Light in our Darkness
Christmas eve we read the story of Jesus’s birth from the Gospel of Luke, finding historic, social, genealogical location of Jesus, in the line of David, witnessed by shepherd, ordinary working night watchmen. In the birth of this child, the heavens witness by means of a particular star and an angel’s message of peace, here is the anointed one. Our Christmas carols are inspired by the physical narratives of Matthew and Luke, less so by John. The crèche takes its inspiration from Luke and Matthew. The pageants reflect the same. Human baby entrusted to human parents, an unlikely entrance for the singular event which changes everything if you are Christian. We see through the life, death and resurrection of this ONE the full extent of God’s redemptive love, as described in the prayer book: “that he may dwell in us and we in him”.
John gives us poetry, universal light and truth. This mystical rendering of the birth creates a vision of chaos of darkness ordered by divine light. From the total darkness came light and the light was the light of the world. Light is made up of different wave lengths, each with a color in the spectrum of light. We can see the rainbow colors when light is refracted through a glass prism. But when we just look at light none of the individual colors are visible. Each color has a symbolic meaning that is common among diverse cultures. Red for divine love, purple for royalty, green for immortality, and so on.
John’s analogy of light is universal, metaphorical and realistic. The word was with God before time, was God when all else was deep darkness. The Word was made flesh. You can’t explain the process, or the mechanism, but you can appreciate its message: God came to be with us motivated only by love.
The divine word communicates God’s own self. The divine breaks into our humanity lifting us above the physical limitations of time and space, lifting us up into the presence of all that is divine and eternal. It is an event that is both incarnational and cosmic. It is a new creation, a new world order, no matter how hard it is to see the changes in a world torn by conflict, war, hunger, and injustice. In the physical world of time and space terrible things happen, natural disasters, accidents, incurable illnesses, and when we face these things we may call them dark moments, dark places where it is hard to feel any divine presence.
The Christmas message is that into this same disorder came the Word, taking on human flesh, full of light and truth, and it was an offering of love.
Our God is not distant, far out in space, but becomes present with us, even in times and conditions where we cannot be sure we are in divine company. At such times when we wish for any company and feel utterly desperately alone, we may describe it as a dark place. Into this darkness comes the divine light. Sometimes it is hard to recognize the presence, but by faith we affirm that the divine gift of grace is present when the community gathers around this table overcoming our fears and tears and hopes to lead us on in our journey to our true eternal home.
I cherish the yearly cards that arrive in the mail during the season of Advent and Christmas. Some friends have taken to sending these cards electronically, with music, and action. The ones I look forward to most are from friends living in Oregon, Texas, North Carolina, Florida, Iowa, Massachusetts. These friends have been a significant part of my life, for 10-40 years. Such friends express an incarnational presence – because they have journeyed with me through dark places and bright places, consistently giving the gift of their presence. Their enclosed family pictures tell me that their children now have children, how many belong to what was once a single friend in college, and the letter when present highlight some of the events of the past year that they find significant enough to share. I am not a good composer of such letters because I am usually preoccupied with trying to find something relevant to say here to very different congregations on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
This year, I ended up writing three homilies because the pageant featuring the children was a very different atmosphere than the service highlighted by music later. Some cards had a hand scribbled note, “I think of you often, please write and let me know how you’re doing”. Not many words, but they convey something important, human fellowship. They suggest that God moves in us and around us and through us in amazing ways.
Jim Strarhdee, writes: “When the song of the angels is stilled, / when the star in the sky is gone, / when the magi and the shepherd have found their way home, / the work of Christmas begins: / to find the lost and lonely one, / to heal the broken soul with love / to feed the hungry children with warmth and good food, / to feel the earth below, and the sky above. / To free the prisoner from all chains, / to make the powerful care / to rebuild the nations with strength of good will, / to see God’s children everywhere. / To bring hope to every task you do, / to dance at a baby’s new birth, / to make music in an old person’s heart, / and sing to the colors of the earth.”
Martin Buber says, “The encounter with God does not come to man in order that man may henceforth attend to God but in order that he may prove its meaning in action in the world.” The prologue of John as art tells us the mystery of love comes into us as being united with being. It is in this union that we give ourselves for the other and discover our identity. It is here in the realization that what God has done invites us to be transformed by the love given to us, and through having been transformed by the divine gift; we awaken to the need of our neighbors.
The unity divine love offers us builds a bridge from the mystery of transcendence into immanence. The message of John’s prologue is that the transcendent God became flesh in the person of Jesus, immanent with us, one of us, to open our souls to divine reconciliation.