God is light and in him is no darkness at all

You can do it in story-telling.

It’s great to play around with light and dark and tell the story of creation, the birth of Jesus, crucifixion and resurrection as into the dark comes the wonder of light. Eyes tight shut. Eyes wide open. And the marvel of light as the darkness goes.

You can do it in music. Haydn’s creation captures the darkness In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the music is dark, filled with gloom, apprehension.

Then into the darkness, into the chaos comes God’s word. And God said, Let … and the music still has the darkness.

Let there … and the darkness seems almost to intensify

Let there be … in the darkness of the music there is yet an expectation

Let there be LIGHT and as orchestra and voices all combine there is an explosion of light.

You can do it in worship. How wonderful, at least for us in the Northern Hemisphere, to be able to have our carols by candle light service. It is special at our Christingle service to turn the lights out in the darkness of mid winter and then welcome the Peace Light that has come all the way from Bethlehem. One so vulnerable flame flickering in the darkness, and yet dispelling the gloom. And from that one flame first one Christingle, then another, and another until the church is encircled with light.

IT is the sadness and the darkness of holy week speaks so powerfully to me. The supper over, they sing a hymn and go out into the darkness of the night. It is in the darkness of the Garden of Gethsemane that Christ pleads with God to let him escape the deep darkness that is to come.


But he is arrested, that night held … in the darkness of a cell, or was it a dungeon.

And at noon the next day?

Darkness covers the face of the earth.

And it is in deep darkness that he breathes his last.

And it is in the darkness of the tomb that he is buried.

For me … there is a darkness on Good Friday.

I capture it in a silly way. A potato. Buried in the soil.

And then you can capture it on Easter morning. Tom, Nicky, Eleanor and Harry were on Bredon Hill for dawn. We chickened out and met twenty minutes later. But it grew lighter slowly. No instant transition. A getting lighter as dawn was breaking.

I noticed in John 20 that Mary Magdalene reaches the tomb ‘while it is still dark’. By the time Peter and John race there it’s getting lighter. When Mary looks in to the darkness of the tomb it is two angels in white that she sees. With gentleness in their voice they ask why she is weeping. But they give her no answer.

She emerges from the tomb. And by now it must be light … and yet even then she mistakes him for the gardener. Again there is gentleness in his voice as he asks the same question, why are you weeping?

Even though it is light, her tears make it feel as if it is still dark.

Then he speaks her name. She looks and sees.

The other gospels speak of it as ‘dawn’ or better still ‘daybreak’.

The stories unfold – some in the darkness of evening, some in the light of day … all in the light of the risen Christ shining in the darkness.

So many signs done in the presence of his disciples.

But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name


Light into darkness.

Life into death.

Life in his name.

In this resurrection season one saying of Jesus comes to my mind …

‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’

That’s it. Living an Easter faith we have nothing less than the light of life.

It’s the light of life that has been there from the beginning. It’s the light of life that was made real in Jesus Christ – and John knew it. He had seen it with his own eyes, looked at it and touched it with his own hands. Wow – no wonder he wants to share it. It fills him with joy. And he wants us to share in the joy as well.

Then John goes on to make an audacious claim.




This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.

Is this the Easter hope?

That God is light … and in him there is no darkness at all.

Well of course, there is still day and night.

We can still close our eyes and be in the dark.

Things happen – we are still in the dark.

We do things that are pretty dark.

But the Jesus who burst from the tomb has overcome the darkness. … and we now look to the God who is light and in him there is no darkness at all!

We’ve had a wonderful week at our Minsters’ conference in the company of Roberta Rominger, General Secretary of the URC – that was pretty special – healing going on! IN the company of one David Cook who in a life time working with the United Bible Societies has had a hand in the translation of the Bible into 64 different languages. We had the wonderful company of Bob Harman, the story teller extraordinaire who through his Story Teller Bible is the inspiration behind Open the Book taking Bible stories into schools. And we had the company of Cheryl a molecular biologist working in a Bible Society project, who is going to be Jonathan Rowe’s administrative assistant as he takes up his new post in Truro.

She was prompting us to delight in the wonder of science. So we had everyone watching out for the International Space Station with its enormous solar panels reaching out into the sky and reflecting the light of the sun back down to us on earth. It was gratifying to be asked by some of the older teenagers to go out into the dark and do one of the scariest things imaginable – lie on your back suspended underneatht the planet looking down into the infinity of space with nothing holding you to the surface but for gravity.

And I come back to ask what is light – particles or waves. And I couldn’t help but think of Brian Cox and the Wonders of the Universe.

Isn’t that interesting!

It’s one of those wonderful moments when maybe the insights of science and that sense of wonder accords with the insights of my faith …

This first light is called the cosmic microwave background or CMB. This first light, this CMB … fills every part of the universe. Every second light from the beginning of time is raining down on the surface of the earth in a ceaseless torrent. If my eyes could only see it then the sky would be ablaze with this primordial light … both day and night.
Wow.

Let’s take that insight into the nature of light. And return with fresh eyes to those words of John.

God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.


That’s quite some thought.

In the face of the darkness that can threaten to overwhelm, the darkness is not darkness at all to the God we believe in with our Easter faith.


Let’s hold on to the joy of Easter – with the eyes of faith in the risen Lord Jesus let’s look to the God who is light and in him there is no darkness at all.

But that has practical implications for the things we are going to do this coming week.

There is still night as well as day. There is still dark as well as light.

So, if God is light, and we look to him, and through this risen Christ find ourselves in a relationship with him, and God in a relationship with us, if we have fellowship with this God, then we are deceiving ourselves if we walk in the darkness, with priorities shaped not by God but by the world and its values. We must be people who walk in the light?

That means seeking forgiveness from God when we let him down and fall short of his way for us … and then drawing on the risen presence of Christ to live in the light.

We do that as we live in love for God and in love for one another. That’s what John goes on to say over and over and over again. It’s what he had heard from the very start of Jesus’ ministry – it’s an age old insight from the ancient writings of the ancient scriptures … and yet for John and for all us as Easter people it is something wonderfully new and fresh each day.

I am writing a new commandment that is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says, I am in the light while hating in whatever form hating might take, is still in the darkness. Whoever loves … in the care for the one who is lonely, or the deed of kindness for the one in need of a visit, or the act of compassion for the one who is filled with sadness, or the stand taken on an issue of justice and peace, whoever loves lives in light.

God is light and in him is no darkness at all.

Or put that another way, as John comes on to do … God is love and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them.