Christmas Day 2014: Waiting for light in December Darkness

Ann Weems writes, “The whole world waits in December darkness for a glimpse of the light of God. / Even those who snarl, humbug’ and chase away the carolers have been seen looking toward the skies. / The one who declared he never would forgive has forgiven, and those who left home, have returned. / And even wars are halted, if briefly, as the whole world looks starward. / In the December darkness, we peer from our windows watching for an angel with rainbow wings to announce the hope of the world.”

John shows us God’s word communicated in the person born and named Jesus. In him was life and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.

The divine word becomes a means of communicating God’s own self in a radically new way, in the form of a human person. What God revealed through law and prophets failed to bring about the communal solidarity God wanted for humanity.

In the Christmas celebration we see a profound truth: God creates, God redeems, God sanctifies. What humans cannot do, God does for us.  John’s Gospel invites us to be open to the divine phenomenon breaking into our lives, as dramatically as light overcoming darkness. Since Christmas falls at the darkest time in the Northern Hemisphere where we live, it is a wonderful time for us to see the contrast of light and darkness.

John’s prologue takes us to a spiritual mountaintop and shows us the landscape of God’s redemptive plan. We see the exile and return of the Hebrew people. We hear the voices of prophets of old. We stand and gaze into the valley of a new promised land, because in a very humble place, what the prophets longed to see was witnessed by ordinary shepherds. The word became flesh, full of light and truth.

John does not give us a story of the infant birth; there is no manger, shepherds, no heroic story of Joseph and his dream machine or of faithful and thoughtful Mary.  The word becomes flesh and dwelt among us. One with us: how amazing is that?

John intends a cosmological statement: the birth of the Word is a historical marker of a new creation, a new world order. It is difficult for us to see the change from the perspective of the newspaper, or in our everyday lives. Some of us grieve deep and devastating losses this year. Some of us have empty places at our table. Some of us have been brutalized by trust, economic systems that oppress and political rhetoric that disappoint. We need to encounter the divine if we are to retain hope and see the good news of the light coming into the darkness as a testimony to a continuing presence of God with us.

When reading the prologue of John we are reminded of the beginning, the dawn of creation, a vibrant, living, diverse ecology that teems with life, benefiting from light and darkness. Before clocks and calendars, before humans existed, there was darkness and God. When God spoke, “Let there be light” it divided darkness and light, day and night, seasons, and all things of wonderful chemistry like photosynthesis. The light that shines in the December darkness is the light of all generations, of all people.

It is hard to imagine how God can be present when devastating things happen. It is impossible to explain in five minutes how it is that God’s presence is neither a sanction for evil nor a shield against it. In the physical world of time and space, things happen, accidents, natural disasters, illnesses that are beyond the ability of medicine to control or cure. When we face these things we often describe it as dark moments, dark places, and we find it hard to feel comforted by any divine presence.  We may sit in a brightly lighted place and still feel the hovering sense of darkness within. To these dark moments the light will abide and shine. The darkness will be overcome.  Faith holds hope close, and the author of love holds us closer.

When the spirit of hope enters into the hearts of ordinary folks, strange and wondrous things happen albeit slowly. We begin to accept others for who they are and accept that their weaknesses like our own are occasions for God’s strength.  The God we worship is not distant, far out there somewhere inaccessible to us but here, present tense and with us. The word became flesh not only to show us a divine plan but to invite us into divine company.

Thomas Merton wrote, “eternity enters into time, and time, sanctified, is caught up into eternity.” By the coming of Christ into the world, bearing light that cannot be overcome by darkness of any kind, all that exists has the potential to reveal God’s truth and love.

We encounter the light of his presence in the community gathered around a common table, sharing common prayer, consuming divine gifts of sacred bread and wine. In the subliminal reality of grace, we are met where we are, with all our fears and tears and hopes and led along to a brighter manifestation of the love that will not stop or die. Here is the reason for Christmas and onto that mystery we gaze with grateful hearts and spirits.

Ann Weems writes in Kneeling in Bethlehem:

“Christmas comes every time we see God in other persons. / the human and the holy meet in Bethlehem or in Times Square, for Christmas comes like a golden storm on its way to Jerusalem – determinedly, inevitably… / Even now it comes, in the face of hatred and war – no atrocity too terrible to stop it, no Herod strong enough, no hurt deep enough, no curse shocking enough, no disaster shattering enough. / For someone on earth will see the star, someone will hear the angel voices, someone will run to Bethlehem, someone will know peace and goodwill: the Christ will be born.”

The light shines and darkness of any kind cannot overcome it.