Lights and Switches

Sunday, May 2, 2004
Third after Easter
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
John 1: 1-5

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
“Watch this!” he shouted over the pounding music, and promptly fell back to the floor.

Mike simply leaned back, put his arm out, and fell to the floor. It wouldn’t have been anything extraordinary, except for the fact that we were at one of our first parties as teenagers.

The year was 1976, and black lights and strobe lights were the big thing. Mirrored balls hadn’t yet gotten to the high-school dance level, but we, the geekier crowd, were happy to occupy ourselves with what cool lights could do, since we certainly weren’t busy doing any dancing. 

This particular night, the guys who set up the lights and music had set up a strobe light. I don’t remember if it was connected somehow to the music to vary the speed at which it flashed on and off, but it was enough of a novelty to draw a small crowd of 6th and 7th graders who didn’t have anything better to do in front of it, to see who could come up with the best way to take advantage of the strobe effect.

On and off. On and off. On and off. Again and again. Hundreds if not thousands of times. It was very much like watching a stop-motion movie. Each flash of light showed the person in a slightly different position. Mike’s fall, had it been in steady light, would have been unremarkable. One smooth motion from standing to lying on the floor.

As it turned out, the fall was captured in steps. In very definite clearly demarcated steps. A progression of positions, but more of a stair step than an escalator.

Let’s do a little exegesis. Read out of the text what is in it. Unwrap it, as it were. Verse one consists of 3 statements:

In the beginning was the word
And the word was with God
And the word was God.

First statement: in the beginning … what does that remind us of but the first words of what was then and still to this day remains the beginning of the beginning? To those who came from the Hebrew tradition and were hearing the Gospel read, the tone at the beginning of John is the same as at the beginning of Genesis. In the beginning was the Word speaks to the nature of Christ as being preexistent.

Second statement: and the word was with God … the preposition "with" in the phrase indicates both equality and distinction of identity along with association. The phrase can be rendered "face to face with." It therefore suggests personality and coexistence with the Creator, and yet is an expression of his creative being.

Third statement: and the word was God … this last phrase speaks to Christ’s divine nature.

It is amazing to me that in those three short statements, John said so much about who Jesus is.

We can accept the statements in faith, but we can’t always wrap our brains around them.

Verses 2 & 3 are simply restatements of what was compacted into verse 1.

Eugene Petersen uses these words in his translation of verses 4 &5:

4 What came into existence was Life, and the Life was Light to live by. 5 The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn't put it out.
So we have this life-light in us. Those of us who have taken that light into our lives, those who have taken on the life of Christ.

Doing a little more exegesis: the term “life” (John uses it 36 times throughout the Gospel) is used in the same way each time it appears. It refers either to the principle of physical life or, more often, to spiritual life. Frequently it is coupled with the adjective ‘eternal’ to denote the quality and power of the believer’s life. The life was embodied in Christ, who demonstrated how God’s purpose and power are made available to human beings.

Here we come to verse 5, first part: The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;

Because my hope lies in Jesus Christ, I have to believe that that statement is as much a statement of history and theology as it is a statement of physical fact. You’ve heard it before. Get a room as black as you can. Close it completely off. No seams, no cracks, no windows, no doors, nothing to let the light in … and light a single candle. The darkness, as dark as it is, can do nothing to stop the light of that one candle from shining through and shining out.

My father was stationed in Alaska during the Korean conflict. As part of their exercises, the soldiers would go out into the countryside and stay there for several days. At the time he was in the army my father smoked cigarettes. He was warned to never light his cigarette in the open at night. Especially if the night was cloudy, or there was a new moon. He should at least cup his hand around the flame. The reason? The flame from the match would serve as a beacon – a target ready made for any potential enemy sharpshooter. The darkness, however vast, truly cannot overcome the light, however small.

Here we come to the problem as I see it. The second part of verse 5: and the darkness did not overcome it. Perhaps I should rephrase that. Here we come to the hard part, as I’ve experienced it, and I suspect, as all of us in this room have experienced it at one time or another in our lives. We have all had days, nights, weeks, months, or God forbid on rare occasion, YEARS where it seems as though darkness has in fact, overcome the light.
It might be in the experience of living with constant pain. It may be in facing, as Margaret Franklin is facing, the uncertainty of steadily declining health and the best our modern medicine can do is wonder, while treating the symptoms. It may be in watching a longtime friend slowly leave your presence, while losing his own presence of mind. It might be in the trauma of losing a husband or a wife … your lifetime companion. The one whom you thought, somewhere in the back of your mind, would ALWAYS be there.

