Sermon: A Light in the Darkness (2020)

Delivered at Salem United Methodist Church in Greenville, South Carolina on January 5, 2020, the Twelfth Day of Christmas

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

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A Light in the Darkness

Audio Version

In the beginning was the Word

and the Word was with God

and the Word was God.

The Word was with God in the beginning.

Everything came into being through the Word,

and without the Word

nothing came into being.

What came into being

through the Word was life,

and the life was the light for all people.

The light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.

A man named John was sent from God.  He came as a witness to testify concerning the light, so that through him everyone would believe in the light.  He himself wasn’t the light, but his mission was to testify concerning the light.

The true light that shines on all people

was coming into the world.

The light was in the world,

and the world came into being through the light,

but the world didn’t recognize the light.

The light came to his own people,

and his own people didn’t welcome him.

But those who did welcome him,

those who believed in his name,

he authorized to become God’s children,

born not from blood

nor from human desire or passion,

but born from God.

The Word became flesh

and made his home among us.

We have seen his glory,

glory like that of a father’s only son,

full of grace and truth.

John testified about him, crying out, “This is the one of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is greater than me because he existed before me.’”

From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace;

as the Law was given through Moses,

so grace and truth came into being through Jesus Christ.

No one has ever seen God.

God the only Son,

who is at the Father’s side,

has made God known.

John 1:1-18 (CEB)

And in despair I bowed my head;

“There is no peace on earth,” I said;

“For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The wrong shall fail,

The right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

From “Christmas Bells” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It has been said that "Christmas comes earlier every year."  Christmas, of course, comes on December 25 every year, so I think it would be more accurate to say that establishments start playing Christmas music earlier every year.  Imagine my surprise, as I walked through Haywood Mall in the middle of October, seeing the visages of murderous clowns on advertisements for a local haunted attraction, when I heard Elton John's peppy invitation to “Step into Christmas.”  Minutes later, I heard about “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” and “Jack Frost nipping at [my] nose.”  After that, I heard Colbie Caillat declare that "it's Christmas time in the city."  Two weeks later, at that same mall, costumed children walked past a sleigh and a giant Christmas tree in their search for candy.  Retailers reason that people associate Christmas music with Christmas shopping, so they play Christmas music long before Christmas in the hopes of getting people in the mood to spend some money.

Churches, especially those that are more liturgical, operate according to a timetable different from the rest of the world.  As you probably know, there are two major times for celebration in the Church: Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of Christ, and Easter, when we celebrate the resurrection of Christ.  Today happens to be the twelfth and last day of Christmas.  On the Church calendar, both of these times of celebration are preceded by more somber seasons.  Before Easter, there is a roughly six-week season of self-denial, introspection, and repentance known as Lent, and, before Christmas, there is a roughly four-week season of waiting, hoping, and longing known as Advent.

During Advent, we hear the words of the ancient Hebrew prophets like Isaiah, and we remember that, in the same way that Jewish people longed for a Messiah to come and save them from oppression, we long for our Savior to come back to set the whole world to rights.  We sing hymns of hopeful longing like “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus.”  We light candles for hope, peace, joy, and love, not necessarily because we have these things but because we long for them.  In many churches, the liturgical color for Advent is purple, as it is in Lent, but at other churches, like the one I attend, the liturgical color for Advent is blue, the color of the sky just before the dawn breaks.  If Christmas is the time when, in the words of the priest Zechariah, “the dawn from on high [breaks] upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness,”¹ then Advent is the darkness before the dawn.

As the longing of Advent gives way to the joy of Christmas, everything changes – or at least everything is supposed to change.  After weeks of planning and preparation, we visit our families, exchange presents, and then sit down to feast on ham or turkey.  Eventually we have to go back home, put our Christmas decorations back into storage, and return to our jobs.  As children, we can barely fall asleep on Christmas Eve, full of anticipation for what awaits us in the morning.  When we grow up, we realize that we long for things that money cannot buy, things that Santa Claus cannot leave under the Christmas tree.  At Christmas we sing, “Joy to the world!  The Lord is come!” yet, once the celebration is over, it seems that very little has actually changed since the of beginning Advent.  The festivities end, and we are left with “the winter of our discontent.”

