Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue

Texts: John 1:1-18

Light was long thought to be a substance emitted from its source—not an unreasonable conception. With proper reflectors to guide it, light can be “sent out” and focused on particular objects. Just as a pipe sends smoke into a room, or a hose sends water to cover a sidewalk, so a torch sends light into a closet.

Yet if light is a substance, it is a substance very peculiar indeed. For one thing, what does it weigh? You can’t hold light, you can’t keep it with you, you can’t put it in a bag, and so forth. So a more modern conception arose, according to which light is actually energy, which is to say, movement or vibration. When energy moves through water, we see a wave; violent energy makes disastrous waves (as the tsunami two years ago showed, to the terror of millions). Music is controlled energy, vibrations of air which move from the source to our ears, whose membranes themselves vibrate in happy receptivity. So light, according to the modern conception, must be energy transmitted through space. But this conception, like the older one, has a fatal problem. If light is energetic vibration, what is the substance that light vibrates? It is not water, it is not air; what is it?

And so we come to the most modern explanation of all: that light is neither substance sent forth, nor energetic vibration. We don’t know what light is. Nonetheless, we do know that it has at once properties of a particle of matter and properties of a wave/energy field. Scientists can write the equations for light, and the data we have will fit the equations; and it all works so long as we don’t try to picture the thing. For no one can give us a picture of light. It remains a mystery beyond the capacity of human imagination.

When God said, “Let there be light,” he was creating. And creation is not emanation. Creation means to give existence to something, to allow it to be something real. There is no picture that the human mind can have of the creative act. For what we humans do is manufacture. We make things. Even the most “creative” endeavors are still makings, performances by us accomplished on the basis of preexisting material. A chair is made of the wood that was already around. A symphony is constructed from scales and harmonies and instruments that already exist. But to create, to create absolutely, means not to use already-existing things. On the contrary, to create is to give existence, to permit something to be, to bring it into being as precisely itself. Only God creates, only God gives being.

And God said, Let there be light. When the ancient author penned those words, he hit a theological home run. Light is a thing in the world, yet when we think about it, we famously run into the difficulties I have mentioned. Which means that here we have a creation that already takes us beyond our imaginative capacities. Wherever we stand—on a subway platform, beside a cash register, in the board meeting, in line with our coffee—we are in the presence of light. We exist, and therefore we stand on the threshold of mystery, a place from which we can be directed to the source of mystery.

The source of mystery is the source of light. To speak of him strains our language to the breaking point. We know he is not light, just as he is not any other thing: he, the reason things exist, is in that sense no-thing. But this does not make him distant. For if he, this source of light, were far from us, then he would be merely some other thing in the world, like some distant star (some other thing that was very important but very far from us). The true source of light is not a thing. And so he is in no place. He is nowhere in this universe, nor (if there be many universes) is he in any of them. He is neither near nor far, but perhaps it is best to think of him as near, if we can remind ourselves that we don’t mean near in space. The source of light is the reason we continue to exist. Pause for a second . . . you are still here only because he holds you in being, he lets you be. Do not think of him as far away!

Scripture calls him Light, he who is the source of light. Here surely we press language beyond its limit, for he is creator and we are creature. Yet there is something deeply appropriate, on a metaphorical level, about calling him Light. For one thing, we can’t form a proper image of light, and so Light is fitting in that way to be a name of God. For another, the presence of God to his creation is rather like the presence of light in the world. God doesn’t add anything to a room; you can never open a closet and say, well, here are old boxes and clothes crammed on hangers and shoes and junk from last Halloween and, oh yes, there’s God in here too. No: God doesn’t add anything to creation, but we might say he lets us know what’s there, the way light does. And there is another thing. Light and darkness are opposites. Darkness is the absence of light, just as evil is the absence of goodness. Neither darkness nor evil are real things in themselves. God is real, and God gives reality: God gives light.

What we have celebrated this week of Christmas is the birth of the son of Mary who is also the son of God. His birth is the irruption of the timeless into time, of the creator into the creation. It is also the coming of Light into darkness. For there was already light in this world, and joy and love and goodness. But there was also darkness, and deep unconsolable sadness, and wickedness seemingly unbounded. Think of villagers gassed, of enemies and innocents tortured. Or think more particularly of gossip and lies. Or think of a child pinned by a truck racing through the amber light. It was into this darkness that he came, first into the darkness of Mary’s womb, then into the darkness to which we may become so accustomed that until the moment of tragedy, the darkness seems light to us. Did we think we needed him? On the contrary, we fought him off. But his is and will be the final victory. The light shines on in the darkness. It shines and will never be put out. And the darkness has not and will never master the light.

In the beginning was the Word.
All things were made by him.
In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world.
He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
We have beheld his glory.
And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.

Please stand and affirm with me the faith of Christmas, the Nicene Creed, in which we say of Jesus Christ that he is Light of Light.