Beauty Forever Beyond the Reach of Shadow

John 1:1-8, 19-28

I love the opening of the gospel of John. I think that the way it uses “light” as a metaphor for Christ is so clever and so beautiful. This scripture says that John came “to testify to the light,” though he himself was not the light. Later on, Jesus refers to himself as the Light of the World (John 8:12) and even refers to the disciples as the Light of the World (Matthew 5:14). But what I love most of all is verse 5, which says, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.”

This Sunday, we will observe the Winter Solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year, which almost always occurs on December 21. Coincidentally, this is also my son Henry’s birthday. It’s a beautiful example. On the darkest evening of the year, I received one of the brightest lights in my life (my daughter Iris is also a shining light, but her birthday isn't as serendipitous to make a good object lesson). 

Aside from the Bible, my most frequently read and reread literary work is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series. Around the middle of the third book, our heroes, Sam and Frodo, are deep in the dark land of Mordor, where evil dwells. The heroes face all kinds of troubles, and the story turns bleak and hopeless when Sam looks up and briefly glimpses a star. Tolkien writes: 

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.”

Though I cannot prove it, I believe that Tolkien, a devout Catholic, likely drew inspiration from the opening of John’s gospel. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overtake it–the beauty and purity of the light is forever beyond the reach of darkness. 

In this season of longer and colder nights, I invite you to look to the light and remember the opening of John’s gospel. Every candle that we light, every light adorning the tree, every star in the sky calls us to remember that Light has already triumphed over darkness. May we rejoice in that knowledge.

Rev. Ryan Young