WHERE THERE IS DARKNESSReading: John 1: 1-14
It is so easy for us to read the prologue to St. John’s gospel and pick out certain phrases rather than viewing the whole picture. We can, for example, take the first phrase of verse 5 and, metaphorically, put it in neon lights within our beings: “The light shines through the darkness.” Praise God that it does! But what happens when we can’t see it? What happens when it doesn’t appear, when the darkness gets deeper, when the night around us closes in? How do we keep journeying when there is no guiding star? What do we do when death casts its shadow within us or around us, or when evil seems to triumph over good? How do we deal with the death of a loved one, the agonising illness of someone dear to us, the severing of a relationship that we had believed was founded on a bedrock of unbreakable trust, the loss of a job with the accompanying crashing self-esteem and self-doubt? How can we get our heads around things like famine, drought, oppression, war, torture, pandemic disease, most of which could be halted if people opened their eyes and their hearts, if they became more generous and more vocal for justice? How could John proclaim such a promise: “The light shines through the darkness and the darkness can never extinguish it” (John 1:5)? The darkness can never extinguish it. The two phrases need to be held together always. There are many times when we cannot see any light shining, but that does not mean that it isn’t there. That does not mean that God has turned off the switch. That does not mean that he is in the business of conserving divine energy! The power that God released through the Word he spoke in Jesus is something no other power, however strong, can overcome. The light that was turned on in Bethlehem can never be put out by any darkness, however all-embracing or deep. And this promise carries with it a guarantee. Isaiah names this guarantee as “the passionate commitment of the Lord Almighty.” God’s commitment to humankind was and is so huge that the only word that even approaches describing such a mystery is passionate. That is not a head word. It’s a heart word. It’s a love-making word. It’s a word that describes intense feeling. Put that word alongside commitment and, even then, we can only catch the merest glimpse of what God desires for us. It is so intense that he gave all of himself, everything, his dearest and best so that we might sow light where there is darkness, with confidence and trust, no matter what.
Darkness can be frightening, disorientating, even sinister. It can rob us of so much, perhaps especially rob us of vision, of destiny, of purpose. And yet darkness can lose its power over us simply by a pin prick of light, by one flickering little flame. Why keep waiting for some other power or impersonal authority to turn on a floodlight that we vainly hope will dispel all the darkness around us and within us when all the time we carry within us the light that no darkness, no power cut, no act of terrorism can ever extinguish?