Out of Darkness, Light!

“It was night”, then, is both a literal statement about the time of day, and also a way of saying that the persons simply do not understand what is happening around them right then.

Neither Judas, nor Nicodemus understood what was truly important.

Oh, they thought they knew.

Judas may have been thinking that he was doing Jesus a favor by arranging things so that Jesus would have an opportunity to show forth his power when the soldiers came to try to arrest him.

Nicodemus may have thought that he was a truly smart teacher in Israel who would help out this itinerant preacher get his thinking and direction straightened out... but Jesus very quickly shows him that he does not understand what is crucial about the new relationships and the new people of promise.

Both Judas and Nicodemus are confused, “in the dark”, about the truth.

They are not the only ones.

--Every one of us has been in the dark.

--Everyone of us has not understood what is of the greatest importance.

We try to go our own ways and to do our own things.

But it is all a failure.

Our big plans and grand ideas end in death, every one of them!

It is night, for us, too.

But Jesus is never content to leave things like that.

He is determined to change the way things have been.

He is never satisfied to let death get the last word.

He intends to make us people of the Light, ones who know and speak the truth.

It was night,...but no more.

We were confused,...but no more.

We did not know what was true and important, ...but now we do.

For now in these days, God has spoken to us by his Son, …[Hebrews 1:2]

and that Word changes everything.

Often folks have been working with a false premise, that first of all there is us to which some people add the idea of God and others do not.

But mankind is not independent, and we are arrogant to think so, and truly stumbling around in the dark.

The alternate proposal, the one which the church proclaims on this day of the Holy Trinity is that:

First there is God,

who, as part of his very nature of being God,

has been carrying on a conversation within himself,

the Father with the Son in the Holy Spirit,

and has now created us and invited us to join in his conversation.

Once that invitation to join the conversation has been given, as it is each time that we baptize someone, things are never the same for that person or the rest of us as well.

Thirty years or more ago there was a popular TV commercial which showed a room full of people all engaged in conversations.

We overheard one person asking another about a particular stock.

“Well my broker is EF Hutton, and EF Hutton says...”

and all conversation in the room ceases instantly and all attention is focused on whatever the person is going to say next.

Actually, our true situation is even stronger than the commercial's idea, for nothing even begins until God speaks!

Remember the creation stories in Genesis.

It was darkness, until God spoke Let there be...and it was so,...and it was very good.

Remember also how the Gospel of John has shown how this word changes our situation:

In the beginning was the Word...and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us....

God could have used his word to command us, to boss us; but instead he wants to convince us, to change us, and to show us how to present that same word of change to others.

Instead of worrying about ourselves, we live with the confidence that God will have the last word, no matter how difficult our life's situation, and his last word will be a good word.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have everlasting life.

And with that gift, the darkness begins to fade for us.

There are a variety of reason why the churches along the Camino Santiago in northern Spain are massive, Romanesque, and elemental in nature.

Of course part of the reason is the era in which most of them were built is mid-Romanesque, but even more than that, it was what was going on in the world at that time.

There was, and is, a great struggle.

It is political; it is military; but even more deeply, it is religious.

Is God the conversation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or is God something less than that?

That was, and still is, the question.

The way in which a person answers that question has profound implications for how one relates to those who agree with you as well as well as those who do not.

They are held to be mutually exclusive viewpoints.

Christians have not been faultless over the centuries, but it must be noted that whenever Muslim militancy has felt strong, tolerance for Christians is very slim.

So El Cid and others over the centuries gradually pushed back the Muslim armies and made room for the pilgrimage route to Compostello, and so it is not surprising in the least that the churches along that route appear to be first-cousins to fortresses, because in two related senses they are!

This contending for the truth of the Gospel is hard and dangerous work, and it is never completed.

All the ancient foes are still arrayed against Christ's church, and some of them have acquired new disguises.

Some may think that the Creeds are tiresome, and especially the Athanasian, which we use once each year, but they are positive precisely in this struggle.

The Creeds help us to know that from the beginning, it is the nature of God to talk and to listen, to give and receive, to be a community of love and care not only inside of the Trinity, but also with all of us who Jesus deigns to call his beloved.

What wonderful news that is; it deserves a hymn of joy and praise!

Near the end of the baptismal service, a small candle is lighted from the Christ Candle and handed to the neophyte with these words: Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

One little candle, held by one single candle-person.

What can they do?

By themselves, perhaps not much.

But because the light is Christ's light and backed by Christ's promise,

that light and that person can change the whole world.

Once is was darkness for Nicodemus and for us.

But now, the Light shine, forever. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.