I’ve confessed from this pulpit before that the Gospel of John has never been my favorite of the four Gospels. Mostly this is because the Jesus portrayed in John’s Gospel is just too certain for me. He is too all-knowing to be convincingly human. For this life-long Episcopalian, the incarnation of Jesus, that he was fully human, has been an important part of my faith. From kindergarten through 4th grade, I attended a Roman Catholic school, and the portrayal of Jesus in my religion classes as all-knowing and God-like, never did much for my faith life. I could never understand how I was supposed to be like Jesus if Jesus was God. I knew even way back then that I was not capable of the love and goodness of God, and if Jesus was God and his humanness was de-emphasized then what was the point of trying to be like Jesus. It felt to me that the nuns teaching my religion classes were asking us to do the impossible.
So, in my adult life I have been much more attracted to the Jesus portrayed in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Certainly, we can see God incarnate in these Gospels, but Jesus is mostly a very real human being. He gets frustrated with his followers and the religious leaders. He gets tired and needs breaks to pray and rest. There are times when he seems to be figuring out his mission as he goes. In Luke, we even see him behaving like a typical adolescent when he stays behind at the Temple and his parents spend three days looking for him. I can understand all that. I can feel hope that it might be possible to live like such a fully human being.
And yet, having said all that, I am finding that the Gospel of John is growing on me. As I shared with you a couple of Sundays ago, I am becoming increasingly aware of how we have all, even those of us who would identify ourselves as being religious, been shaped by the modern idea that the transcendent doesn’t exist because we can’t explain it with our senses and intellect. And I am becoming more and more aware of how harmful this is to our spiritual and psychological selves and the very fabric of our society.
It is the reason we can treat our planet the way we do. It is the reason we treat each other the way we do. The enlightenment, the rise of knowledge and an understanding of the world around us has brought us many good things—democratic countries, modern medicine, modern technology—and it has brought us extreme individualism, medicine that does amazing things but is denied to a lot of people because of cost, the ability to keep people alive beyond a good life, technology that could destroy us or make us so unhappy that life is not worth living, and a sense of despair that comes with a lack of purpose for living.
Without an awareness of the transcendent the primary purpose for living becomes our own individual selves, and maybe that of our family and tribe, and we can see the result of this way of living all around us. We are destroying our natural systems as we extract from the planet whatever is of immediate benefit to us, even if in this extraction we are likely destroying ourselves. We continue to hold up economic and political systems that are causing hardship to millions of people in the hopes that the we might beat the odds and win it big in this system and become wealthy ourselves. Without a sense of the transcendent, of something beyond us that created us, all that seems to matter is having as much stuff as we can right now no matter the harm this causes others and the very earth itself. Without a sense of the transcendent, ultimately what is the purpose of anything at all? We might as well seize the day and have a party, for all that is real is what is in front of us. If the entire purpose of our lives is to further the economic prosperity of our selves and our families, then why do anything that might benefit someone else outside of those boundaries, particularly if they look, sound, and pray differently from you and me? Sometimes it feels to me that the enlightenment has brought us to a place where we have many of the powers of God but none of the love and wisdom of God. For me it is time to let go of the myth that we can save ourselves through our intellect and technological expertise. For me, it is time to acknowledge that though we cannot save ourselves, God can save us and will if we will just get out of the way and let God act and partner with God in this action. But first we have to acknowledge that there is a God, and this God has the ability to act in our world right here and right now. We have to become aware of and in touch with the transcendent.
And this is why the Gospel of John is beginning to grow on me, particularly this beautiful passage from the first chapter that we read this morning:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. . . And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. ” John 1:1-5, 14
“A light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overpower it.” My soul needs these words right now. I need to know deep in my soul that there is light, and that darkness cannot overpower it. Think about darkness and light for a moment. Even the tiniest bit of light scatters the deepest darkness. You know this is true. Think about how hard it is to go to sleep if there is even the tiniest of digital lights blinking in your room. Light always scatters darkness, but darkness has no effect on light. Darkness cannot touch light. Darkness cannot extinguish the light. The darkness feels powerful. Darkness feels scary, especially when we are in the middle of it, but compared to the light it is nothing, nothing at all.
That’s the Christian story in a nutshell—Over 2000 years ago, in the middle of an occupied land, God, the transcendent, that which created us and is more and greater than we will ever be, entered our world as a tiny baby because of love, because darkness thought it could overpower the light. And darkness fought hard. Darkness arrested Jesus, put him on trial, beat and stripped him, mocked him, killed him, and put him in a grave. Darkness thought it had won, but it didn’t because darkness can never extinguish the light. And Jesus rose from the tomb shining bright as ever.
“What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”
The Christian story is the story of the transcendent. The Christian story is the story of the Creator’s love for us. It is a story that calls into our awareness that which is beyond us and greater than us. It is a story that calls into our awareness that which loves us more than we could ever love ourselves and this love acts on our behalf each and every day. It is a story that reminds us that there is so much more than that which we can perceive with our senses and understand with our intellect. It is a story that calls us back into an awareness that we did not create ourselves and we cannot save ourselves. An awareness that we were created for more than this world and more than our own individual lives and self-fulfillment. The Christian story does not deny that there is darkness in the world. There is darkness in this world. The Christian story acknowledges that the darkness will continue to try to overpower the light. And the Christian story reminds us that the darkness is not stronger than the light and will never be stronger than the light. Thanks be to God.
Amen.
