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. John 1:1-5

“What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”

Life and light. Light and life. This is how God comes to us. As life that is the light of all people.

People across time and cultures know this connection between light and life. There is no life without light. Perhaps that is the reason that in the first Genesis creation story light is the first creation. From that beginning comes everything we know. 

From the beginning of human community, we have known that light is essential to life. Even in pre-scientific times, it was clear that light made all life possible. Modern tools allow us to see ever more clearly how this happens.

Light that comes to us from the Sun provides the energy necessary for all life on Earth. Light is energy and all the energy we require for life is brought by or released by this light. 

Sunlight that warms our planet created the atmosphere that gives us livable temperatures and protects us from being too hot or too cold. That light warmed water, which released oxygen that we and other living things breath. Sunlight draws water up from the seas and then showers it back down on us. Light shines through rain to give us rainbows and hope. Light is converted into stored chemical energy in plants that sustains other life forms – it becomes food. 

Light is the reason we have day and night, and the seasons of the year. Our sense of time is possible because of light – it gives us a sense of past and future. 

Light travels eons across the universe, allowing us to see the distant past – and it also travels across the sky marking minutes and hours. 

Light makes sight possible! Revealing creation all around us, including colors and textures and movement. Light literally enlightens us. Light carries information into our eyes and into our minds. It allows us to understand our world and ourselves. 

Light warms us and infuses us directly with nutrients and energy. Light helps us sense and follow directions, it helps us find our way. 

We rely on light for energy, information, and guidance through time and space. 

The writer of John’s gospel didn’t understand all the science behind light, and yet the comparison of Christ to light is amazingly fitting, especially when we know the connections between light and life that science reveals. 

What we believe about Christ is that through him the radiant energy of God makes all life possible. The light of Christ becomes infused into our lives, becomes the food of our faith, the revealer of truth, the way we are able to see and understand God. 

Think about “God with us” as light touching our existence and creating the atmosphere that enables life to thrive. The light of Christ enters our bodies the way oxygen enters our lungs, and gives us insight the way information enters our minds, and nourishes and energizes us the way food does, and dispels darkness the way sunlight brings morning from night and spring from winter. 

A lot of times, we think about God being in our lives as an intellectual proposition, an idea. We have a Bible and tradition full of thoughts about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit – and I for one enjoy contemplating all these ideas and finding ways to connect to Jesus through words and actions, through community and ritual. 

And yet, we also have this visceral way to experience God in Jesus. As light, as warmth, as energy. As a presence in our very being, in the very cells of our physical bodies. When I experience God this way, I think about Jesus, the incarnation of God, in a very personal and also very universal way. When “the Word became flesh and lived among us” it was in the person of Jesus, a particular human being. We can think of Jesus as part of history, we can think of his life, death and resurrection as events to remember and reflect on. And yet the Word also was there in the beginning, and all things came into being through this Word, and this Word brings life and is the light of all people. 

This is beyond history. This is beyond memory and reflection. Or perhaps it is more appropriate to say this light is before history and before reflection. 

There is a unity in all things. All that is, originates with God and comes into its own through God. Jesus is a reminder to us that we all originate with God. Light is an ideal image for this unity because light shows us the way, dispels darkness, warms us, and is essential to life. 

Jesus came into our darkness, into a world that he – as God – brought forth. He came into our darkness to lighten and enlighten us.

When we think of Jesus as light it is impossible to feel separate from God. Just as sunlight infuses life into our world from the smallest atomic level to the most expansive global level, so God in Christ permeates our existence from the cells of each body to the most complex arrangements of human communities. 

And all of this is captured in the wonder of a tiny human life, in a simple human family. 

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us” in Jesus, as an infant and a young man, and suffering on the cross. 

In Jesus we have the impossible vastness of God’s love expressed in a baby you can hold in your hands.  In Jesus, we can understand that God is in our lives at the most basic and ordinary level – in our breathing and eating and sleeping. God is with us in our most elementary connections, as between a helpless infant and exhausted parents. 

God sent us light to remind us that we come from light and that following the light will bring us to our source. 

Based on sermon preached on 12/29/24 at St. Joan of Arc Episcopal Church