Apr 25 | “The Light shines,” (Sermon, April 24th, 2016)

Note: Today was a Celtic Sunday with a Godly Play-style sermon. Here was the regular sermon I preached at the 8am.

 

When he had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. ³²If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. ³³Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, “Where I am going, you cannot come.” ³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

John 13:31-35

 

“ Ἐν  ἀρχῇ  ἦν  ὁ  Λόγος,  καὶ  ὁ  Λόγος  ἦν  πρὸς  τὸν  Θεόν,  καὶ  Θεὸς  ἦν  ὁ  Λόγος.  Οὗτος  ἦν  ἐν  ἀρχῇ  πρὸς  τὸν  Θεόν.  πάντα  δι’  αὐτοῦ  ἐγένετο,  καὶ  χωρὶς  αὐτοῦ  ἐγένετο  οὐδὲ  ἕν  ὃ  γέγονεν.  ἐν  αὐτῷ  ζωὴ  ἦν,  καὶ  ἡ  ζωὴ  ἦν  τὸ  φῶς  τῶν  ἀνθρώπων.  καὶ  τὸ  φῶς  ἐν  τῇ  σκοτίᾳ  φαίνει,  καὶ  ἡ  σκοτία  αὐτὸ  οὐ  κατέλαβεν.”

It’s not often that we get the chance to hear the Scripture in its original language. There’s good reason for that; at the risk of underestimating you, dear friends, I imagine that was gibberish to many of you. What I just recited were the first five verses of the Gospel of John.

“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.”

I recited it in Greek to remind us of our roots. Koinē, the Greek of the New Testament, may be inaccessible to many Western Christians now, but once it was a language of the common people. Like Elizabethan English it now ironically enjoys an academic, privileged status that it never possessed in life.

Hearing the Gospel in this language reminds us who we are. Not superheroes. Not spiritual Titans of virtue. Ordinary people, using ordinary language. Children using sticks and dust to sketch crude pictures of a promised kingdom beyond anything we could ask or imagine. Children who are afraid, vulnerable, messy, and wobbling on scraped knees. Children who need love and affirmation.

I also recited this passage because many scholars believe it is a microcosm of John’s entire Gospel. If you like, it’s John’s thesis statement – particularly the last couple of lines: “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” This thesis statement keeps popping up throughout the whole of the book, not only through explicit linking of images and phrases but through implicit construction of sentences and phrases. This was part of John’s genius. He used simple words that any child – or beginning student of Koinē – would recognize, and yet loaded them with layers of meaning so that they are at once maddeningly cryptic and utterly enticing.

Actually, that’s a pretty good description of Jesus – talk about the Living Word.

But John was an even more brilliant wordsmith than that. John’s Gospel is exquisitely crafted, probably one of the most perfectly constructed documents in history. I tell you this because today’s passage, Chapter 13 verses 31-25, is a restatement of that thesis, and it’s done not in an explicit way but in a beautiful implicit way, like a love note passed in secret. I want to share a piece of that with you, because we’re Anglicans and we appreciate beautiful things, and because I really believe that this beauty can be a sign for the world – say, a piece of scaffolding for the coming kingdom of God, which should give us hope during this time of transition and change.

Let’s explore.

Chapter 13, verses 31-35. We also hear it on Maundy Thursday, when Jesus washes his disciples’ feet. That’s the scene right before this passage in verses 1 to 31. Jesus performs this beautiful sacramental act to teach his disciples, whom he calls “little children,” about the new commandment of love which will be a mark of identity for them. It is a “teachable moment.”

But Jesus doesn’t do this for no reason, and the text makes that clear. He does it knowing full well that two of those who are washed will later betray him. Peter, who at his washing in verse 8 enthusiastically blurts, “Not only my feet! My hands and my head too!” will deny him three times. This is a dreadfully ironic moment. Peter believes this is a statement of faith, but really he has just betrayed himself. He doesn’t really understand what the footwashing is about. It’s not just about love and servitude, you see. It’s about death, and how the Christian person is to respond to death and loss in all its forms.

How do we know this? Well, thematically the washing of feet hearkens back to the anointing of Jesus’ feet by Mary of Bethany, which she does to, in his words, “prepare him for burial.” And then the text gets even more explicit than that.

The footwashing begins in verse 5. In verse 2 we hear that the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas to betray Jesus. Then we hear in verse 4 that Jesus took off his robe – except the Greek says, “lays down” his robe. Jesus lays down his robe, like he will later lay down his life.

These verses provide us with a filter to view the washing. And just in case we didn’t get it the first time, we receive another couple of clues. Jesus makes veiled comments about his betrayer in verses 11 and 18. Then in verse 21 Jesus totally does away with subtlety and says outright that he will be betrayed. Judas, who the text implies is present both for the washing and the supper, stays silent, and, after being commanded by the living Word who is in complete control of the whole narrative, goes out into the darkness of night. Remember that time is important in John. “It was night” is a cipher for the machinations of the world (which God is said to love) that seeks to extinguish the light. But the light shines in the darkness.

The teachable moment, overshadowed by the specter of death, is followed by the overt and literal nighttime of Jesus’ betrayal.

And then, just as the darkness is dropping down, Jesus says in verse 31, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.”

Now? After that?

Yes. This is the light. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.

It really shines in the darkness, because right after the conclusion of the passage, at verse 36, there is more nighttime. After the new commandment, the proclamation of love that never dies, in verses 36 to 38 Jesus predicts the denial of Peter.

Those are the verses which close out the chapter.

Current betrayal, a proclamation of love, and future betrayal. Jesus knows he has been sold out by Judas, and he speaks love. He knows he will be betrayed by Peter, and he speaks love.

The light shines in the darkness.

Jesus, knowing that the disciples’ love for him will not survive the fear of reprisal, commands them to love one another. Knowing that he will once again come to them and they will finally understand, he commands them to love one another, and patiently waits for that later morning of breakfast on the beach, where, over a charcoal fire, he says, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?”; where he asks it three times in order to undo that threefold denial Peter made over the last charcoal fire in this story.

What does this tell us?

That nighttime is no time to be afraid.

Today, we are sitting squarely in the light. We have an advantage over the disciples: we know the whole story. Today, on our last Sunday before our interim priest joins us for our identity-forging journey through the wilderness, through the nighttime of uncertainty, we are given the gift of this new commandment, this new rule of love for our time together.

We do not carry this commandment into a barren place. We carry it into a world made fully new by Love rising from the grave. We carry it into a world where the holy springs up from barren ground, where if our voices fail or are taken away, the rocks and stones themselves will sing for us, where τὸ  φῶς  ἐν  τῇ  σκοτίᾳ  φαίνει, the light shines in the darkness.

The light shines in the darkness…and the darkness has not, does not, will not overcome it.