It is not uncommon for people to feel a bit let down after Christmas.  Linda Walter, a contributor to Psychology Today, lists a number of reasons we might feel a bit sad after the holidays: a suddenly clear schedule after a month of busyness, strained relationships with the family members we see over the holidays, memories of loved ones who are no longer with us, inclement winter weather that leaves us stuck at home, fatigue from traveling, having to return to work after time off, guilt from holiday overindulgence, and disappointment that our celebrations were not quite we hoped they would be.²  For me, the last ten years have brought a lot of pain and a lot of change, and there have times when, on the umpteenth day of Christmas, I felt like I was still sitting in the dark, waiting for the dawn to break.  This Christmas season, my mother and I were reminded that the hard parts of life, like grief, do not go on holiday around Christmas.  Beetle, one of my mother's beloved pet birds, who was also dear to me, died suddenly and unexpectedly just a few days after Christmas Day.

Unfortunately, our lives and our emotions rarely follow the Church calendar.  I would go so far as to say that, in some sense, life itself is one long season of Advent, one long season of waiting and longing.  The Germans have a word that might describe what some of us feel.  Weltschmerz means “world-weariness” or, more literally, “world-pain.”  It describes “a deep sadness about the inadequacy or imperfection of the world” or “a mood of weariness or sadness about life arising from the acute awareness of evil and suffering.”³  In other words, weltschmerz is the pain of knowing that the world is not as it should be, that life is not as it should be, that we are not as we should be – basically, that nothing is as it should be.  Another German word that might describe how we feel is sehnsucht, which describes “thoughts and feelings about all facets of life that are unfinished or imperfect, paired with a yearning for ideal alternative experiences.”⁴

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During Advent and Christmas, the Church typically reads the birth narratives found at the beginning of two of the four Gospels.  The Gospel of Luke tells the story of Jesus' birth primarily from Mary's point of view.  Mary and Joseph, who are expecting a child at any moment, are forced to travel far from home to Bethlehem.  When they are unable to find any place that will take them in, they end up delivering the baby in a stable.  There, they are visited by a group of nervous shepherds who have just seen an army of angels heralding the infant's birth.⁵  The Gospel of Matthew, on the other hand, tells the story of Jesus' birth primarily from Joseph's perspective.  We read that the family is visited in Bethlehem by wealthy astrologers who have followed a star to their location.  These magi present the child with gifts of gold, incense, and myrrh shortly before the family has to flee from the violence of a paranoid king who is afraid of losing his power.⁶

At the beginning of the Gospel of John, we read not a birth narrative but rather a poem, which some have titled the Hymn to the Word.  It tells us that “in the beginning was the Word,” that “the Word was with God,” that “the Word was God,” and that “everything came into being through the Word.”  It tells us that “what came into being through the Word was life” and that “the life was the light for all people.”  It tells us that “the Word became flesh and made his home among us.”  In Eugene Peterson's words, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”⁷  The Hymn to the Word is very different from the birth narratives, but it tells us all we really need to know about the Christmas story.  It tells us that the creative force at work when God spoke those first words let there be became a flesh-and-blood human being and lived among us as Jesus of Nazareth, a man “full of grace and truth” who “has made God known” to us.

There is one part of the Hymn to the Word that reminds me to be hopeful amid my post-holiday malaise: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.”

The season of Advent took on a new meaning for me several years ago when, during Christmas Eve services, a former pastor of mine started extinguishing the four candles on the Advent wreath representing hope, peace, joy, and love before lighting the Christ candle.  Christ came into dark world, a world in desperate need of hope, peace, joy, and love.  The world can be a very dark place, and the circumstances of our lives can be dark as well, but the message of Christmas is that the Light of Christ continues to shine in spite of the darkness.

The Hymn to the Word tells us that “the light was in the world,” and that “the world came into being through the light,” but that “the world didn't recognize the light.”  The Light of Christ shines in the darkness, but apparently it is a lot easier to miss the Light than we might think.

