It’s finally here – all the fluff and kerfuffle that comes with the season. If you haven’t already, maybe you’re about to go home and open the first present that sits under the tree. Just one tonight – the rest tomorrow.
Maybe your children are about to go to bed – what am I saying? – you’re about to try to coerce your
children or your grandchildren into their beds. Maybe you’re going to resort to bribery. I hope not threats. Hopefully, they’ll sleep long enough through the night that you can get a bit of rest before tomorrow. The big dinners, the big celebrations, the excitement. Christmas cards, Christmas letters…sometimes, don’t those Christmas letters just sound a little annoying?
Dear Friends, this year, we climbed Mt Everest, then went and holidayed at Maui. Out little boy Franky was handpicked by President Obama to create a universal education system, and our dear little Tracy was admitted into Queen’s University with a full scholarship. Such a little go-getter for a 13 year old!
Yeah, certainly Christmas has become the time when we can bask in the glow of a year well-spent.
But maybe that’s not you tonight.
One thing about Christmas is that it comes so soon after December 21, the day when there is only about seven hours of light, and 17 of darkness. Today’s slightly better, we’ve had about 7 hours and 5 minutes of daylight. But for many, tonight is the longest night.
The longest night spent in bed alone, remembering the past year and dreading the hours to come, hours when you spend every minute ticking off all those things you miss. Maybe it’s your spouse, a child, a parent, brother or sister. Maybe it’s the job you were told no longer needed you, and you spend the night panicking that the few toys under the tree won’t be acceptable to your kids who’ve gotten used to more.
Or maybe, there’s no tree, at all, and you’re here tonight longing for a present that is just for you, seeking some deeper meaning to this season that isn’t centered around getting more stuff.
One thing about Christmas, it can be as close to hell – as devastating a time as anything – as it can be close to heaven. It can be a time when our own darkness, our losses and mourning, all those fears and worries add up like bills that we’re going to get next month. And we can ill afford them, when the dark is long our night seems to be never-ending.
But a man named John knew that feeling. Knew what it was like to be buried in darkness, knew those long thoughts that keep us awake at night. So he wrote of a light, that can shine even in the midst of all that and that the dark cannot overcome. And that light John wrote about – even though he doesn’t name him in those first verses – was Jesus Christ.
We’re gathered tonight because of a birth – but also more. (We’re gathered here because Grandma said we had to, if we wanted dinner tomorrow.)
But there are other reasons we gather. We come together because for just this one night we can come together and remember something that we hold in common – our humanity. We think on all the joys and sorrows that make us who we are as a people, and we remember that one this night, on this longest night, God came to be with us. This little boy would come to be called Emmanuel, which means literally ‘God with us.” Not God above us, not God better than us, but God with us. And John was right. What came into being through that tiny baby was light.
That light is the light of all people – it shines in us, in our darkness – those things in our lives that drag us down, make us wonder if anything we do or if we are worth anything. But our darkness cannot overcome it – it’s why we call Jesus Christ “the light of the world”. We come in faith, seeking a part of Christmas – a part of the world -- that we think is hidden from view. But we find through John’s words that we have always had what we are seeking. We come seeking life, and find in faith that life has first found us.
Faith brings us here – faith that, in the midst of all this season and all that it has come to mean, our hearts are alive through Christ. This faith, as tiny or simple as it may be, that in the midst of all the darkness of our world a light shines, and that light is for us all.
draws you here tonight, I hope you have found it. Whatever sustains you in life, I hope you can bring it from this place. And if you have come seeking something to give you light in your darkness, I hope you find that that light was in you to begin with. Through faith in Christ – faith in one who was born just like us, a little tiny baby on this very night – I pray that you may have life, and that life has found you.
May this be so among us. Amen.
