“Light Always Overcomes the Darkness”

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Pastor Dave Schneider

 

I

 I John 2:7-11, 15-17

 
 

I.                   Artists in Holland in the first half of the 17th century were known as  “painters of light.” That was also their Golden age of painting.

A.                 Rembrandt who was from Amsterdam was certainly the greatest of these painters of light,  and Reubens was a distant second.

1.                  Their canvases portrayed “Allegories,” in which painted objects and persons conveyed symblic meaning” of human mortality, with “a moral message hidden under the surface.”

2.                  Take, for example, a Philipp Bernard portrait appropriately titled “Walk the Way of Light.” A young woman’s innocent face is illumined by a candle whose light is magnified against the pages of her open Bible on the table. 

a.                  This “painting expresses Dutch pietism’s conviction that study of Scripture enables one to walk in the light.”

3.                  These Flemish and Low Lands artists “became absolute masters of the treatment of light.”

 

II.                 So also is our writer John a master of the treatment of light with his Gospel, the first Epistle of John and the book of Revelation.

A.                 His first mention of the subject in his letter is so simply stated that the power of the message explodes across the face of his theological canvas.

1.                  “God is light and in him is no darkness at all” (chapter 1, verse ).

2.                  The Prologue of the 4 th Gospel is a retelling of the Genesis creation story.

a.                  It is a magnificent artistic portrayal worthy of a 17 th century artist.

b.                  It sets the tone for the sharp dualistic contrast in John between light and darkness,

(1)              as well as love and hate, truth and sin.

3.                  “In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

4.                  Our author echoes those same words in 1 John 1:5.

 

B.                  Consider the fascinating nature of light.

1.                  If you place a small bit of darkness in the light, as John claims, the darkness will be totally dispelled; it cannot be seen.

a.                  Even a shadow cannot exist in sunlight.

2.                  If you place a tiny light in total darkness, it will endure, everyone sees it.

3.                  Light brings the fulness of life and color out for my sun-loving, heat-loving spiny bromeliads.  If they stay in the shade or darkness, they all turn green, they have no individual character, and eventually they will get leggy and lifeless. They will not produce offshoots, nor will they flower. 

a.                  One particular bromeliad, a giant puya (poo-ya), the raimondii, lives in South America and takes 80-150 years before it sends up its inflorescence or flower stalk. It finally blooms with some 8,000 white flowers! The raimondii’s flower spike grows to a height of 15 feet, 8 feet in diameter, and is found only at elevations of 10,000 feet and higher in the Peruvian Andes. The flowers can last for more than a month. But this puya must always have bright sunshine.

(1)              (I have a couple of puyas, but not that one!)

b.                  “we have fellowship with one another.” God is light, and in him is no darkness at all...if (you and I) live in the light as he is in the light, our lives mature and bloom, our bright colors come out, and we are made clean by his blood.

 

III.              To talk about light is to make a faith statement about God, for only God could create such a marvelous thing!

A.                 Therefore, it is an incarnational statement.

1.                  Any time John the Apostle talks about light, he is saying something about Jesus, how Jesus worked,and how he walked,

2.                  about his death on the cross and blood sacrifice.

a.                  Today we do not use that kind of language-- atonement or blood sacrifice, but we certainly talk about light.

3.                  It is very intentional, then, for John, when Jesus dies in the middle of the day–the brightest, hottest time of the day, there must be darkness over the land, then burial and sealing up in a tomb.

4.                  for as Paul writes, we have died with him and our sins are sealed up in his tomb to be buried and destroyed in the darkness forever.

5.                  And yet we need some darkness in our lives–to rest, to sleep,

a.                  to be dormant, regenerate, be born again for a new day–we call it

                                      resurrection!

b.                  so like the bromeliads–those that live in trees, in the air, on rocks, or in the ground– may bear pups, seeds, offsets and bloom in the sunlight.

 

B.                  We have the marvelous “‘I am the light of the world’” statement in the middle of the Gospel.

1.                  The Evangelist places this statement strategically in chapter 8, verse 12,

a.                  right after the woman set up by the authorities to be caught in the act of adultery.

b.                  Another way of putting it: she disobeyed the commandments of God/the Law of Moses, so she deserved to die, to be stoned.

c.                  Those Pharisees who trapped her were like the faction in the church in 1 st John who claimed to be sinless, yet conveniently overlooked their own hatred and self-righteousness. They therefore lived in the dark and doomed themselves to stumble and fall.

d.                  Jesus tells her to go and sin no more.  Once she has met Jesus, she can no longer walk in the dark, only in his light.

2.                  Secondly, this “‘I am’” statement is strategically placed because Jesus had just been in the Temple in John for the Feast of Tabernacles or Lights.

a.                  He is now to replace that feast, for he is the new light that is coming into the world.

 

IV.               Light for John the Apostle of necessity has a moral componjent.

A.                 We have already ascertained that Christians “ought to walk” as Jesus walked, in the light.

1.                  When John mentions the light, or walking in the light, then that automatically triggers other “links,”

2.                  specifically to obey his commandments,

a.                  the greatest of which is the commandment to love your brother or sister

b.                  to confess your sin

c.                  to do good works

d.                  to worship

e.                  to have fellowship in the church     (page 2)

3.                  always becoming increasingly Christlike!

a.                  I have a framed quotation from Saadi, a Persian poet, a Sufi Muslim who lived in the 1200's. Saadi wrote: “If you,  Christ-like, pure and simple-hearted be, the world by your very light imparted will be illumined.”   

