "understand." The darkness has intelligence; it plots strategy, it actively opposes God but it failed in its attempt to put out the light.
The light, of course, is God's goodness, God's intentions for creation, God's grace. John's affirmation is that the light shines on in spite of the darkness. The light is stronger than the darkness, smarter than the darkness. If we are not realistic about the darkness, we cannot see how powerful John's affirmation is. If we are naïve about the darkness, we don't see the audacity of John's claim. However intractable, however persistent, however treacherous the darkness seems to be, it cannot win. God's light continues to shine. That statement is not just wishful thinking, not just looking on the bright side. That statement is faith. It is a faith that refuses to give up, refuses to surrender to the darkness of the world. It is a faith that claims the promise of the victory of the light. It is a faith that seeks to bring light to the darkened parts of our world, sharing grace and healing with those plunged into the deepest part of the darkness.
Jesus reveals this light to us. He is the one who comes down to this darkened world. John does not give us an intriguing birth story as Matthew and Luke do. John uses the language of abstraction, but his version is just as thrilling in its own way. John says, "The Word became flesh and lived among us" (John 1:14). God's creativity, God's sense of order, God's direction of the universe, God's wisdom became weak, human flesh. If we think oil and water do not mix, Word and flesh really don't mix. Yet, that is what John says. The Word came into this corrupt, painful, dangerous world and lived among us. God shared the danger, the sadness, the pain of our world.
Even if we don't see how the light shines on, or how the light will ultimately get the best of the darkness, we trust John's words by our faith. We remember Jesus' words later in John, "... all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day" (John 6:40). We may not see the triumph of the light now, but we trust John's promise that in the resurrection the light will shine brightly.
What will this coming year hold for us? Will it be the year that we get our act together? Will it be the year that the politicians clean up the corruption? Will it be the year that science finds a breakthrough for any of the multitude of diseases that threaten us? Will it be the year that the church boldly proclaims its message and lives out its faith? Will things simply turn out the way they always have? Will our old problems barge back into our sunny January optimism? We don't know what this year holds for us. Likely, we will experience grace and love along with the pain and frustration. We will see the darkness in its full fury. We will also see shafts of light that burst through the darkness. Let us hold on to those shafts of light this year. We can face this year courageously, come what may, because we know that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Amen.