The Life-Light Blazes

 Holy Father and Mother God, fill us with the Life Light that blazes for all to see.  Cause us to hear what you know we need to hear.  Give us courage to journey into places we have not been before and humility to gratefully experience your grace.  Amen

            Let’s face it.  Now that we have begun to talk about God in different ways, we must, also begin to talk about Jesus and even the Holy Spirit in different ways.  And, believe it or not, we don’t have to leave the Bible to see those different ways unfold in front of us.  In this Advent season, bold, mystical poet, John, leads us into the realm of deeper understanding of things spiritual.  So, let’s start there.  Our Gospel Lesson today is short—just three brief verses, but the paths they illuminate are many and wonderful, varied and cosmic. 

            Let us begin at the beginning of verse 3:  “Everything was created through God; nothing—not one thing—came into being without Yahweh”.  John is specific—‘everything’ is created through God, ‘nothing’ came into being without God.  This simple verse turns most of our talking about good and evil on its head. John also has an interesting way with prepositions.  In the Genesis account of creation, the writer says that God did the creating.  John’s prepositions are through and with.  In other words, God is no longer a unique divine individual who works to make something happen; God is part of the process itself.  So, God then is the creative power itself, not just the doer of creation. 

            In the next verse, John is specific again—‘what came into existence was Life’—he leaves no doubt on the extent and expansiveness of this creation; it was Life.  This Life, John describes as the ‘Light to live by’.  Let’s review these first two verses because an understanding of them is crucial to beginning to understand verse 5.  To do that, let’s take a look at another, more common process that is known to us all.  It’s called photosynthesis.  Now, my research told me that the chemical equation for photosynthesis is 6CO2 + 12H2O + Light → C6H12O6 + 6O2+ 6H2O.  If Noreen or one of our other chemists want to challenge me on that—go right ahead—I have absolutely no idea what all that means, or at least I would really have to slow down and take it all apart, and hope that my 11^th grade memorization of the periodic chart would not fail me.  You might be feeling a similar feeling about these verses in John.  Why in the world did he have to make it so difficult to understand?

In my example of photosynthesis, and I pray this metaphor doesn’t break down somewhere along the way, let’s say that the production of oxygen—the process by which oxygen is produced is God.  Though we do not understand exactly how it happened, we know that plants and trees came into being and that there were portions of the earth covered in water.  In the process of photosynthesis, carbon dioxide enters the plant’s leaf.  At a similar time, water enters through the plant’s roots.  Sunlight falls on the leaves that are now nourished by the water.  Using the energy from the sun, hydrogen and oxygen are created in that process.  Hydrogen is used by the plant to nourish itself and, fortunately for all us oxygen-dependent people, oxygen, and lots of it, is also produced.  There are, in fact, other processes involved, such as the water cycle, but what is primarily needed is that tiny process that takes place inside the created leaves and produces what we most need for life.  Now you could state that God is the force that put this process into place; and, I wouldn’t argue with you about that.  But, unless we understand that God’s creative vitality is part of the process itself, we miss the centrality of God in all of life. In other words, in simple terms, God—this divine ingenious force, created carbon dioxide, trees, dirt, and rain, but unless that same divine force is in the process itself, you and I breathing just isn’t going to happen.

It’s in the process where the sacred appears; and, if we are to be in touch with the sacred in our own lives it is in this same sort of life-giving process that we must be found seeking. I do not for a moment believe that (stretching my metaphor a bit) the plant ‘thinks’ about making oxygen.  The plant simply houses the process.  We have many verses throughout both the Old and New Testaments that suggest, as French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, notes “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”  When we, you and I, begin to look for a spiritual experience to happen to us as if spirituality will somehow invade our human hearts and minds, I think we miss the boat.  John would agree with me, I think, that the spiritual is already happening every moment of every day—the Life Light is here.  We need merely to tune in to that process that is existing alongside of our day to day experiences.  This is why we stop, quiet the world, and go within to find God faithful in the process of turning the Light into Life—the carbon dioxide into oxygen, if you will.  God, the process, goes right on whether we are aware of it or not.  It is this awareness of the process that we seek in new ways as God prepares our hearts for the coming of the Holy Infant once more

            Finally, the fifth verse of the first chapter of John says this, and, oh, I love this!  “The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn’t put it out.”  John is telling us, assuring us, really, that once we have entered into the sacred process of living Life by the Light, that the Life-Light itself will come blazing out of us, our spirits, and our hearts.  This is an incredible assurance that John gives us, but give it to us, he did and the rest of his Gospel shows the many ways that Jesus, about whose birth he was speaking, lived out the Life-Light. 

As I was typing the readings earlier this week, I accidently replaced the ‘z’ in blaze with an ‘s’.   It occurred to me what a difference one letter can make.  Just by replacing that one letter, I went from a blazing Life-Light to a Life-Light that was blasé.  Believing that nothing happens by accident when I am working on the sermon, I investigated further.  The full definition of blaze is 1—intense direct light often accompanied by heat like the blaze of lights on a football field, or an active burning of a flame.  2—a dazzling display such as a blaze of color, or a sudden outburst such as a blaze of fury.   Pretty powerful words.  Blasé, on the other hand—not so much.  Blasé can mean : having or showing a lack of excitement or interest in something especially because it is very familiar; i.e. no longer exciting or apathetic to pleasure or excitement as a result of excessive indulgence or enjoyment or weary of the world.  We are ablaze with the Divine Life-Light when we seek ways to learn and to serve; we are blasé when we bumble along waiting, I suppose, for God to hit us over the head with the blessing planned for all of us.  I’m afraid that too many of us, as we continue in this Advent Season, have grown blasé about our spiritual life—either we’ve let other things crowd out our commitment to ourselves and to our relationship with the Sacred, or we’ve grown tired of looking for that ‘thing’, you know, that ‘thing’, we just keep missing. 

Advent, of course, means “coming” and waiting and hoping.  It means that our lives are not set in some blasé, meaningless mode.  Advent means that God is welcoming us again to become aware of the sacred process within.  John doesn’t talk about a baby.  He talks about God being born in us—about the opportunity to live our lives ablaze with the Life-Light which is both God and Jesus.  John wants us to know that the shepherds, and angels, and astrologers, and sheep in the hay are not what is most to be sought this Christmas.  John urges us to seek for that special place in our spirits where water and sun and carbon dioxide come together and oxygen—the thing most necessary for us to live is produced.  And, in that place, our lives will produce that which others need to live—a sense of meaning and belonging, kindness, compassion, and gentleness.  As we live our lives ablaze with the Life-Light to which John is introducing us, the darkness cannot stop us from living and serving and being that Life-Light to others.

And, so, this Christmas, while I may not know if angels really sang or if the shepherds really did come on the night Jesus was born; I don’t think that matters all that much.  Because what I do know is that God leads me to a place where the Sacred Light, the Source and Sustainer of all Life, can make me new.  The Life-Light that is stronger than darkness can heal, inspire, and move me forward in my commitment to myself, to God, and to the Creation.  Amen and amen.