And the Darkness Shall Not Overcome It (2)

              John 1.1-7 "... and the light shines on in the darkness and the darkness shall
not overcome it."
I. This is one of the most powerful affirmations ever spoken on
planet earth. It is a promise that God makes in the midst of
evolving galaxies, orbiting planets, and a spinning globe. It is
written in the network of historical settings whether it be the
Soviet Union, Romania, Czechoslovakia, South Africa, East
Germany, wherever men and wo men have lived in the dark shadows
of walls that partition human beings from one another. "and the
light shines on in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome
it."
II. This story begins in the far reaches of creation. Long before
dreams of reaching the moon, or of cloning, or of organ
transplants, or mega-power were dreamt. There in everyone's
Garden called Eden, man and woman were promised that the
spoiler of life would be conquered.
This promise focused one year when, according to astronomers
interviewed on New Radio 78, Jupiter aligned itself with another
star and created a brightness in the sky not often seen. In those
days shortly after the baby J esus was born Herod sought to destroy
him, and his mother and father fled to Egypt to keep him in safety.
"and the light shines on in the darkness and the darkness has not
overcome it."
IV. Later Jesus returned to his home town where he grew up. The
neighbor's called him Jesus the carpenter's son. One day he began
his prophetic mission of preaching the Kingdom of God. "What
shall it profit anyone, if the whole world is gained, and one's soul
is lost?" While theologians were trying to figure out whose sin
caused the blindness of a man born that way, Jesus healed him.
What everyone learned including the most religious was the human
family had strayed far and long from God's ways.
V. It was said of him that he was the light of the world and its life.
Yet he was put to death by crucifixion. Death always puts out
light and life. But to his story God adds an Easter. "and the light
shines on in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it."
VI. Those disciples who followed him were put to death for
proclaiming the Kingdom of God which they understood to have
come in the birth of the Messiah Jesus, each were put to death. By
the end of the first century, 50 years after the first Christians
gathered into enclaves called churches the emperor determined to
wipe them from the face of the earth. Domitian instituted
persecutions that made famous the arenas in which gladiators
made sport of Christians. And from which another emperor Decius
would hear those being burned at the stake singing praises to the
one whose birth had changed their lives... "and the light shines on
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