A sermon preached at Calvary Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, CA

Dec 24, 2023

Introduction to Worship

We are here tonight, at the darkest time of the year to light our candles and sing the stories of our faith. It’s one of my favorite nights of the year. 

The days are imperceptibly getting longer now that we’ve passed the solstice. And we need more light in our lives, metaphorically and literally. 

We understand how the planets rotate around the sun. We have seen the Hubble and Webb satellite photos of our galaxy and the pictures of earth taken by astronauts. We know the sun will rise tomorrow. 

But I wonder what the longest nights felt like for our ancient ancestors. Did they worry that the sun was never going to return? Wonder if it was dying out, the way a fire turns to embers? 

There is an old Punjabi tale about when the sun was first setting. As her distance narrowed to the horizon, the light on earth slowly diminished. This made way for darkness to creep over the land. The people were afraid that when the sun would finally set, darkness would be permanent. “What will happen to us?”, they asked. 

Far, far across the land, in a small hut, a little lantern lifted its wick. It said, “I challenge the darkness. In my small corner, I will shine a light.” 

With this example, many other little lanterns in other small huts lifted their wicks with light in the darkness. And the people watched in amazement as so many little lanterns illuminated the earth, keeping light in the midst of the darkness.

Our work as people who seek to follow Jesus is to keep light shining in the midst of the darkness of our world.

One of the scriptures we’ll here tonight says this:
The people who walked in darkness 
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.

Tonight one of the candles looks different than the others. It is so we will remember our Palestinian Christian siblings in Bethlehem who were unable to celebrate Christmas today because of war. The patriarchs and heads of the churches in Jerusalem issued a joint statement, a part of which reads: 

“In extending these greetings, we are well aware that we do so during a time of great calamity in the land of our Lord’s birth. For over the past two-and-a-half months, the violence of warfare has led to unimaginable suffering for literally millions in our beloved Holy Land. Its ongoing horrors have brought misery and inconsolable sorrow to countless families throughout our region…”

“Yet it was into such a world that our Lord himself was born in order to give us hope. Here, we must remember that during the first Christmas, the situation was not far removed from that of today. Thus, the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph had difficulty finding a place for their son’s birth. There was the killing of children. There was military occupation. And there was the Holy Family becoming displaced as refugees. Outwardly, there was no reason for celebration other than the birth of the Lord Jesus.”

We light a candle this night to remember, and to add light so we won’t forget what is happening. 

Let us pray. 

As once you came in the hush of darkness, O God, so still our hearts now by the wonder of this night.  Make us wise with the wisdom of a little one, that truth might be born afresh in us.  Let not our hearts be busy inns with no room, but doors opened wide to welcome a Holy Guest, who is Jesus Christ, alive with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.

Scripture:

Luke 2:1-20

Isaiah 9:2-7

John 1:1-5, 10-14

Sermon:

Hello Darkness, my old friend.

So begins Simon and Garfunkel’s most famous Christmas Carol, “Sound of Silence”. 

But how often do we see darkness as a friend?

I confess that at these, the darkest days of the year, I long for light. I don’t like the sun setting at 5 pm.

I love taking vacations to bright and sunny places. They don’t even have to be warm.  My husband wants to go the most northern part of Norway in the dead of winter. I will not be joining him on that trip, but will look forward to hearing about it, when he calls me and I answer the phone from my beach chair in Hawaii. 

Once I heard a great interview on NPR, reviewing a book about the joys and creative work of the night time. Phil Cousineau edited an anthology that centered on the creative joys of nighttime, called Burning the Midnight Oil: Illuminating Words for the Long Night’s Journey Into Day. Here’s the quote that caught me:

And one time I was down in a studio — Warner Bros. down in Hollywood — and they had a little sign on the special effects door: “Do not open the door, for the darkness will leak out.”

I love that.

Rather than thinking about light leaking in, they described darkness leaking out. Because you need a certain amount of darkness to see some things more clearly. Do not open the door, for the darkness will leak out.

This story has caused me to re-think images of light and dark in my life, and in Scripture. 

