The Light has come and has shown you God’s heart: that you share that heart and bear the Light into the world.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Nativity of Our Lord
Text: John 1:1-14, add 18
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness can’t understand it, John says.
But can you? Do you?
God’s Light, through whom all things came into being, entered our world as a human, but the world did not know him, John says. The Light came to his own people, whom he made, and they did not accept him.
Do you?
We have a problem with our vision and understanding, John says, when it comes to God. Everything we are and have is of God’s Light, made and graced by the Triune God.
But we struggle to see. To understand. To know. We want God’s light to shine on the shadows of evil in this world, to restore the creation, to bring all into the light of God’s loving embrace. We want what John today says about the Light of the World, about Christ.
But can you see it? Do you understand it?
The problem might be that we don’t appear to hope for the answer God is bringing.
When you imagine God solving the problem of world hunger, what do you imagine? A miraculous intervention changing all the deserts into fertile land? A power move overturning corrupt governments that deprive their people of needed resources?
When you imagine God stopping evil in this world, what do you imagine? God intervening with power in every terrorist act? God destroying those who live their lives to harm others? God going into Gaza or the Ukraine and taking away all the weapons and bombs?
That’s what we really want to see. But it’s not the way God works. And if you are devastated by the carnage and destruction that is happening in this world, know that God is even more. But God still is going to bring healing and wholeness another way.
This Child who is born shows you and the world the heart of God.
This Light of the World, this Word-made-flesh, John says, gives us inside knowledge of God’s true heart for the world. “No one has ever seen God,” John says. “It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made God known.”
Because of Jesus the world no longer needs to speculate as to the nature of God, the heart of God. We never have to look at a natural disaster again and wonder, “was God angry with those people?” We never have to face a tragedy of evil and ask if it was punishment from God. We never can claim violence and killing as the way of God. Because now we’ve seen God’s heart in the face of Christ Jesus. The heart of the Triune God is and always will be love.
But God’s answer for the pain of this world is and always will be love, too. It’s the only way to stop the evil and insanity.
This is the only true light that can end the darkness.
Coming in person revealed God’s heart as love, and, because the shadows of evil rose up against Christ Jesus, hanging him on a cross, this in-person love also showed the power of God in losing, the strength of God in self-giving. Rather than fight the shadows of this world by destruction and force, the Triune God entered the shadows to transform them from within.
God said, “I’ll open myself up to evil and it will do all it can to me, and light will still win.” When God doesn’t fight evil but stands in its way on our behalf, stands even in our way as we make evil, God brings a light that darkness cannot understand or overcome.
But the plan was never meant to stop with Jesus.
From the beginning of creation God’s plan has always been to care for the world through the children of God. So, to those who see this Light of the World, who trust in Christ, John says, God gives power to become children of God themselves.
God’s solution to everything that ails this planet, everything we wish God would fix, everything wicked and ruined and oppressive, all comes down to this. God will bring healing through you, through me, through all God’s children, across this globe.
We are children of God; so we, like Jesus, bear God’s heart in the world. We, like Jesus, become people who are always love, all the time. We, like Jesus, become people who stand as light in darkness not with power but with a willingness to lose, like God.
Even divine power able to create universes couldn’t fix God’s greatest pain about this world: the hearts of God’s children were cold and selfish, the root of all that is wrong in this world.
Change the hearts and you’ve got something, God thought. You’ve got changed people. And then a changed world, because these people are going to go out there and make a new creation with God’s Spirit giving them grace to do it.
In the coming of this Child, now you can see the truth clearly, and trust it.
Jesus, the Light of the World, the Word made flesh, has made God’s heart known to you. Now you, a child of God yourself, get to reveal that same heart, that same love, to the world, and see God’s healing begin.
And God’s light will shine in you. And no shadows, no darkness, will be able to stop it.
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen