Christmas Eve (Year C), 24 December 2024
Isaiah 9.2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2.11-14; Luke 2.1-14
Revd Rob Miners
INTRODUCTION
Years ago, when I lived and worked in East Africa, my wife and I went on a camping trip with the three children. One night, before we had fallen deeply asleep, we heard sounds out in the bush around us. I poked my head out of the tent door and watched and listened for a moment or two. All I could see was birds taking flight every so often then settling back down a little later. Then another flock would fly out of another tree and later come back to settle. Then another and so on.
I knew what was happening. Lions were encircling the campsite, keeping themselves hidden, but visible to the birds.
O for daylight! O sun arise!
Neither happened. We had to wait and hope. Helplessness and fear governed the sleepless night. Only the light of morning set us free.
THE PEOPLE WHO WALKED IN DARKNESS HAVE SEEN A GREAT LIGHT
The Scripture readings for Christmas Eve always surprise me. I should not be surprised, but I am, that those ancient texts speak into our world with such force and clarity.
I have read the passage from Isaiah 9 many times, but this year its power struck me anew. It is full of striking images, deepest human longings and such powerful emotions.
Isaiah’s poetic image plumbs deeply the subterranean depths of darkness, depression and death where people live as dwellers in a land of depression as deep as death, a land of deep darkness, a land full of anxiety and meaninglessness.
It is a terrible thought that humans should stumble around in deep darkness where justice and truthfulness are hard to find and violence, lies, and hatred injure us at unexpected turns. But it is true to life.
Yet it is there, in the darkness, that a great light has shone. Joy transforms depression as light overcomes darkness. Hope is real. The dark world is not forgotten or consigned to eternal destruction. It is loved with passionate righteousness and justice.
So it is that God goes about his business in his world. He will wrest his people from the terrifying rod of the oppressor, snapping the fear and anxiety that holds them in thrall. Military might and violent rule end up in the bonfire of bloodied garments and weapons. The darkness of fear, anger, hate, violence is supplanted with peace, justice and joy. Light unleashes life in God’s love.
God’s business in God’s world, in the horrors of Isaiah’s day in the eighth century BCE, would be a new Davidic king, prince of peace.
FOR A CHILD HAS BEEN BORN FOR US, A SON GIVEN TO US.
We Christians read that ancient word as a template of God going about God’s business.
And for good reason.
God shines light through a new king who will rule in peace, justice and righteousness. God’s overcoming of darkness comes when he creates, not a new religion, cult or sect, but when he offers the world an alternative governance of peace based on truth, righteousness, justice and love of enemies. The source of this is his freely given, passionate, love for the whole of creation. That is what salvation is.
That salvation happens when God himself enters our history and challenges the deep darkness of oppression and war, fear and violence, represented in Emperor Augustus. Augustus may have thought of himself as sovereign of the whole world; son of god, benefactor and saviour of the whole world, imperator of land and sea.
Even the census was an act of control and power to bring his unwieldy empire to heel in submission to his violent power.
Yet Light shines in darkness. Life is released and God’s work of justice and peace find their focus in a child of transient, immigrant parents.
He finds itself at home among a despised work force called shepherds; economically necessary yes, accepted in high and powerful society, no.
Fear is banished, hopelessness and helplessness fade. The great darkness that covers much of our world has a light shone on it. Even the great Augustus is merely God’s coadjutor for the salvation of the world as we have described it tonight. In doing so he participates in his own downfall.
We may feel we end the year with the triumph of what some call nihilism; the rejection of all values as meaningless and having no foundation. It may even go so far as to suggest that nothing has real existence.
Except for this: that God loves his world in his freedom and offers that world salvation from its oppression and violence; not from his hand as a lordly dictator, as Augustus or his modern counterparts, but through his hand as a servant in human history.
Our task is to trust the One Born in Love as the Light and Life of the whole world. Our task is to live that life among ourselves. Hence the reading from Titus about living lives that are self-controlled, upright and godlike, zealous for good.
There is only one window onto this Light. That is us. If we the church do not trust that Love, Light and Life, why would any-one else? Then we are just a religion.
We need to show how love, light, life work among us as peace, truth, love of enemies, justice, forgiveness and mercy. If we do not struggle daily to live like that, we are a cult and nothing more.
We must wrestle daily in prayer with the question, How do we live in this world? Why? Because we, broken as we might be, are the window through which Light shines.
CONCLUSION
Nick Cave a while ago speaking of keeping the light of creativity and ideas flowing called it;
A little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hands and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. If you can hold onto that flame, great things can be constructed around it.
Delight in the child who has been born for us. Hold in trust and hope to that Light of Life and Love. Live the light of love and life.