Christ Church

“This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you,
That God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”

We have had already in the pageant of Advent the witness or record of John the Baptist, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.” Now we have the witness of another John, John the Evangelist, who seems to speak directly to us about what he has heard and seen and touched concerning the Word of Life, and who claims his intimate discipleship with Christ and the truth of his witness, “this is the disciple which beareth witness of these things, and wrote these things, and we know his witness is true.” There is, I think, a wonderful firmness to the rather understated quality of such remarks. It compels us by its quiet insistence upon what is being proclaimed. The power lies in the idea made real, the idea of the Incarnation. We can, after all, only think it.

For that is the burden of the witness of this John. We see in no small measure through the eyes of John in the witness of his Gospel and his Epistles, both of which testify to the idea of “the Word made flesh.” Within the festival of Christmas, the Feast of St. John the Evangelist illumines the wonder and the glory of one simple but profound truth, the reality of Christ as God’s Word and Son and Light incarnate in our world. These are the three great and essential images that govern entirely the nature of Christian doctrine and devotion. Through the eyes of John the light of God enlightens us.

It is the burden of the Collect, gathering up the rich themes and images of the Epistle and the Gospel, to point this out. We pray the merciful Lord “to cast thy bright beams of light upon thy Church,” the Light of God for the understanding and direction of God’s Church. A light to enlighten but how? “By the doctrine of thy blessed Apostle and Evangelist, Saint John.” To what purpose? That the Church “may so walk in the light of thy truth, that it may at length attain to the light of everlasting life.” It is a pretty complete prayer that points to the role and place of John, Apostle and Evangelist, whose intimate association with Christ is married to his theological insight into the Incarnation.

The witness of John insists upon the reality of the Incarnation against the deniers of the idea of God being with us. John has primarily in mind the Docetists for whom matter and spirit, flesh and divine Word, world and God are utterly incompatible. A dualist view of reality, matter, flesh, world are seen as evil; there is a complete opposition and separation between God and humanity. At best, the Christian story is heavenly play-acting. Christ only appears – seems – to have been born, suffered, and died. In a way, there is revelation – something is made known – but no redemption of the world and our humanity in such a view. It leads to a distorted view of God and man that comes out most clearly in the later apocryphal writings, like the Gospel of Thomas and a host of other writings largely dating from the second century. The counter to them is found in the witness of John.

Two principles belong to the question about which books would comprise what Christians have come to know as the New Testament. The two principles are catholicity and apostolicity; both are more or less explicit in the witness of John.

“That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you,” John says, speaking explicitly about “that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of Life.” It is intended for all and not just a select few. The Gospel gives further emphasis to this idea of something known first hand, as Apostolic. It would appear to have an empirical quality to it but there is something more that is captured in what can only be described as the metaphysical images of Word, Son and Light and which lead to another metaphysical idea, the idea of fellowship between God and Man. John writes these things, he says, “that your joy may be full.” What is that joy? The joy of the fellowship between man and God revealed in the Incarnation, the mystery of Christmas.

John’s writings shed the greatest light for our understanding of that mystery. Christ is the Light which “shineth in darkness and the darkness overcame it not,” as we heard on Christmas Eve, for the light is greater than the darkness. Here in the epistle reading there is a further theological elaboration upon the metaphysics of light. “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” What is proclaimed transcends the simple dualities of good and evil, light and dark. The light defines and names the darkness and not the other way around; the goodness of God is greater than all and any evil, greater than the darkness of evil.

There is revelation and redemption. The Incarnation is about this fundamental insight already implicit in John’s witness but wonderfully expressed by St. Athanasius. “There was not when he was not.” God in becoming man in Christ Jesus does not cease to be God, neither is humanity swallowed up and lost in divinity. “Not by the conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by the taking of manhood into God,” is there redemption and salvation as The Creed of St. Athanasius puts it, so-called because it echoes so much of his understanding, an understanding derived, I wish to suggest, because of what he has seen through the eyes of John. And so may we and so discover the joy of our spiritual fellowship with one another. As John says, “truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.”

The Incarnation and the Trinity, “two rare cabinets full of treasure,” as the poet George Herbert exclaims. “Thou hast unlock them both” – such is revelation, things revealed and made known to us through eyes of John looking upon the mystery of Christmas – “and made them jewels to betroth/ the work of thy creation/ undo thy self in everlasting pleasure” – such is redemption. Herbert could be commenting exactly on this Epistle about the wonder of Christmas because of the witness of John, because of the message which he has declared.

“This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you,
That God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”

Fr. David Curry,
Feast of St. John the Evangelist in Christmastide, Dec 27, 2013