Notes from the Wayside: Christmas Perspective: We Need Some Light

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Christmas Perspective: We Need Some Light

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.
Comments are always welcomed.
If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

We Need Some Light

The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness doesn't extinguish the light.

John 1:5 (CEB)

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fears

From "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)"
by John Lennon and Yoko Ono

Once again, Christmas is upon us, the day we celebrate the birth of Christ.

In the Gospels, we read two different stories of Christ's birth. In Luke's Gospel, we read the story from the perspective of Mary, Jesus' earthly mother, and, in Matthew's Gospel, we read the story from the perspective of Joseph, Jesus' earthly father. Mark's Gospel tells us nothing about Christ's birth but rather begins with the story of Jesus' baptism as an adult.

John's Gospel, which is very different from the other three, begins not with a story but with a hymn.
This hymn tells us about a Word,

a Word that "was with God in the beginning,"
a Word that "was God,"
a Word through which "everything came into being,"
a Word that "became flesh and made his home among us."¹

This Word is, of course, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Like a word, Jesus is the way that God has revealed Godself to humanity.

There is one part of this hymn that I especially love:

The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness doesn't extinguish the light.

Nearly five years ago, in January of 2016, I delivered a sermon based mostly on this one verse. It was perhaps a sermon I was preaching primarily to myself. I was going through a rather dark time in my life. The Bible study group that had been my community for the past five years had just disbanded; months earlier, I had left the church I attended for most of my life; and, in the midst of all these changes, I was feeling a bit lost. For some reason, the pastor of the same church I abandoned asked me to fill in for him on the first Sunday of that year.

On the first Sunday of this year, I revised that sermon and delivered it once again at another church. At the time, I had no idea how dark this year would become for everyone. A deadly virus has claimed nearly two million lives in the world and has impacted countless more. People in my country are becoming more and more divided - divided over politics, divided over religion, and divided over race. Even the crises that should have brought us together to work for the common good have become excuses for us to further divide ourselves. People believe whatever they want to believe nowadays: when they are confronted with facts they don't like, they embrace fictions that suit them better.

The Hymn to the Word reminds us that, no matter how dark life becomes, there is a light that shines in defiance of the darkness - a light that can never be snuffed out.

But what exactly is this light?

The hymn tells us that "what came into being through the Word was life" and that "the life was the light for all people."²

"The light for all people,"

the light that "shines in the darkness,"
the light that "the darkness doesn't extinguish,"

is the life that Christ has brought into the world.

In the Gospel of John, we read what is probably the most well-known verse in the whole Christian Bible: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won't perish but will have eternal life."³ This verse has been described as "the Gospel in miniature," or, as we might say nowadays, "the Gospel in a nutshell." Christ offers us a new kind of life - not just an eternally long life after death but an eternally deep life before death.

It is a kind of life that cannot be snuffed out by any kind of darkness.

So is the light that shines in the darkness - the light that can never be extinguished - Christ himself, or is the light something within us?

In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me won't walk in darkness but will have the light of life."⁴ In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says to His followers, "You are the light of the world... Let your light shine before people, so they can see the good things you do and praise your Father who is in heaven."⁵

Jesus is the light,
yet we are the light.

The Bible begins with a poem about the creation of the world. In it, we read that, on the fourth day, God created two lights of the world: "the larger light to rule over the day and the smaller light to rule over the night."⁶ The sun, the larger light that rules the day, shines with it's own light, while the moon, the smaller light that rules the night, shines by reflecting light from the sun.

Christ is like the sun, shining with His own light,
and we are like the moon, reflecting the light He gives us.

Christ is the light who shows us the way, and, when we follow the path He illuminates, we become a light for others.

The world needs some light. We long for the day when dawn breaks to drive away all darkness, but, until then, we are called to shine brightly in the darkness. In this dark time, may we seek the light, and may we reflect the light into the darkness around us.