To start with, when scripture mentions dark and light, it is not referring to skin color. We should be cautious when we notice how our culture puts the good guy on a white horse and calls the bad guy the black sheep. 

Tonight’s assigned passage from the Book of Isaiah tells us:

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.

One of my favorite images to use in worship is light. You may have heard me say “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” quoting the opening verses of John’s gospel. We’ll hear it later in the service when we light our candles. 

Darkness is most often a bad scriptural image. Later in John’s gospel, and frequently, he contrasts light and dark. You are either children of the light or children of the dark. And only one of those is a good thing to be for the author of John’s gospel.

Apparently John was listening to Metallica’s Enter Sandman, gripping his pillow tight, when wrote his gospel. The dark is to be feared and avoided at all costs if you are a child of the light.

But what I noticed about our passage from Isaiah, is that the darkness doesn’t go away.  Yes, they’ve seen a great light. And on them has light shined.

But while light will cause the darkness to leak out, as the sign on the door said, it doesn’t get rid of darkness altogether.

And we know that because we still experience darkness, not just in winter close to solstice, but in our relationships, in our work, in all aspects of our lives.

In the Holy Land this year, in the town where Jesus was born, there is no Christmas because over 1,000 people have been killed in Israel and 20,000 people have been killed in Palestine since October. Our world knows darkness. 

I’ve heard many of my friends recently commenting on the darkness they feel.

We know darkness, and we gather together at the darkest time of the year with candles to proclaim that on us a light has shined and it gives us hope that we’ll find that perfect balance of light and dark.

And I know that in the midst of the darkest time of the year, we’d like the darkness to just go away.

We’d like the bad guys to lose.
We’d like people to not get cancer and children not be shot at school.
We’d prefer scary diagnoses and illness would become extinct.
We want peace in our relationships and in our community.
And if we’re being honest, we’d like God to show up in force and with great strength and bright sunlight that never sets.

God chose not to do that, however.

God became one of us, a helpless infant, subject to the darkness in the world.  I don’t want to spoil it for you, but if you read Matthew’s gospel, King Herod kills all of the infants he can find, and Jesus’ family has to flee to Egypt. God entered the darkness of our world, to show us how to bring light, not to eradicate the dark. 

So, if God chose to shine light by being born in a stable in the midst of political unrest, maybe we need to reconsider how we see the darkness.  Maybe we need to worry less about banishing all of the darkness, which can seem an endless task.

Maybe all we’re called to do is shine light, and trust it is enough.

You can figure out how to be a giant spotlight if you want, but you just need one flame to make the darkness less intense. 

How does the old saying go?—everyone wants to save the world but nobody wants to help mom with the dishes.

We don’t have to do all the things. But we can do something. And it probably starts close to home and then glows out from there. 

I love this reminder from author Elizabeth Gilbert:

“Some years ago, I was stuck on a crosstown bus in New York City during rush hour. Traffic was barely moving. The bus was filled with cold, tired people who were deeply irritated with one another, with the world itself. Two men barked at each other about a shove that might or might not have been intentional. A pregnant woman got on, and nobody offered her a seat. Rage was in the air; no mercy would be found here.

But as the bus approached Seventh Avenue, the driver got on the intercom.”Folks,” he said, “I know you have had a rough day and you are frustrated. I can’t do anything about the weather or traffic, but here is what I can do. As each one of you gets off the bus, I will reach out my hand to you. As you walk by, drop your troubles into the palm of my hand, okay? Don’t take your problems home to your families tonight, just leave them with me. My route goes right by the Hudson River, and when I drive by there later, I will open the window and throw your troubles in the water.”

It was as if a spell had lifted. Everyone burst out laughing. Faces gleamed with surprised delight. People who had been pretending for the past hour not to notice each other’s existence were suddenly grinning at each other like, is this guy serious?

Oh, he was serious.

At the next stop, just as promised, the driver reached out his hand, palm up, and waited. One by one, all the exiting commuters placed their hand just above his and mimed the gesture of dropping something into his palm. Some people laughed as they did this, some teared up but everyone did it. The driver repeated the same lovely ritual at the next stop, too. And the next. All the way to the river.

