When I was doing A level English I had to wrestle with the Prologue of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales  in which Chaucer introduced us to each of the pilgrims who were to travel from London to the Shrine of St. Thomas a Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.  Then, in the rest of the work, each of these had their own ‘tale’.

Prologues, by their very nature set the scene and through them get an idea of what is going to come.

Similarly, our Gospel today is a Prologue – the first 14 verses of St. John’s Gospel- through which the writer, with great mastery, introduces us to the themes of his Gospel – sets the scene for what is to be unfolded, revealed  in the life of Jesus and which roots the events of that life into that great theme of Light doing battle with darkness and triumphing over it.

The Jesuit Biblical Scholar, Raymond E Brown, calls John’s Prologue a poetic summary of the whole theology and narrative of the Gospel, as well as an introduction.

He suggests that the Prologue can only be fully understood after the gospel has been studied. The recommendation, therefore is that, after reading the gospel in its entirety  we should then return to the Prologue. It is then possible for us to understand more deeply the meaning John is trying to impart.

The basic theme of St. John’s Gospel is that the Son descends from heaven to our level and ascends back to heaven bringing us up with him to the divine level.

Or as one of the early Christian teachers of the Church put it - God became as we are in order that we should become like him.

This is a stupendous claim and through it we are taken into the heart of the Gospel action which is,  that in Jesus, God came to share our human life from within and in so doing raises up our human nature and opens for all of us the possibility of eternal life. This possibility becomes real when we fashion our lives on that of Jesus.  The hope is that we become more Christ-like.

This vision is taken up by one of the Collects, that for the Second Sunday of Christmas, in which we pray:

Almighty God,
Who wonderfully created us in your own image
And yet more wonderfully restored us through your Son Jesus Christ;
Grant that, as he came to share in our humanity,
So we may share the life of his divinity.

This is a huge request and it has big implications;  the biggest of these is that we can, somehow, be like God.  How is this possible given that God is completely above and beyond us?  Is it that we can bring him down to our level and turn him into someone made in our own image? That would be to dilute the Majesty of God and His Mystery and Otherness and make him little more than, at best a super-human and at worst ‘one of the lads’ – the kind of theology, popular in some places, that ‘God is simply my mate.’

There is, inevitably, a tension between a deep personal relationship with God which is the object of our prayer, worship and study of God as revealed in Scripture and the mysteriousness of God which we can only express in superlatives like ‘Almighty’ or negatives like ‘Immortal, Invisible, Incomprehensible.’  The key to this tension is in Christ Jesus himself – indeed those two words express it. ‘Jesus’ is the human being who is God as one of us and ‘Christ’ is the God-title that shows us the Divine nature of Jesus.

We express this tension whenever we pray the Creed, as we shortly shall – in which we speak of our Lord as ‘the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God and we place that statement next to another set of beliefs that he was made man who came down from heaven and, after a series of events from Bethlehem to Calvary, returned to his Father.

At one level we could say of this – God came to us – did things amongst us and then returned to heaven.  What changed as a result?  The answer to that is that we did - or at least that we can change.  What Jesus achieved – and goes on achieving - is to turn our lives from being bound by the earth earth-bound to becoming heaven-bound.  That is potentially what can happen to us but if it is to be achieved some changes have to be made and the first of these is in our understanding.

The Prologue of St. John’s Gospel explains what this means when it contrasts the darkness of the world with the Light of Christ. That light penetrates the darkness and, as it were lightens it so that its power is diminished and eventually overcome.

Trying to think of a way I could illustrate this, I was taken back to a boat trip I once took between Portree on the Isle of Skye and the mainland port of Mallaig.

As the boat journeyed, the sky darkened until it was impossible to see any daylight. As the boat turned into the Sound of Sleat, the waves crashed against the boat and it tossed and turned in the boiling waters. The sky lashed down hail and heavy rain. It was a frightening experience and all around was utter darkness.

Then, quite suddenly, in the midst of this storm, the clouds parted a little and a brilliant shaft of sunlight penetrated the black sky. In front of the boat, a shimmering, brilliant patch of light danced on the waters. The whole scene was transformed.