In my own life, I can point to a span of time during which depression was a darkness that overshadowed most, to not say all the light in my life. There were days when I would have welcomed death if he had knocked on my door, if only to escape the shadowside of pain through which I was wandering. What went into effect, as I’ve shared with you before, was that, even though I felt like I was being swallowed up in darkness, I had the presence of Christ surrounding me in the form of my sisters Karen, Becky and Lolly and my brother Jimmy. In the prayers of my parents. In the words and open arms of my friends Jim and Janet Rittenhouse, Sue Milton, Jim Ruby, Stacey Littlefield, Jay Voorhees, Kirby Geiger, Eloise Parks and Claude Drouet. It wasn’t so much a single presence in my life, as it was a constellation … that cloud of witnesses I keep coming back to, all pointing to the one true source of light.

Friday evening, Leslie and I had the opportunity to help out at the concession stand at the little league field up next to the elementary school. We met and got to know Kim and Clifton Balderson. Kim and I spent the better part of the evening talking about her experiences on a mission trip she took to Mexico two years ago and about how the church she attends has been growing over the last 5 months. At one point in the evening, an older gentleman walked in. She did not introduce him, but in the course of the conversation he mentioned that Billy Brann woke up and recognized his father, and he may have even spoken a couple of words to him, or at least responded in such a way to show that he is still fighting, still present. A huge smile broke out on Kim’s face.

Light on.

A few minutes later, another man came into the concession stand, a jocular man, with a big smile, very boisterous. He started joking around with Kim and with Clifton. There was a slight change in the feeling of the room … Kim started to say several times “Please don’t” … but was never able to complete the phrase to where I could understand what she was trying to head off. The man started to tell a joke, actually, several jokes. Turns out, they were jokes that were … not in the best of taste … and actually offensive, if the truth be told.

Light off.

Yesterday afternoon, we drove into Richmond with the kids.
We were walking around a shopping center that has a little train that runs around every few minutes, and after much prodding and pleading from the kids, I decided to get tickets to ride it. I walked into the Customer Service Office to buy tickets.

I suppose I’d been thinking about my family, because I asked for 7 tickets. That would have been enough for my parents, my three sisters and my brother and me. I had the kids with me, and they were, of course, bouncing off the walls with excitement. As we walked back out to the courtyard, Leslie was coming out of the store across the way, and I caught her eye and we walked up to each other. As I started to hand her the tickets, I realized that I’d bought two extra tickets. I explained what I thought my thought process must’ve been, and asked her to wait a minute or two while I returned them.

I walked towards the office, and as I did, I started thinking about the movie ‘Pay It Forward’. I decided as I walked in to return the tickets but not take the money, and asked the woman at the counter to simply give the next person who walked in to buy two tickets to simply give them the tickets.

Light on.

It’s been a long week, and there’s not been as much rest gotten as there probably should have been, either for me or for the kids. We dropped Leslie off at Food Lion to pick up a couple of things as well as to pick up the other car. I drove on here with the kids. They were getting a little louder than I was able to deal with and I lit into them. Oops, wrong term: I tore into them.

Light off.

It’s not just between different people that the light is on or it’s off. It’s within me. There seems to be a switch that can be turned on and off. If the darkness cannot overcome the light, how does the darkness keep rearing its ugly head? Again, it brings to mind what Paul refers to as “the law that is at work within us” in the 7th chapter of his letter to the church in Rome – “when I want to do good, evil is right there with me”. We cannot, in this
world, escape the fact that we are susceptible to the power of sin, even though, spiritually speaking, we are dead to it. It is a question of choice. The good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that we now have that choice, through presence and the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we can IN FACT overcome sin. I would invite you to read on, into the 8th chapter of Romans, take a minute this afternoon to do that. In fact, read the 7th and 8th chapters together. Paul takes on this issue head on – we live in a broken world and are weak … but thanks be to God, it is through our weakness that Christ is strong.

So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Are we living in a strobe light of our own making? What choices do we make individually and collectively that result in the light staying on or going off?

Yesterday morning, the youth of our church put on a car wash in the parking lot at Northern Neck State Bank in town. As of 11:30, they had raised $200.00. The decision had been made that all proceeds from the event were going to go to the Billy Brann fund at the bank.

Light on.

This afternoon, we have the opportunity to reach out to comfort the family of Tina Schools, after her sudden death on Thursday morning.

Light on.

Next Saturday, the youth will be preparing and delivering another meal to the shut-ins of our church family and those dozens of people in our community who’ve come to look forward to their visits as well as the food.

Light on.

This last Wednesday, while I stood at the front of this sanctuary and the hymn played, how many of you came forward and told me you wanted to be … you wanted to rededicate yourself to being a shining light, a burning light, a living light for Christ? My response to you then and now is the same: we will do that together. We’re not called to do it alone, but we ARE commended to each other – to redefine what family is in light of the spiritual bonds that now tie us together.

LIGHT ON.

Let’s pray.