She continues, “we live in a hard world, my friends. Sometimes it is extra difficult to be a human being. Sometimes you have a bad day. Sometimes you have a bad day that lasts for several years. You struggle and fail. You lose jobs, money, friends, faith, and love. You witness horrible events unfolding in the news, and you become fearful and withdrawn. There are times when everything seems cloaked in darkness. You long for the light but don’t know where to find it.

But what if you are the light? What if you are the very agent of illumination that a dark situation begs for?. That’s what this bus driver taught me, that anyone can be the light, at any moment. This guy wasn’t some big power player. He wasn’t a spiritual leader. He wasn’t some media-savvy influencer. He was a bus driver, one of society’s most invisible workers. But he possessed real power, and he used it beautifully for our benefit.

When life feels especially grim, or when I feel particularly powerless in the face of the world’s troubles, I think of this man and ask myself, What can I do, right now, to be the light? Of course, I can’t personally end all wars, or solve global warming, or transform vexing people into entirely different creatures. I definitely can’t control traffic. But I do have some influence on everyone I brush up against, even if we never speak or learn each other’s name. 

She ends with, ”No matter who you are, or where you are, or how mundane or tough your situation may seem, I believe you can illuminate your world. In fact, I believe this is the only way the world will ever be illuminated, one bright act of grace at a time, all the way to the river.”~~

+++

Many people saw the birth of Jesus as the embodiment of Isaiah’s light shining in the darkness. 

And for the people in Luke’s day, darkness was as real in their lives as it had been to Isaiah’s audience. Occupied by Rome, the people displaced and on the road at the command of foreign leaders.  They knew darkness.

And God responded to the darkness in a stable in Bethlehem.  A child has been born for us. A son is given unto us. A light shines in the darkness.

And the darkness has not overcome it.

And Christmas, the birth of a child, is our reminder that the darkness never wins, because even small and fragile light makes a big difference. It calls us to shine light for each other, helping us through the darknesses of life.

And a baby born to save us reminds us to consider the darkness in new ways.

Friends, there is nothing I could say here tonight that would banish the darkness entirely. And anyone who tells you they can is lying. But what I can say is this—the light that shines is enough. We just need to adjust our vision so we can see by it.

When I traveled to the Middle East in seminary, we went up Mount Sinai in the middle of the night so we could be on the top of the mountain when the sun rose in the morning.

 

We rode camels part of the way up, but then we had to walk because the path was too narrow and tricky. And we discovered it was easier to walk without using our flashlights or headlamps. Because the headlamp shined a bright light in one spot, where the beam hit. But that light blinded us so we couldn’t see the rocks or hazards beyond the light beam.

When we turned off our flashlights, allowed our eyes to adjust, and walked by the light of the moon, it was enough. We could see where we needed to go.

And when the sun rose that morning, it didn’t happen in an instant. It was gradual. The color of darkness became less opaque, the inky blackness started leaking out. The stars were no longer visible, but mountains and plains on the horizon came into view.

And then it was day. And even though I couldn’t see the darkness in the broad day light, I never forgot it had been there with me all night.

In a little while, we’ll light candles in the darkened sanctuary. And we’ll go out into the dark of night with refrains of “Silent Night, Holy Night, Son of God, Love’s Pure Light” ringing in our heads.

And I invite you to take that light with you in your heart. Because unto us a child is born, a light has shined on us. So go and share that light with a world that needs to know that while the darkness is still with us, it will never win, and the lights we shine in the darkness can create some beautiful moments in the midst of it all.

Merry Christmas.

What I said when we lit candles.

Howard Thurman said, 

”I will light candles this Christmas.
Candles of joy, despite all the sadness.
Candles of hope where despair keeps watch.
Candles of courage where fear is ever present.
Candles of peace for tempest-tossed days.
Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens.
Candles of love to inspire all of my living.
Candles that will burn all the year long. “

Let us light those candles, friends. 

And here’s the video I shared with the kids in the service.