This is amazing! I haven’t seen snow like this since I was a kid and we used to sled down all the Bertona hills, past SPU and bail out before hitting 3rd Ave. West!

In this Advent season, we have been looking at a number of things that scripture has to say about light and darkness. We want to continue that this morning, and to do that we’re going to read just a bit of the gospel of John.

Now, you know that I love to read. And I’ve found I always appreciate books- and authors- who are straight forward. They don’t beat around the bush, and if they want to convince you or convict you or convert you, they just come right out and say it. The gospel writer John is just such a person. He blatantly says “these (things) are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” There it is, no surprises- he’s writing so that we will believe-(trust) in Jesus, and have life.

Reading: John 1:1-5, 9 and John 8:12.

The preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick once said “I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.”

Listen to that again: “I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.”

Once upon a time people thought that the realm of mystery was simply everything we humans didn’t understand. That held up pretty well- there was an awful lot that human beings didn’t understand, so that could all be God’s territory.

Over time, human knowledge- of science, of human development, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, biology, physics has grown at a phenomenal rate. And as human knowledge has grown, less and less is attributed to the realm of God, to mystery. The pie is the same size, but it’s perceived that human knowledge has relegated God to a smaller and smaller piece of the pie. If we understand everything, so the idea goes, then who needs God?

But the truth is, we don’t seem to understand much at all. We’re wandering around in the dark, whether that darkness is sin, or unbelief (which may be the same thing) or ignorance. In so many ways, we are, as Isaiah said, “The people who have walked in darkness.”

Maybe you read a Washington Post article a couple weeks ago. It was about a man named Shin Dong-hyuk, who is the only person known to have escaped from a prison camp in North Korea and made it to South Korea. There are other Northern defectors, people who have been released from North Korea, but only one who made it from a prison camp escape. It is estimated that there are nearly a quarter million people now held in North Korean prison camps, which are visible in satellite images, but are denied by the North Korean government.

Shin Dong was born in such a camp. As a boy, Shin was forced to watch the execution of his mother, hanged for supposedly planning a family escape. On the same day, his brother was shot to death. Shin himself was tortured and beaten at various times,

He has burn scars on his back and arm when he couldn’t provide information about why his mother wanted to escape. He had half a finger chopped off for dropping a sewing machine in the garment factory at the camp. Now free in South Korea, he is trying to figure out for the first time what human life is supposed to be. He says things like this:

• I don’t understand forgiveness- in camp it meant to beg not to be punished.
• I have recently discovered that I am lonely.
• I now realize…that you really need a family.
• I go to church (sometimes on Sundays) but I really don’t understand the words or the concepts.

Such darkness. This is just one story, of course. There are many. We people who have arrogantly thought that education was the ultimate answer, then thought that technology was the ultimate answer…find the world around us as dark as ever. Not just “out there,” but “in here.”

We people who feel we have such a good understanding of so many things are coming off of the single most violent century in the history of mankind, as far as we know. Wars, world wars, holocausts, ethnic cleansings, it doesn’t sound like we understand so much. Maybe it is worth checking out God.

But if we’re honest, God is far harder to understand than we might claim.

There is much about God that is a mystery. That we just can’t know, can’t figure out.

• Why is it that God allows evil?
• Why do people made in God’s image look so terrible?
• Why is there cancer, and Alzheimers?
• Why don’t God’s people seem to be shown any favoritism when it comes to disasters and crises?
• Why do people who claim to be God’s commit such evil?
• Why do we pray and pray and pray yet not seem to get an answer?

Well, if we think God is a mystery, then we’re in good company. Good, biblical company. Think about Job, who had so many terrible things befall him. “I looked for good, but evil came; and when I waited for light, darkness came…” (Job 30:26).

“If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him…” (both Job 23).

But of course, somehow, Job (42) ends up saying “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” Same guy. The mystery of God.

Or King David, who cried out- “O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.” (Psalm 22:2). And: “Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? (ps 10:1)

Yet it was the same David who said “Bless the Lord, o my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name…” The mystery of God.

