Sermon for 2nd Week of Christmas – John 1:1-18

Welcome to 2021! We made it! What do we love to do on a new year? Make resolutions. New beginnings. Start new habits. Get our act together. Did you make a resolution? Me, I started walking. Though it’s not actually a resolution. I started a few weeks ago. But, for some reason, it’s really hard for me to just start something new. I have to make it a habit, where it becomes this automatic thing that just happens. So I don’t usually make resolutions because I’m such a creature of habit. Can you relate to that? Not that we want to believe it about ourselves.

New beginnings are the theme of our gospel reading for today. That’s really what Christmas is all about. God finally made good on all those promises that Isaiah prophesied. God sent a Messiah to make things right between us and God. But not the way we expected. We were expecting a real hard-charger to raise an army and wage some kind of holy war to depose the powerful and raise the lowly. But what we got was a baby born in a manger. Vulnerable and innocent. God really knows how to catch us by surprise. Talk about a new beginning! But it’s so new that we need someone to unpack it for us. So John obliges….

First, John tells us that Jesus is God. But it’s not like the other gospels. No nativity, no genealogy, no angel Gabriel. Just Jesus at the beginning of time. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through him.” From the very beginning, God created all things by speaking a Word. That Word was Jesus. God in the world, doing miraculous things from the start. Genesis says, “The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep. Then God said ‘Let there be light’, and God separated the light from the darkness. Night from day.” That’s why John says “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

But the thing about light is that it doesn’t eliminate the darkness. Now, we can see a little more than before, but the darkness is still there. So John is also talking about what’s been happening to us ever since the beginning, and it’s pretty dark. Wars. Colonization. Slavery. Poverty. Our history is full of greed and injustice, and it’s not just isolated incidents in the past. The legacy still echoes in our bodies. It shows up in our words and deeds and biases in ways we don’t realize. Otherwise we wouldn’t still have the same problems. But we refuse to believe that. We’re convinced that what’s past is past and doesn’t have anything to do with us. Except, sin has this insidious way of weaving its threads into everything and we don’t see how we’re perpetuating it. Sin loves the status quo. It loves to keep us stuck in the darkness where we just can’t see the truth. No wonder that we’re not good at keeping our resolutions. We’re creatures of habit.

So, John tells us that Jesus has come back to intervene. A new beginning. “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” We’re his creatures. We should recognize our creator. That should be enough. But, John throws a wrench in the works. “The world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” How could we not recognize our creator? But we’re quick to think – wait, we know the story. Jesus came to the Jews, God’s chosen people, but they didn’t just reject him. They sentenced him to death on a cross. So we immediately point fingers at “those people” and figure we’re off the hook. After all, “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” Isn’t that us?

Except, if we’re children of God, then why do we still have this nagging conscience? So John says that the light that shines in the darkness is the light of grace and truth. Jesus’ light is a double-edged sword. When we see him, we see everything that we aren’t. His light reveals the truth that we still stumble in darkness. Our regrets, our failures, our sins, everything comes to light. But we’re not the only ones who see it. So does everyone else. They can see us for who we are. What do we fear they think about us? Hypocrites? Fakes? Like we’ve never thought this about anyone else. It’s so easy to do, especially with folks in power. Politicians or televangelists or anyone who’s ever hurt us. But at the end of the day the same spotlight burns all of us, because we’ve all been stuck in the darkness all along.

We’ve been just as hurtful to others, but absolutely blind to everything that God has always seen in full. Now, we want to argue otherwise, that we didn’t mean it. But that just reveals that we don’t understand how. Maybe that’s why we argue endlessly about racial and economic privilege. We see the light, but we stumble in darkness to the very end.

But, brothers and sisters, the good news is that Jesus has given us a new beginning because we couldn’t do it for ourselves. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. We nailed him to a cross to die, and the light of the world went out. But after three days, he rose in the light of his resurrection. This kind of light doesn’t just shine in the darkness. It obliterates it. And Jesus separates our night from our day just by speaking a word. His forgiveness. And because of his promise, we can dare to look at the death and darkness of the cross and know that it won’t overcome us either. For if we are baptized into a death like his, we will surely be raised in a resurrection like his.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. Jesus’ light has revealed our darkness and we don’t have to deny it anymore. He sees us as we are and loved us from the beginning of time because he knew us then. More than we can ever love ourselves. And he assures us we’re free. Free from guilt. Free from the fear of death. Free to meet him at his table, to eat and drink his body and blood. All because Jesus sends us his Holy Spirit to trust his powerful Word. We don’t even have to make ourselves believe it – the Spirit works that work in us. All this so that we can finally be honest with ourselves. We’re sinners and saints, gripped by this God come in our flesh, who will not let us go.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. The darkness of the world will never derail the mission of God. The Spirit draws us to people and places that we don’t expect, and maybe still fear. But how often don’t we realize what’s happening until we’re already there? Probably unprepared and uncertain, but we don’t have to rely upon ourselves. The Spirit is always with us and empowers us in ways we don’t have to understand. So we end up serving in spite of our shortcomings. Chances are, we probably won’t ever know if we helped at all. But, the Spirit that gives us trust in Jesus’ word, gives us trust that somehow, we really did.

So, let’s circle back to where we started. Jesus has given us a new beginning. But not just today. Every day, as we die and rise in the light of Christ. Of course, you’re still free to make resolutions if you want. Traditions die hard. But know this – what God has in store for you and for me is greater than any resolution we could ever hope to think of. Therefore, people of God, arise, shine, for your light has come. Merry Christmas.