O Lord, we pray, speak in this place, in the calming of our minds and in the longing of our hearts, by the words of my lips and in the thoughts that we form. Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. Amen.
"This is Lisa," whimpered the voice on the other end of the phone. "I cannot stop crying. Do you have some time to talk to me?"
"Of course," I said. "What's up?" Lisa was a middle-aged woman who had just ended a 15 year-long relationship with her husband. Three attempts at couple counselling had failed to make a dent in Arthur's defensive, angry shell. He had been raised by a very religious and extremely abusive mother and had had huge problems trusting women ever since. Lisa had given it her best; but now it was the end of the road. She and the children could not take any more of his abuse.
As she had indicated a month earlier, Arthur had agreed to move out. They had followed the plan with a minimum of conflict. Then, just recently, Lisa found out that he has a younger mistress in Shenzhen and confronted him angrily. Arthur had told her that his mistress meant nothing, but that he had not loved Lisa in a long time.
"I feel so betrayed," she said. "It's the cruelest thing anyone has ever done to me! How could anyone put me through so much grief!?"
I had spent time earlier explaining the problem of co-dependency to Lisa and had predicted that she would have trouble letting go. You don't just assume a mothering role for a grown man for most of fifteen years and then give it up overnight. "You'll let go when you no longer feel the need to be responsible for him," I had said. But it was more than just a
co-dependent relationship. A part of her had truly loved him just as a part of him had truly loved Lisa. It was this that was tearing her apart.
"Why couldn't he let me help him?" she wept.
"Because part of him is too afraid," I said. "For the first time in his life he came across a woman he could trust and who demanded the same trust from him. The thought of being exposed, of having to come out and actually stand in the light of such a love was too much for him to bear."
Well, I resist as much as I can getting all 'psychological' on you; but we are looking at John's gospel for this second Sunday of Christmastide because the authors of the Lectionary argue that fair is fair. Matthew and Luke have had their turn at it. Finally John gets to tell his story of Christmas. The problem with John is, well, John. He doesn't tell stories.
He gives speeches. He doesn't preach three-point sermons. He preaches fifty-three-point sermons. John never does anything small. And as for psychological? John is the most psychological treatise of all four gospels.
John, quite simply, likes to write things large. Mark goes back to Isaiah and Malachi to begin his gospel. Matthew goes back to Abraham. Luke - not to be outdone - goes all the way back to Adam. But John is in a class by himself. When he tells the story of how Jesus came into the world, he goes back to the dawn of time.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
Do you see what I mean? In John, Jesus doesn't just come into the world because of two people, Mary and Joseph. He isn't just the Messiah Israel has been longing for and for which the prophets held out hope. He is the logos, the Word of God himself. He is that very part of God that reveals, that very part of God that speaks, that very part of God that makes himself
heard.
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.
It is an often repeated and stark contrast in John, this metaphor of light and darkness. This light that Jesus was, John says, turned out to be a threat to many, so threatening, in fact, that the forces of darkness tried to overcome it. Behind this pattern, of course, we hear the struggle that was going on in John's church, a Jewish church, many of whom would not accept Jesus as the Messiah. Throughout John we will hear about not only how Jesus was persecuted by his own people but how his followers were equally mistreated. What we have in such stories is a lens through which we can view the struggle that went on in the emerging church, a time in
which followers of Jesus were experiencing a severe estrangement from their religious and cultural roots.
Why did this happen? That is the question. If you read John carefully, you will find clues dropped here and there about why people found Jesus so threatening. But, in the end, he simply doesn't come out and explain why. All he says is:
He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.
It is left to us to explain why the self-professed children of light were closed to the light of God's truth when it shone. How do we answer such a question without becoming guilty of the very same kind of self-righteousness that Jesus' opponents embodied? The only way that makes
sense to me is 'psychological', that is to say, by looking deep into that placed called 'soul' that is the deepest place inside you and me. What is it that happened when the light that was Jesus came into the world that is still happening today whenever the light that is Christ begins to shine?
Light is not only the revelation of the logos; it reveals the nature of all who come in contact with it, and the judgment upon each person is determined by his or her response to it. Light shines in darkness. It reveals. It also exposes, aays Alan Culpepper (Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel).
The way I think it works is this. Light comes into the world and it's as if everyone and everything is seen in a new and penetrating way. Suddenly we are connected with each other and the source of divine love precisely because this light comes as an invitation to grow in connectedness. Just as suddenly, however, we are also alienated because of everything about us
that insists on remaining entrenched in isolation. This is the contrast John is talking about. It is the contrast we, no doubt witness, every passing day.
Like Lisa and her husband Arthur, we are, all of us, a mixture of light and darkness. There is much that has happened to us since we came into the world that encouraged trust in us or damaged it deeply. It is that sense of trust that allows us to put our ignorance and fear into the larger context of struggle and growth. When we trust, we risk, moving toward the
light, letting it draw us out of the darkness of ego and fear into the warmth of self and love. It is as if we know that the light is where we belong. That is why we journey toward it. It is why Arthur fell in love with Lisa. For the first time in his life he saw where he belonged.
But there are those of us who love darkness more than we love light. Like those who love the light more, they are also a mixture of good and evil. The problem is that they have begun to identify with their own darkness, to love their own evil more than their own good. The light that shines on them, then, from another human being, appears harsh and glaring. It exposes their mistakes and inadequacies. In terror they flee from it and scheme to keep themselves covered - even from their own goodness.
Lying to themselves and to others is the only strategy they can envision. They cling to their own darkness out of fear. In this perverted sense they love it. it allows them not to be seen. Eventually they realize the only way to secure the darkness is to kill the advancing light. They think this will protect them, but it proves to be their undoing. - John Shea, Gospel Light: Jesus Stories for Spiritual Consciousness
It is how judgment works. It is not about going before a Judge who will weigh our good deeds and bad. It is about the choice we make every single day about whether or not to step into the light or retreat into the darkness.
And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world and human beings loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. - John 3:19
In the end Arthur felt the need to retreat into his angry, abusive shell because he simply would not trust the invitation of love. It is the kind of story that gets repeated in countless places, in countless places every single day.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
That was John's Christmas message to his own church, a people who were tempted to despair before this awful struggle going on in their own church and their own hearts. It is the message that there is something about this light that has come that will not be stopped even by the human refusal to accept it. Even in a world like ours. Even people like us. Eventually, all those of us who insist on living in the dark will have to give in to
that advancing light of love. Praise be to God day by day. Amen.
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