“And it was night.”
Oct 19th, 2008 by John
“And it was night.”
Doesn’t that sound like a bolt out of the Hemingway blue? A terse, stark declaration; a burst of this-ness.
Hemingway could have written it. But it was actually written by John the Apostle.
John 13:10– “As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.”
John is doing more than telling us a time reference. We are given a reality reference. Darkness and light, day and night, good and evil are very real for John. That Judas eats with Jesus and then becomes an agent of Satan and betrays Jesus into the hands of evil men for a handful of silver coins–is that a broad daylight kind of activity? No. “And it was night.” It was dark and it was evil. People love darkness more than they love light because their deeds are evil. Yet, why are we instinctively afraid of the dark?
Night.
Jesus writhes in agony on a cross. The sun hides. Darkness smothers the land. Evil reigns supreme. In the empty nothingness of death, Jesus is laid in a pitch-black, stone-sealed tomb. Night. “And it was night.” Evil night.
Think about it. Night had to be redeemed, too.
Scooped up into the redemptive work of Jesus, Christians now recite all over the planet that it was night that brought us day. “On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, blessed it and broke it and said…”
Why is this night different from all other nights? On this night, night was conquered. In this darkness, light blazed. In this season of evil, love definitively won the day.
I think Hemingway would have liked John 13:30. He might have even bragged, “John the Apostle taught me how to write.”
“It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference.” Just a few sentences of Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.”
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There is a certain amount of importance in using good language in story telling. When I was in fifth grade, I first learned about the importance of an introduction in a five paragraph essay. My teachers always told me that it was the first paragraph that was the most important and hardest piece to write. But “and then it was night” is the perfect topic sentence to grab readers attention.
I think many pastors could learn a thing or two from good story telling to make their sermons more interesting.
Yeah for pastors that read Hemmingway. I quite enjoy Hemmingway, but sometimes it becomes a little “too far out”. It is good for thinking.
Yeah for pastors who teach the truth like a story. A true story.