December 24, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Christmas Eve     Isaiah 52:7-10     Psalm 98     Hebrews 1:1-4     John 1:1-14

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Why do we come to church in the dark tonight? Why this night and not other nights? We come to church in the dark on Easter Eve as well but there aren’t as many of you that night. What is it about Christmas that means we want to come to church, and to be here at midnight to usher in the day?

If we were living in some European countries we would be going home after this to Christmas dinner – reveillon as the French call it. I remember my first French Christmas in New Caledonia at the age of 13 – before we went to midnight mass we left a pair of shoes each under the tree and then when we came home our presents were there on top of our shoes. Still to this day I don’t know how the parents got those presents there! 

Maybe coming to church in the dark seems more magical: the candlelight; the joy of being with friends and family. The sense of expectation is heightened.

Maybe there is something too about claiming the darkness. We heard in our gospel reading tonight: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. John, the gospel writer, proclaims with confidence that light shines and cannot be overcome.

I don’t think I was ever really afraid of the dark as a child, but lots of children are. We are cautious even as adults of walking alone in the dark. We have security lights and street lights to help us feel secure. In our apartment building the lights in the corridors never go out. In the city the lights never go out. If you want to see some stars you need to get far away from the lights of the city.

Tonight we embrace the dark. We keep the lights in the church lower. We have lit the Christ candle on the Advent wreath, where we have been lighting one candle a week in a countdown to Christmas. Each of the purple candles represents a week of Advent and each candle has a meaning attached to it. The first one is for hope, the second for peace, the third for joy, and the fourth for love. Advent themes that lead us into Christmas. The candles bring light and the darkness does not overcome them. Hope, peace, joy and love are not overcome by the darkness.

The world this year has felt like it could maybe be overcome by darkness. It would be hard to say whether this year has been more “dark” than others; every year has its tragedies and calamities; who is to say one is “worse” than the other. It all depends often on how close you are to the particular darkness. Parisians will be feeling in need of light after the terrorist attacks; the thousands of refugees spending their first Christmas in the cold of Europe have sought light and hope. Closer to home our child poverty statistics are pretty dark.

Simply turning the lights up; more street lights, more security lighting, more candles, does not bring about change. What we need is a different kind of light. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Thousands of years before John wrote these words, storytellers passing down the story of creation from the memories of their foremothers and forefathers, had said the same thing. “In the beginning God said “let there be light” and there was light. And God saw the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.” (Gen 1:4-5). Many creation stories from the cultures of the world speak of the coming of light as essential to the beginning of life.

Like our own story of Rangi and Papatuanuku, the sky and the earth must separate to allow light and to bring forth life.

John’s poem or hymn of the coming of the Word begins in the same place: with light. The light is literally light that shines, like a candle or the sun. And the word “phos” in Greek can also mean understanding, enlightenment or truth. Biblical writers always use words with multiple meanings to encourage us to peel off the layers and wander about in their writing.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Understanding shines in places of ignorance, and the darkness has not seized it.

So tonight in the dark we seek light and we seek understanding, or wisdom. And this light is not just a light as bright as the sun to blind us and banish the darkness. Instead it lives alongside the darkness – like night and day, both were declared good.

Barbara Brown Taylor, an American writer, has a book called Learning to Walk in the Dark and in it she recounts being taken to a cave by a friend so she could experience real darkness. In one cave before turning her headlamp off she spots a sparkly stone full of light and keeps it as a souvenir. When she gets home and takes it out of her bag it looks like a piece of gravel. [1] She says “I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.” [2]

We don’t want life to be hard, we don’t want suffering for ourselves or others but we know too that from “dark” times in our lives can come learning and strength and hope. To bring about change in amongst the darkness of child poverty or the refugee crisis requires spending time listening and learning. It requires us to spend time in the darkness so we can find out how peoples and governments can work together. We can’t magically fix these problems even on this the most magical of nights. Rather with the strength of the light within, we can together listen and work and bring about change.

Jesus’ journey into our world began in the same way as each of us; in the darkness of the womb. There is an early church tradition that Jesus was born in a cave – which is entirely possible if the house the family stayed in was built against a hill and the section for the animals (which was inside the house) was that end of the house. He was born into the quietness and darkness of a humble home with a family and animals around. [3] His journey ended in the darkness of a tomb, also a cave. Then light broke into the darkness, the light of new life, or resurrection.

And so we gather tonight in the dark, the dark of a womb, the dark of a cave, the dark of the night, the dark of creation waiting for first light.

This darkness is good as God created it, and safe. We know there is much in the world that is not safe, much in the world that is sad and wrong and evil.

And so we come this night to seek the light, the light that was created at the beginning of time; and the light that was born that first Christmas night.

The light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

[1] Chapter 6 “Entering the Stone” Learning to Walk in the Dark 2014 Harper Collins

[2] Ibid p 5

[3] Kenneth Bailey Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes 2008 SPCK chapter 1