John 1:1-5
Christmas
Eve 2016
On
Christmas morning, my brother, Craig, and I, were never allowed to go into the
living room, to see all the presents around the tree left by Santa, until both
of our parents were awake. This meant in
order to see the presents we had to wake our parents, which we did together, usually
around 6 a.m. One Christmas morning, I
must have been five or six, I remember sneaking down the hallway to peak into
the living room before anyone else. I
can’t recall if I peaked before or after waking our parents—probably, after,
because I was a good boy (of course).
All I know is that I was by myself, alone. I remember walking down the hall and turning
right into the living room—and then it struck me. I stopped, almost pushed back by some force,
and I stood there, at the threshold of the living room, stood there in
awe. The entire room was full of light
and the tree, loaded with tinsel, was shining.
We didn’t have lights on our tree.
It was still early in the morning, so I’m not sure where the light was
coming from. My mother never used Christmas
foil wrapping paper, which has a kind of sheen.
I don’t know. I just remember how
I felt, struck by the beauty of it all, the beautiful tree with its silvery tinsel,
shimmering, and the gifts all wrapped in red and green. I was in awe.
The room seemed alive. The light seemed to be alive.
Years later in college I was given a
fancy word to describe this early mystical experience. It was numinous. Numinous, first coined by the theologian
Rudolf Otto (1869-1937), in 1917, describes an experience of awe, transcendence,
and mystery, when you encounter something, someone wholly other, which completely overwhelms you. The numinous both
fascinates and repels at the same time. Sometimes
it’s joyful and beautiful; sometimes it causes you to quake with fear and
trembling.[1] Think of the shepherd’s outside of Bethlehem
when the heavenly host appeared (Luke 2:8-14).
In these moments life takes on greater intensity. Things, people, time, the Holy become really real. Numinous
has its root in an old Sanskrit word, numen,
meaning “to bow.” The numen causes one to bow, to kneel, or
stand with awe in a doorway. The
numinosity of that Christmas morning has never left me and I continue to be
struck by it, overwhelmed with tears and deep feelings, not only from the memory
of that moment, but the way the memory is associated with the celebration of
Christmas. For it reminds me that it’s
only through such experiences of awe and wonder, encounters with mystery and
transcendence that we can begin to approach—and even then only at some distance—the
meaning of Christ’s birth among us, with us, for us.
I am inadequate to convey the meaning of this
night. We all are. How do we find the words to express what it
means for the Word to become flesh and live among us? The birth of Jesus Christ stretches the
imagination. It forces us to think in
new ways and feel in new ways and even experience God in new ways. It requires symbols and metaphors, symbols
and metaphors that are strong enough to convey the meaning toward which they
point.
And that’s what we have in the Gospels. Matthew and Luke and John, each in their own
way, are trying to evoke the meaning of his birth. They are each, in their own way, extremely
numinous. Of the three, perhaps John is
the most numinous, the most mysterious, who with his majestic and sublime
prologue turns to the metaphors of Word and light and life. There’s nothing like is in scripture. Listen:
“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 light was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it”
(John 1:1-5). Even the metaphors are
straining to bear the weight of what their trying to convey.
There’s one image or metaphor I want
to lift up: light. There’s a play of light and darkness doing on
here, which is obvious. But we have to
be careful. We’re used to hearing of
darkness waging a war against light. We
need to remember that darkness, the absence of light, is also part of God’s
good creation (Gen. 1:5). We need
darkness to know the light. Where would light be without darkness? The darkness is a given. God pronounced it good. But darkness is also scary. Several weeks ago I was in Rappahannock
County, Virginia, in a house in the middle of the woods in the Blue Ridge
Mountains. I was alone there for two
nights and one night I went outside. It
was very dark. The skies were heavy with
low-lying clouds, no moonlight, no stars.
Completely dark. I looked into
the dark woods. For some reason I started
to imagine what it must have felt like for our ancestors, millennia ago, who
experienced the night before the discovery of fire, unable to see anything,
unable to see danger approaching. It
must have been terrifying. This is real
primal fear, the residue of which can still be found in our reptilian brains
and ancient psyches. At some level, it’s
rational to be afraid of the dark because the dark was/is frightening, whether
it’s the darkness of the night or the dark night of soul.
For many these days the world seems
dark. The Winter Solstice this year
witnessed the darkest night in 500 years.
Consider the events of this past week in Berlin, Zurich, Aleppo, and
Ankara, the talk of a new nuclear arms race.
Very dark, indeed. People are
anxious. People are afraid. People are worried about their safety,
especially the most vulnerable among us.
“The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it.”
What we need to remember as Christ’s people, what we need to enflesh
with our lives is the deepest truth that darkness cannot, will not ever
overtake the light. Why? Because the light shines in the darkness. And what is
light? Actually, John says that that’s the
wrong question. Who—who is this light? Here,
again, metaphors are pushed to their limits when it comes to the birth of
Jesus.
“What has come into being in him was
life, and the life was the light of all people.” The Greek word for “life” in the text is zoë, meaning full life, abundant life,
significant life, intense life. There’s
no equivalent in English. Christ bears
within his very being the abundance of life-giving life itself! And it’s this life, his life, God’s zoë through a human being, God’s
love embodied for all to see and touch and love, it’s this very life that is
the light of all people—whether they believe in him or not.
Christ is living light, the living light of
God that shines in the darkest places of the world, which can never be
overcome. And John didn’t say that the
light only shone in Christ when he lived in Galilee. The light shines—he shifts to the present tense—in
the darkness, still shines, now. Christ’s life still shines in us. This is the gospel, the good news. Not lights or Christmas trees that shimmer or
presents under a tree, but a person, who
when we meet him and look into his face—again and again and again—reflects the
light of God.
This is the good news that we
celebrate in the dark this night, the good news I invite you to claim in the shadow
and darkness of these days. Indeed, it’s up to us, we who bear the name of
Christ, to remember that our confidence and hope is in him, the one who alone
is our life. “Do not be afraid,” the angels
said to the shepherds (Luke 2:10).
The world needs you to not be afraid of the
dark. The world needs you to share
Christ’s light. Your job is not to conquer or even curse the darkness. Your job as a Christian, our job together as
the Church, is to shine. Shining the light of Christ might increase the darkness around you. Sometimes a bright light makes the dark
darker, heightens the contrast.
Don’t worry about the darkness.
Just shine.
Remember who shines through you—God’s living light.
Don’t worry about the darkness.
Just shine.
Remember who shines through you—God’s living light.
[1] Rudolf Otto first introduced this
concept in The Idea of the Holy: An
Inquiry into the non-rational factor in the idea of the divine and its relation
to the rational (Das Heilige,
1917), (London: Oxford University
Press, 1958), 5-6ff. Otto describes an
encounter with the Holy as a mysterium
tremendum et fascinans, an experience of a mystery that both overwhelms and
fascinates.
