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File:Autumn trees in Santiago de Compostela (2012-10-19).jpgHoly Saturday / the Great Vigil of Easter

John 1:5

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

I puzzle over the phrase here translated, “the darkness did not overcome it.”  I want it to say that “the darkness cannot overcome it,” but I am not sure that’s what John or his community understood this sentence to mean.  I want it to say that the darkness has no power over the light that is Christ Jesus.  There is good reason to say this since even death could not hold him.  It is important to hear that death has no ultimate power, that fear and hate and all that is ugly in the human experience cannot withstand the work of God to heal and make whole.   And all of this is true.  I just don’ t know whether I am putting words in John’s mouth.  Maybe John is saying something different, something equally profound.

The word translated ‘overcome’ is used in Mark 9 when a man brings a child to Jesus saying a demon ‘seizes’ him.  And John 8 uses the word for the woman ‘caught’ in adultery.  But 1 Corinthians 9 talks about running the race so as to ‘win’ the prize.  In Acts 10 Peter uses the word to say he finally ‘understands’ that God shows no partiality.

All of which suggests to me that the darkness cannot grasp the light.  It can’t get a hold on it.  This is written in a time when people conceive of darkness – and light – as a substance.  Darkness is a thing, not just the absence of light.  We use language like this when we talk about a darkness so deep it feels palpable or oppressive.

The darkness doesn’t get Jesus.  And the word seems to carry this wondrous duality that the darkness doesn’t understand what’s going on here, nor can the darkness possess it.  The light that has come stands just beyond our grasp.  The life manifest in Jesus is given to us but we do not possess it.  We do not own it.  It’s not in our hands like any other possession.  It’s not a bird in a cage, but a meadowlark singing on our fencepost.  It is there for us, but not grasped by us.

No darkness will silence the song.  No hate can extinguish it.  No sin can chase it away.  No ignorance deny it.  The song is there.  It rings through all creation and it sings on our back porch.  It is there for us, but not in our grip.  It is gift.  It is radiance.  It is life.  It is divine.

File:WesternMeadowlark23.jpg

Gracious and ever-present God,
whose mercy knows no bounds,
and whose arms are ever open to your world:
Grant that Christ may live in us and we in him
And make us joyful in your service.

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Image1:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Autumn_trees_in_Santiago_de_Compostela_(2012-10-19).jpg  Leon F. Cabeiro / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) 
Image 2: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WesternMeadowlark23.jpg  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. / Public domain