Or even Jesus himself who teaches his followers to pray a wonderful, intimate prayer, “Father (Abba), hallowed be your name.” AND yet also says “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”

Clearly, there is some mystery when it comes to God. There are things we don’t know. A lot of wandering in the dark. There are things we can’t explain. And still…things happen. The light of God breaks in, not always according to plan or schedule or expectation, and the light utterly changes the darkness. In big ways. In small ways.

I was reading an essay by C.S. Lewis this week. He wrote “Some years ago I got up one morning intending to have my hair cut in preparation for a visit to London, and the first letter I opened made it clear I need not go to London. So I decided to put the haircut off too. But then there began the most unaccountable little nagging in my mind, almost like a voice saying, “Get it cut all the same. Go and get it cut.” In the end I could stand it no longer. I went. Now my barber at that time was a fellow Christian and a man of many troubles whom my brother and I had sometimes been able to help. The moment I opened his shop door he said, “Oh, I was praying you might come today.” And in fact if I had come a day or so later I should have been of no use to him…It awed me. It awes me still.”

Mystery. The thing is, the older I get, the more I find myself more willing (or forced) to live with mystery in my life. I used to feel like I had to explain everything, to out-reason everyone, to have an airtight defense of the faith…and don’t get me wrong, these are very important. There have been and are absolutely brilliant Christian thinkers, philosophers and theologians. But it doesn’t remove the mystery. God is always more, always bigger, the grace of God always overwhelms me, the call to trust always surprises me.

Once we admit that there is mystery to this God we follow, that we really don't know everything, we may be in a better place to think about what we do know.

The Gospel writer John is especially helpful here. He tells us, essentially, that if we want to know what God is like, we look at Jesus Christ. If we want to know about the grace of God, the character of God, we look at Jesus. If we want to know the light that breaks into darkness, we look at Jesus. If we want to know what ties together this world and the next, we look at Jesus. So there is an awful lot that we can know about God. But there is still mystery.

For me, that mystery is not simply that God is, that He exists. I think that the science of the world, the creation itself, the story of scripture, my experience, all convince me of that. At least at some levels, I understand that God IS.

Nor, for me, is the mystery that God HAS COME. Though it’s huge, it makes sense to me that God chose to bring heaven to earth, the divine to the human, to enter into our world and even to go to the cross to once and for all set things right. At least at some elementary level, it makes sense to me THAT God came, it’s understandable.

No, for me the real mystery, the one that is too much for me to comprehend or understand is…the why. WHY would God come? Why would he come for a humanity that embraced pain, and holocausts and prison camps? Why would he come for people who are broken and bitter and battered? Why would he come on my account? Or yours?

And the answer that scripture has, the simple answer is this: “For God so loved the world, he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

A bunch of broken, glued together people, God chooses to love. There’s the mystery, the thing I can’t comprehend or understand or get my arms around. The reason that Christ chose to come here, to do his work, to give his life, to experience a separation from God so that I might, that you might never be separated is…he came out of love.

We almost have to have pictures, or poems or songs for this, because it’s too much. So I have a picture. 28 years ago now, Richard Ballener was a seven year old in Anderson, South Carolina. On the day before Christmas, his mother was busy wrapping packages, and she asked her 7-year old Richard if he would shine her shoes. He went off, and a short time later, with a proud smile, presented the shoes to his mom for inspection.

His mother was so pleased that she gave him a quarter. On Christmas morning as she put on the shoes to go to church, she noticed a lump in one shoe. She took it off, and found the quarter wrapped in paper. Written on the paper in a 7-year-old’s scrawl were the words “I done it for love.”

“I done it for love.” Those might be God’s words to us this morning. “In Christ…I done it for love.” This is the mystery. And as soon as we say “But why…” we are hushed. Our understanding has run out. Mystery. “I done it for love.”

“I am the Light of the World,” Jesus said. “The light shines in the darkness….and the darkness does not overcome it.”

No surprises, remember? The gospel writer John wrote these words in order that that we might believe in Jesus…and truly, truly have life.