Bible Passage: John 1:1-5
Free Extract: Joy to the world
'The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.' (1:5)
John uses a present tense, rather than a past tense: ‘The light shines’. Nobody has been able to put out the light of Jesus.
Cruel Herod laid his plans of genocide, but he could not put out the light. Weak Pilate ignored the demands of justice and condemned Jesus to die, but he could not put out the light. The Roman emperor Trajan sent thousands of Christians to their deaths in a bloodbath intended to do away with the church, but he could not put it out. The German philosopher Nietzsche created his superman, designed to stuff Jesus back into his grave, but he could not put it out. Today’s postmodern generation devise their new subjective moralities, but they cannot put out the light. ‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.’ Or as another version puts it (Peterson, The Message): ‘The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn’t put it out.’ Here is good news indeed for a world that lives in darkness. The light shines.
It is good news, precisely because life without God is dark. Yes, without God life has no real direction or purpose. Without God we are lost. Without God there is no meaning, no purpose, only darkness. This was the sad experience of a young teenage girl, who looked like an old woman, and who had just given birth to a baby already hooked on drugs. To a nurse who was trying to help her she said: ‘Don’t talk to me about love and meaning. Life is just a long black tunnel. You go in it and never find your way out.’
The good news is that there is a way out of the tunnel. For Jesus, the light of the world has come. Jesus, who said: ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life’ (John 8.12). Jesus, of whom Charles Wesley wrote in his carol, ‘Hark! The herald angels sing’:
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.
So don’t let us stay in the dark. Let us come into the light.