Splitting up the Hymn to the Word are words about someone who “wasn’t the light” but whose “mission was to testify concerning the light.”  During Advent, as the Church prepares for Christmas, congregations who follow the Revised Common Lectionary typically hear about the one who was called by God to prepare the way for Christ, namely John the Baptist – or, as Methodists sometimes call him, John the Baptizer.  At some point, around the time Jesus began His public ministry, John rubbed the wrong people the wrong way and landed himself in prison.  For those called to be prophets, this is a hazard of the job.  John, like many people of his day, expected a militant messiah who would start a revolution.  As he sat in prison, he began to second-guess himself and wonder if the One he had been supporting was actually going to do what He was supposed to do.  He sent two of his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”⁸  In Eugene Peterson's translation, they ask, “Are you the One we’ve been expecting, or are we still waiting?”⁹

Jesus, who had already done a lot of wonderful things in His ministry, said to the messengers, “Go, report to John what you hear and see.”  Echoing the words of the ancient prophets, He continued, “Those who were blind are able to see.  Those who were crippled are walking.  People with skin diseases are cleansed.  Those who were deaf now hear.  Those who were dead are raised up.  The poor have good news proclaimed to them.”¹⁰  John could not see the light from his prison cell, but the Light of Christ was indeed shining.

After John's messengers left, Jesus said to those around Him, “I assure you that no one who has ever been born is greater than John the Baptist.  Yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”¹¹  If the greatest man to ever walk the face of the earth didn't fully understand Christ and the Kingdom He had come to establish, what does that say about the rest of us?  Though we may have certain information John did not have, are we really any more enlightened than he was?  If even the voice crying out in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord!” didn't fully understand why he was preparing people, then what might we fail to understand?  If even the one “sent from God” to be “a witness to testify concerning the light” could lose sight of the Light amid the darkness of his circumstances, then how easy it must be for us to miss the Light!

According to Shane Hipps, the commonly-held idea that light and darkness are opposites is a misconception.  To say that light and darkness are opposites is to imply that they are equal opposing forces.  Darkness is not the opposite of light but rather the mere absence of light.  “Darkness,” Hipps says, “is always at the mercy of light.”  If you enter a dark room and turn on the lights, the darkness will immediately flee, and it will not be able to return as long as the light is present.  Hipps says that, if you want to dispel the darkness in your life, you need to seek a source of light.  If you are in a place of despair, seek a source of hope.  If you are plagued with anxiety or anger, seek peace.  If you are dealing with sorrow, seek a source of joy.  If there is hatred in your life, invite love into your heart.  If you are tired of the darkness, then move toward the light.¹²

We don't usually notice light, because our attention is most often focused elsewhere, usually on whatever the light illuminates.  What we don't always realize is that light is the only thing our eyes can actually sense.  You aren't really seeing the objects in the room around you: you are seeing the light reflected by the objects.  Your sense of sight is totally dependent on light.  We don't typically notice light, but, at the same time, light is the only thing we can actually see.¹³  I wonder if, at times when the world seems devoid of light, we are actually walking around with our eyes closed, spiritually speaking.  Perhaps the light we seek is always hidden plain sight, and perhaps we only need to open our eyes to experience it.

There is a poem that was reportedly found at the end of the Second World War.  Some say that it was written on a wall in a Jewish ghetto.  Others say it was scratched into the wall of a concentration camp.  The poem read, “I believe in the sun, even if it does not shine.  I believe in love, even if I do not feel it.  I believe in God, even if I do not see Him.”  In the darkest of circumstances, the poet had chosen to believe in the Light.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.”  When our Christmas celebrations are over, when the decorations are taken down put back in the attic, when all the leftovers are finished, when we return to our jobs, this is the message we must keep in our hearts, whatever lies ahead of us in the new year.  The world can be a very dark place, and our lives can seem dark at times, but the Light never stops shining.  The Light is always shining, no matter how dark life seems, but we must keep our eyes open if we want to see it.

May we all keep our focus on the Light.  Amen.


Notes:

1. Luke 1:78-79 (NRSV)
2. Linda Walter.  “The Holidays Are Over; Why Am I So Blue?”  Psychology Today, 01/12/2014.
3. Wikipedia: “Weltschmerz”
4. Wikipedia: “Sehnsucht”
5. Luke 1-2
6. Matthew 1-2
7. John 1:14 (The Message)
8. Matthew 11:2-3 (CEB)
9. Matthew 11:3 (The Message)
10. Matthew 11:4-5 (CEB)  (See also Isaiah 35:5-6; 61:1.)
11. Matthew 11:11 (CEB)
12. Shane Hipps.  “Spoiling the Illusion.”  Mars Hill Bible Church, 05/08/2011.
13. I don't have a specific source, but I have heard Peter Rollins say stuff like this.

The image featured in this blog post is part of a photograph taken by Jack Delano in the Union Station waiting room during World War II.