                     4.     The greatest commandment of course is the commandment to love.  The danger in 1 John, however, seems to be that the love commandment is delimited, as Moody Smith observes in his “Interpretation Commentary.”

                               a.     That is, those who walk in the light are commanded to love only the brother and the sister with whom we have fellowship.

                               b.     “Therefore, do not love the world.”

                     5.       We need a more balanced perspective from the Gospel and the book of

                               Revelation, where God loves the whole world, even the lost Jews, and in

                               Revelation 7, there are 144,000 from each of the 12 tribes in heaven,

                               praising God and giving glory to him.

 

B.                  I enjoyed reading C.R. R. Tolkien’s “The Ring” trilogy and also J.K. Rowling’s seven Harry Potter novels.

1.                  Though my contemporaries have condemned the Harry Potter books as evil and unacceptable in their politically-correct Christian circles, I have never understood why they then say Tolkien’s Ring books are OK because the Ring novels have all kinds of Christian themes.  Nonsense! Both of these authors’ modern-day sagas have wonderful Christ-like themes. Both masterfully utilize the dichotomy between light and darkness in their characters and plots.

a.                  Joann Rowling and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien use imagination and the unconscious with Freudian skill. For both British writers, hopes and belief systems that are deeply ingrained make the final difference.

b.                  Harry Potter is every bit on his own as a leader and one who must finally choose. He is in one sense very human, ordinary, but also a messianic character, whose every action is in the light, not the dark.

2.                  Tolkien and Rowling end up affirming the same message: “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

a.                  The characters of their stories face tough, life-threatening ethical dilemmas:

(1)              to choose to walk in the light or stumble in the darkness.

b.                  One choice leads to blindness, bondage and death; the other to life and freedom, fellowship.

3.                  Both have incarnational themes, and themes of sacrifice and atonement.

4.                  Those who have fellowship in the light can not then have fellowship or association with the lords of darkness, cannot even mention their names.

5.                  I would love to see a study of the use of the themes of light and dark in the two authors, J.R.R. Tolkien and J. K. Rowling. [pause]

 

V.                 FINALLY, IN ALL OF THE APOSTLE JOHN’S WRITINGS, THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN LIGHT AND DARKNESS, IS NOT ONLY A PART OF THE EVERYDAY TENSION FOR THE CHRISTIAN, BUT IT IS AT THE SAME TIME A PENULTIMATE ESCHATALOGICAL STRUGGLE IN WHICH DARKNESS MUST LOSE.

A.                 When reading John, this man gives a clear sense that we are near the end time,  (page 3)

 

1.                  This is because he was a prisoner on the island of Patmos and he must have witnessed the persecution of Christians by Rome.

2.                  In a time of martyrdom, the command to specifically love the brother or sister, and to “not love the world” is more easily understood.

3.                  For John we are coming full circle.  We start with the time when God created and separated light from the dark, and in Genesis God saw that it was good.

a.       God gave the light to his people – his law– and they were to be a

          light to the nations, but they failed, for they loved the darkness.

b.       Then the prophets: their word was to recall the Jews to be a light to

          the Gentiles, specifically Isaiah. That too failed.

c.       Then Christ, who appropriated that messianic destiny of light from

          Isaiah, the prophet he quoted so often.

(i)       He was and is “the true light that enlightens everyone” who is

             coming into the world.... and whoever believed in him and

            received him, to these he gave the power to become children of

            God, born not of the flesh, but of God.”

It is an ethical, moral thing, one of obedience and walking as

Jesus has always walked.

This light was not overcome on the cross, but it came back even more radiant, after the 3 days of darkness, Easter!

4.                  And now the end time is almost upon us, history’s last days.  By walking in the light, this means:

a.       we see,

b.       we live,

c.       we shine by the light of God’s reign, “God’s new age that is breaking into the darkness of this old world.”

5.                  For you and me this is not a time of terror or fear from which to flee, as it might have been for some of Frodo’s companions, or for Harry Potter’s classmates, or for the three children in C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” –Peter, Susan and Edmund. Now it is now a time expected and hoped for, as the world comes alive in a new springtime.

6.                  In the final two chapters of Revelation, John sums everything up in God’s new creation:

a.     “The city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light shall the nations walk (not just Christian nations)..and there shall be no night there.”

                             b.       To me it is significant in this portrayal of the kingdom, while there

                                       are no tears or mourning or death, no separation but we will be

                                      face to face with the very purity of God’s light for the first time,

                             c.       there will, however, still be thirst and hunger, and God himself will                                     feed us at his table.                    

                               d.     A crystal-pure stream of life-giving water will flow from under his heavenly throne that will feed 12 trees of life on either side, each bearing miraculous fruit in the eternal light of God.

                               e.     Look closely and I think you will even see a giant blooming puya raimondii for all God’s children to enjoy. And the blooms will last in God’s light as we shall-–for eternity.       

                                      (page 4     (Let all of God’s children of light say...”Amen.”