Light and Dark

John 3:14-21New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“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 eternal life.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

This was the gospel reading I preached on this Sunday.  While I was preparing, I was kind of bowled over by all the many things there are to say about this passage.

And many things, frankly, unsaid.

I have to admit I was semi-ambivalent as I thought about this passage - as well as other related passages in John.  The reason has to do with the comparison of light and dark.

I get how for John light illuminates and darkness hides.

How light reveals truth.  How light IS truth.

All of those were images that were meaningful to me for most of my life. 

Then I just finished reading Barbara Brown Taylor's book "Learning to Walk in the Dark" and the meaning became a little muddled for me.

I won't summarize the whole book (you can find a link here with info on it: Learning to Walk in the Dark) But suffice it to say, that the book deals with the very ways we have overlooked the darkness.  It deals with the truth that I've learned for myself: that there is spiritual learning to come from the times of darkness in our lives, whether those times are periods of suffering or even the dark night of the soul itself.

We grow up being afraid of the dark, and maybe that's something that needs to be unlearned.

Yet I'm not ready to throw John's beautiful metaphor of Jesus as light and light as truth away either.  I sometimes need the light to be shone in those dark places of my life where I am hiding, either from myself or from others. Light is truth. It is life.

Yet so can darkness be.

God after all made both the light and the dark.

God of day and night, be the light for my path when I can't find my way, and envelope me in darkness when I need rest. Amen.