Light had penetrated the darkness and, as it were, made a statement to that darkness – you cannot overcome me. I will prevail. Light is stronger than darkness.

In John’s terms that can be seen as Christ saying to a darkened world – do what you will (and indeed it tried hard) but my light, my love will prevail.

That is more or less what the Prologue says and in the working out of the Gospel – for the remaining 20 and a half chapters, we see this battle of darkness and light engaged in the person of Jesus – a battle which led ultimately to the victory of the Cross and its subsequent triumph declared in the resurrection.

As in my boat trip, the storm which seeks to destroy Jesus is penetrated by light, the power of our Lord’s Love  which transforms and overturns the darkness.

For the world which Jesus comes to save the imagery is vital and we have to grasp its meaning, not least because, seemingly our world is increasingly a dark place. The deeds of humanity more often reflect darkness rather than light.

Yet the Gospel is clear – no matter how dark things get there is always the triumph of light. God will prevail.

But is this just the preacher’s wishful thinking or the Christian’s futile hope?

Sometimes it seems so but we have another component to put into place if it is to become a reality and that is – ourselves.

For it is through us that the world will slowly but most definitely be changed from a place of darkness into a place of light.

For that to be so there has to be a transformation not only of our understanding but also a transformation of our very lives.

If, as I suggested, we can become like God it is not that we can BE God – but that we can REFLECT God and his qualities – of mercy, justice, love, freedom and holiness. Qualities which the world needs to see.

These qualities, when achieved are the same qualities which Jesus showed in His own life. So to talk of being Christ-like is to talk of having these qualities in some measure in our own lives – and the more they are present in our lives the more they are present!  In other words, the more we try to be like Christ the more we shall be like Christ.

And to be like Christ we have to embrace the potential of our own lives and refuse to be dragged down by the darkness which so often seems to prevail – a darkness which comes across in negativity, a refusal to accept that we can be changed at all.

This requires vision- so often lacking in the Church and it requires submission to Christ.

In our first reading from Paul’s letter to the Colossians – a remarkable passage full of rich imagery – we are told that Christ is the image of the invisible God in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell  and because of this, all things are reconciled to God.

This reconciliation is the key to everything in our Christian life because once we are reconciled to God we are a new creation – we are, as John’s prologue puts it, children of God.

What a fantastic vision that is and what a title! Children of God. Not children of the world; not children of darkness – but children of light – children of God.

Just realising the tremendous implication of that can be the most transforming thing that can happen in our lives. It changes everything – it changes the way we look at ourselves and each other. It changes our destiny – it changes the purpose of our lives – it is totally transforming.

And yet – so often we continue to behave as if it wasn’t true. Maybe because we are too scared to believe it – so absolutely incredible it seems.

But – if we dare to believe it and if we take steps to make it true we make progress in the  process of becoming Christ-like.

Of course, that is often a very painful process because it means we must confront the darkness not just of the world but in our own lives. This darkness is sometimes sin, sometimes complacency, sometimes the despair that we don’t seem to be any better despite all this God knowledge we have.

To move away from this negativity we have to do something really profound.

Some of you may know about a man called Charles de Foucauld. He lived between the 19^th and twentieth centuries and as a young man he led a rather sinful life. As a boy he had been spoiled and he was terribly self-centred. Yet God wanted to change him and he found his moment. A series of incidents when Charles was in the French Foreign Legion led to a sickness in his soul. He was in total darkness and in this state he called on a priest to whom he made the request that he wanted instruction in the faith. The wise priest penetrated his soul when he replied, “No, my son, you want forgiveness not instruction.”

The step Charles de Foucauld took that day was the step of repentance – of turning his life back to God. As a result he became more fully a Christian and his story of his subsequent missionary work in the desert has inspired many.

Until then, his life as a Christian was just the Prologue to a life in which the Gospel took him over more and more.

That’s the profound step we all must take if our lives are not to be lived as a prologue to the Gospel but rather lives lived within it, acted upon by it, and slowly becoming it, fully and completely.

That is what it means to be like Christ – that is the way we shall become His Light in the world today.

But first – the Light must penetrate our own souls – we must repent of all that is dark within us and, with joyful confidence receive that wonderful gift that is on offer to us – to become truly, completely, children of God