A light shines in the darkness

A reflection on John 1: 1-5, 10-18, Jeremiah 31: 7-14 and Ephesians 1: 3-14, preached Sunday, 4 January 2009

I’ve been rereading some of my recent sermons. “Why on earth would he do that?” you’re thinking. Well, I wanted to check just what it is I’ve been saying to you in the last few weeks. We had four weeks of Advent – the Sundays of Hope, Peace, Joy and Love – and then Christmas Day and last Sunday, the first Sunday of the Christmas season. All of those opportunities for excitement and rejoicing in anticipation of the coming Good News. But after revisiting those sermons, I’m starting to think I may be a miserable sort of person.

It’s been good news and bad news, with plenty of opportunity to think about the bad news: there’s been wandering in the wilderness and AIDS and war and poverty and injustice and loneliness and sadness, and a church in decline in Australia, and even on Christmas Day I managed to talk about the Millennium Goals and the millions of people dying unnecessarily each year, deaths which we have the resources and the ability to prevent.

Cheerful soul, aren’t I? It seems I’m not so much a glass half-empty person, as a “someone took my glass and drank it, and even when I did have a glass, it wasn’t as big as everyone else’s” kind of person.

In my defence, however, I want to say that from the very beginning I have been putting the bad news together with the good. My starting point was to suggest that good news only makes sense in the presence of those things which are not good news. I’m not talking about bad news because there is nothing else. I’m talking about bad news and the Good News which breaks into that and transforms it, removes it, converts it.

There is a light which shines in the darkness.

In the beginning, all was darkness, and God said, “Let there be light”! John tells us the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.

There is bad news, but the Good News is greater.

By way of illustration, my sermon on this Sunday six years ago (yes, I even read sermons from other times and places) my sermon was all about Australia’s refugee detention centres, and it was about the prevailing attitude in some circles which seemed to suggest that refugees somehow brought their bad news upon themselves. Six years later, detention centres are no longer headline news in our country. Somehow, good news has replaced the bad; a light has come into that particular darkness.

Of course, that is not to suggest that we no longer have refugees in our country or that we no longer have detention centres, or that there is not still much work to do. Terrible damage has been done to an unconscionable number of people, some of which will never be healed. But there has been and continues to be a move towards the light of reason and compassion. A light shines in the darkness.

And those who believe in the light have been a major part of the change which has taken place. Christians have proclaimed the necessity of good news for those living in darkness.

It’s not often that I use three readings from Scripture on a Sunday morning. In part, it’s a time thing; it’s also a “how on earth can these readings go together?” kind of thing.

But this morning we have heard from Jeremiah and Paul and John, and all three of them are about how good news overcomes bad, about God’s great desire for hope, peace, joy and love in our world, in this time and in this place.

Jeremiah proclaims, “Sing! Exile will not last forever.”

Paul says, “Rejoice and give thanks. There is forgiveness for sin, and adoption for orphans.”

And John pronounces, “There is grace upon grace.”

Grace – that extraordinary love which imposes no conditions, no limits, no exceptions. In the face of all that would deny it, there is grace.

So, what will 2009 be like for us?

For the world at large, I’m imagining that it will be more of the same: more economic crises, more job losses, more natural disasters, more unnecessary sickness and death, more ills for the health of the planet; but there will also be more acts of random kindness, more cures developed, more children raised in healthy families, more expressions of love and compassion, more efforts to heal our fragile earth, more good news even as there is more bad news.

And for the church? What lies ahead in 2009? I’m imagining that Christianity will also experience both good and bad news. It’s likely that, in the developed nations, people will continue to turn away from traditional expressions of the faith in search of a different spirituality which they feel speaks more directly into their lives; and it’s likely that in many other parts of the world – Asia, South America, Africa – that Christianity will continue to grow as more and more people see how the Good News of Jesus Christ is extraordinarily applicable to their everyday lives.

And for us? The fact remains that we live with the former reality rather than the latter. That is the bald bad news. But the Good News is that there is a light which shines in the darkness. And the darker things appear, the more clearly the light shines.

The spirituality which people in our culture so desperately seek at this time is still the spirituality of grace, of love, of compassion, of relationship, of all those things which lie at the heart of our faith, that have always lain at the heart of Christianity, and will always remain at the heart of Christianity. The Good News is still good!

One extraordinary part of the grace of God is that we are invited, indeed commanded, to work with God in bringing Good News. We need to remember that it is God who is at work – each of our readings makes that abundantly clear; Paul says, “With all wisdom and insight God has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to God’s good pleasure” – it is God who is at work and we are asked to join in with whatever it is that God is doing.

What will God do with us in this place in 2009? I don’t know. But I do know that, whatever it is, whatever it looks and sounds and feels like, it will be Good News.

The celebration of the meal we share each Sunday morning reminds us that the central metaphor of our faith is that of death and resurrection. We believe that God brings new life out of death. And we are called to hear and to speak words of hope, new life, new possibilities in a future with God.

Jeremiah, Paul and John tell us that God breaks into the world, for all those who are in need, in need of love and in need of hope. We are called to live hope-filled lives, proclaiming that God is with us, and praising God for God’s blessings.

A light shines in the darkness! Amen.