A very happy Christmas to you and to your families.
Have you ever looked up at the stars; perhaps on a fine summer’s evening or maybe on a clear and frosty winter’s night..? They say that about 6,000 stars are visible from the Earth with the naked eye. But that is only a very, very small fraction of all the stars there are.
Astronomers have calculated that there are about 100 billion of them in our galaxy, the Milky Way, which measures 100,000 light-years across. That means that light, travelling at 186,000 miles/second takes 100,000 years to span our galaxy. Actually, on a universal scale the Milky Way is a walk ‘round the block. Mathematicians have calculated that there must be as many as 200 billion galaxies like our Milky Way in the observable universe!
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| The Milky Way |
And, when you peered up at the cloudless night sky did you look up and wonder? The universe, you, life, God, how we all got here, where it all came from and is there anything, anyone, out there beyond us..?
The Logos
When John sat down to write his Gospel he was mulling over precisely those sorts of questions. How did it all happen? Where does it all come from? And he jotted down some simple sentences; “In the beginning was the Word.” It’s the English translation of the Greek word logos from which we get words like “logic” and “logical.” Because, in Jesus, life, the universe and everything make sense. In his light we understand ourselves and begin to see what God is like.
Logos is also related to our word “logo”; Jesus is God’s logo – his public face, if you like. Jesus is God’s body language. When you see a swoosh logo you think “Nike” - top level sport. When you see a three sided star in a circle you think “Mercedes” - quality car engineering. What you see in Jesus is the most vivid picture of God it is possible to see.
The True Light
In our reading tonight, talking about Jesus, it says, “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Imagine for a moment being in a very dark room; a place with no windows or doors and no artificial lighting at all. You have to feel your way around. It is pitch black. The claustrophobic disorientation and minor anxiety you feel physically is what life would be like spiritually without Jesus. Now imagine somebody turns on a light in the room. Where is the darkness now? Nowhere. One unalterable property of darkness is that it must capitulate to light. Always. That’s what John is saying about Jesus here. He means to say that Jesus is always decisively greater than evil and sin and doubt and fear and darkness.
A little later in the reading John says what the light of Christ is like. You can qualify light in many ways. People talk of soft light, bright light, indirect light, diffuse light, natural light... what sort of light is Jesus? John 1.9 describes Jesus as true light, real light. It’s not that Jesus is a bit like light. It’s the other way round. Light is like Jesus. He is the true light. So when Jesus was born angels lit the heavens and there was brightness at midnight. When he died, darkness covered the earth for three hours and it was dim at midday.
He is the true light. I’ve been reading a book by Bill Bryson called “A Short History of Nearly Everything.” Some of you might be familiar with it. In fact, I’m reading it for the second time, I like it so much. If you haven’t come across it, it’s a general science book, written for non-experts like myself and it brilliantly describes in plain English both the gargantuan magnitude of the heavens and the infinitesimal scale of the subatomic world – and much more besides. It’s not a Christian book and it is not written from a perspective of faith, but last night I read with wonder at how implausible it is that life on Earth (or anywhere) came to be, such are the overwhelming odds against it. The universe needs a wise author to complete the puzzle of its improbable existence. “In the beginning was the Word..., in him was life, that life was the light of all people...”
Nobel laureates have enlightened us on the origins of the universe; thanks to their research we now know that it came into being, from nothing, 13.5 billion years ago, in a perfectly proportioned spontaneous explosion we call the Big Bang. They throw light on the ‘how’, but only the True Light can ever show us ‘why’.
To understand the difference between the how and the why, define, if you will, a kiss. Here’s a strict definition, actually found in a Russian dictionary from the Soviet era. “A kiss is the approach of two pairs of lips with reciprocal transmission of microbes and carbon dioxide.” Oh wow! Find me any two sweethearts, passionately in love, and they will attest, breathlessly, that there’s a bit more to kissing than that! I love science. It is fantastically descriptive, but it never will shed light on ultimate meaning. The ‘how’ can tell you the number of stars out there when you gaze up at night (give or take a few trillion). But it can’t tell you why they are there or who put them there.
His Own Did Not Receive Him
Richard Dawkins’ whose book The God Delusion has been a best-seller in this country over the last 18 months or so, is on record as saying, “We are on our own in the universe. Humanity can expect no help from outside. So our help, such as it is, must come from our own resources.” And he goes much further. He forcefully contends that everything outside the boundaries of science, and he particularly singles out Christianity, is false and even dangerous. Many people agree with him.
Even in the first century people rejected Jesus. John says so near the end of our reading; “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” So there’s nothing suddenly new about rejecting Jesus. There’s nothing novel about atheism come to think of it. Some people claim that our great learning has only recently exposed belief in God as irrational superstition. But 1,000 years before Christ the Psalm writer wrote, “Fools say in their hearts there is no god,” so it’s not a new idea at all.
This year, the British Humanist Association is financing an advertising campaign on London buses. If you remember, the bus posters carry the slogan, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy yourself.” (This is the same BHA incidentally that campaigns to ban faith schools despite the fact they achieve higher than average results and are popular with parents).
Of course, they have every right to make their point. We are not after all living in a dictatorship. But I feel, as a believer, I should make mine too. “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy yourself” say the posters. Aside from the quite patronising assumption that Christians joylessly cling to their beliefs because they can’t otherwise cope, I want to say three things.
Firstly, when Jesus came, he said, “Don’t worry.” He said it 2,000 years before the British Humanist Association did. “Don’t worry about food, clothes, where you’re going to live or how you’re going to survive, don’t be anxious about tomorrow.”
Secondly, when Jesus came, he said, “I have come to give you life in all its abundant fullness.” In other words, “Enjoy yourself, live life to the full.” Again, he said it first.”
And thirdly this: about 50,000 people become believers in Jesus every day. One in five live in China, where the government ruthlessly imposes the dogma that “there’s probably no God.” 10,000 people every day are saying back, “You know what, we think there probably is.” Since I have been a Christian I have become more and more convinced that there probably is too. And no, I’m not a worrier. And yes, I do really enjoy life.
Ending
So John finishes off this little passage with these simple words, “To all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” Receive Christ tonight, and the next time you gaze up and wonder at the heavens you’ll very probably see them in a new light.
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 24th December 2008
