Christmas Eve, 2020
One of the best things about the pandemic for me was that when no one was going anywhere from March until September, I never set my alarm. Instead, my “alarm” was the sound of pitter-pattering feet, and the feeling of my two kids, then 3 and 4 years old, climbing into my bed with me. They would just wiggle their little bodies right in close, and I’d wrap my arms around them and for a few moments, the bed was full of love and everything felt safe and warm.
I lived for these few moments each morning. In a world full of fear and uncertainty and constantly changing news and advice, I needed this constant bit of love to creep in and wiggle its way right up beside me, even when, honestly, there really wasn’t quite enough room in the bed for everyone. We made room. Such love was and is a daily source of life and light.
Love, life, and light: three images we think a lot about during Christmas. Each year we hear the story of God’s immense love for us, about how in that love God came to live among us, to bring us life, taking on a body like ours. And then, having heard this story, we light candles, and in this magical moment we bask in the glow of knowing that the darkness of night cannot overcome us because the “light of the all people” has come to dwell among us.
I know that many hearts ache this year with the reality that, in a year when we need that promise more than ever, we can’t experience it in the way we look forward to each
year. We will, of course, still recall that light shining from the manger on that silent, holy night – I am counting on you lighting candles in your homes, maybe even going out on your porch to hold a candle and sing out into the neighborhood. Even if we cannot be together, a light still shines in the darkness and the darkness still has not overcome it! That does not change.
St. Paul's, Pittsford, in 2019
Even so, that darkness has made a pretty good showing this year. With all that 2020 has brought, it can be difficult to believe that there might be a light shining that could possibly overcome that… yet this is what makes it all the more important to believe exactly that! We need that light to creep in, to wiggle in like a sleepy 3-year-old climbing into mommy’s bed, and embrace us with its warmth.
This need is not so different from that first Christmas night, of course. Our hearing of the Christmas story has been sanitized over time, made more sweet and cute than aching and painful. It’s easy to miss or overlook why this light shining in the darkness was so important. The Roman occupation was no picnic. The hundreds of years of feeling like God had abandoned God’s people. The year that Emmanuel, God-with-us, was born, the earth was more than ready for a savior. They were living in a land of deep darkness, just like the people in our reading this evening from Isaiah. And into that darkness, God crept in, wiggled His way into humanity and into a manger in a stable in a quiet, dark little town, so that the shadows would no longer be quite so consuming. And in the dark streets of that little town of Bethlehem, shined the everlasting light.
Do you think God will do that again this Christmas? Do we believe that this will happen, that the light of Christ will creep in beside us, finding its way into a nook or cranny, onto the very edge of the bed or that little space up by the pillow, and shine away the shadows of fear?
It can sometimes be difficult to believe, I know. It has been a hard, emotional, exhausting year, one that has brought many to a breaking point or close to it. So how do we keep believing this light has come, or will?
Maintaining the hope and the belief that God’s brightness will still dispel the shadows starts with opening our hurting hearts even to the mere possibility that it can. It starts with making our hearts as vulnerable as God made Himself when He became a helpless child, completely dependent on a teenage girl and her terrified fiancé to take care of him. It starts with trusting that if God was willing to do that, then God must also know what is needed to take care of us in the effort.
This leap of faith, this vulnerability, can be terrifying. God knows about that, too! The Christmas story is full of a lot more fear than cheer. That Mary was pregnant at all was a risk, in a time when pregnancy was a leading cause of death – let alone that she was unwed, a real scandal! A long journey – probably about 80 miles – by foot. Giving birth to her first child, in a stable with no family to help her except her terrified fiancé. A group of trembling shepherds in the hills confronted by a host of angels. Might as well add to the story a deadly virus, social and political unrest, and an economic downturn, right? In fact, those things probably were going on in the background!
Nope, the characters in the story are no strangers to fear, any more than we are. And there are lots of reasons to keep our hearts safe from all our fears, to just shut ourselves away from it, distract ourselves and focus on something else. Same thing in the story. Mary could have said no to the angel. Joseph could have dismissed Mary quietly like he planned. The shepherds could have just gone back to work. It would have made for a much different story. But instead, the angel says to Mary, “Do not be afraid.” The angel says to Joseph, “Do not be afraid.” And the angel says to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid.” Be open to hearing this good news of great joy. To you is born this day, a Savior. You will no longer be in the shadow of death. A light has come to scatter the darkness.
And what do Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds do? They believe it. They tell people that they believe it. And after the shepherds have greeted this babe, this light shining in the darkness, Luke tells us, they return, “praising and glorifying God for all they had heard and seen,” giving thanks that when they were able to open their hearts, their ears, their eyes, to the possibility that such a darkness-shattering light could be true, as terrified and trembling as they had once been, now they had indeed been transformed.
Some years ago, I learned of this beautiful prayer from a book called Cloth for the Cradle. It gives words to the prayer and longing of our hearts this year better than I ever could, so in closing, I’d like to read it. Let us pray…
When the world was dark
and the city was quiet,
You came.
You crept in beside us.
And no one knew.
Only the few who dared to believe
that God might do something different.
Will you do the same this Christmas, Lord?
Will you come into the darkness of tonight’s world?
Not the friendly darkness
as when sleep rescues us from tiredness,
but the fearful darkness,
in which people have stopped believing
that the war will end
or that food will come
or that a government will change
or that the church cares?
Will you come into that darkness
and do something different
to save your people from death and despair?
Will you come into the quietness of our cities and towns;
Not the friendly quietness
as when lovers hold hands,
but the fearful silence when
the phone has not rung,
the letter has not come,
the friendly voice no longer speaks,
the doctor’s face says it all?
Will you come into that darkness,
and do something different,
not to distract, but to embrace your people?
And will you come into the dark corners
and the quiet places of our lives?
We ask this not because we are guilt-ridden
or want to be,
but because the fullness our lives long for
depends on us being as open and vulnerable to you
as you were to us,
when you came,
wearing no more than diapers,
and trusting human hands
to hold their maker.
Will you come into our lives,
if we open them to you
and do something different?
When the world was dark
and the city was quiet
You came.
You crept in beside us.
Do the same this Christmas, Lord,
do the same this Christmas.
Amen.
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