A Reflection for Christmas Eve
Service 2017 at All Saints Church, Southern Shores,
NC
“At the Darkest Moment Comes the
Light” Thomas
E Wilson, Rector
We
started off before the service with the church pretty dark, and we gave you
candles to be still and be aware of the darkness as you listened to the prelude
with the bleak midwinter outside. Then we sang “Silent Night”. It is Christmas Eve at 8:20 PM Eastern
Standard Time here in Southern Shores, and it is 3:20 AM in Bethlehem on
Christmas Day. In both places it is dark outside, and we share the darkness.
What is it like to walk in darkness?
Almost
every morning I awake in darkness and take my dog for a walk before I do my
exercise regimen. As we walk out of the house, on many early mornings I can
hear the waves on the ocean a half a mile away, and can hear the owls call and
the fox cry. There are coyotes, opossums, raccoons, birds, rabbits, deer, stray
dogs, feral cats, and human neighbors out there which I have seen in the light
but I have not heard them in the dark. One of the advantages of my part of the
Outer Banks is that there are no street lights, so I walk by the light of the
moon and stars with some ambient light from some of the houses. The heavens are
so clear that I am in awe of how the creation was put together. I am also aware
of how much I do not see, and there are times when I walk and stare at the
stars. Sometimes I feel that this might
not be totally safe and for that reason I carry a flash light. I only use the
flash light if I think there might be something out there in the dark, but I
prefer that delusion of a sense of being safe and alone with nature. However, on
late fall and midwinter nights, nature is not so welcoming in the cold, and so
walking alone, I sing the carols of Christmas under my breath to refresh the
old story that light is coming into the world.
These
are the darkest moments as the nights get longer until the Winter Solstice and
then we have a new beginning. Christianity chose this time of the year to
remember the birth of Jesus. They were not alone - the Greek God Dionysius, the
Persian God Mithra, the Roman Festival of Sol Invictus, the Druid Yule Festival,
and others celebrated the change of the light as a chance for looking at a new
beginning. Joseph Campbell wrote: “The black moment is the moment that real
message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the
light.”
It is 721 BC and the mighty army of the fearsome Assyrian
Empire is surrounding the city of Jerusalem. There is a dark sense of doom
which has settled over the inhabitants. The city is full of refugees from the
surrounding areas clinging to one last hope of survival. In the middle of this,
dwelling in darkness, Isaiah the Prophet looks at a young girl who is pregnant
and sees hope. He sees that new life is beginning and sees the hand of God, the
hope of God, speaking to him and through him to the people. He cries as a voice
of one in the wilderness; “The people who have walked in darkness have seen a
great light; for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.”
Hope in the middle of the darkness, a light shining in the
darkness. The school of the prophet will remember that idea because soon after,
the mighty Assyrian army slinks away back to Nineveh because the King of
Jerusalem, Hezekiah, had been emboldened to construct a strategy and had built
a tunnel to the springs to provide enough water to withstand a long siege.
During that waiting period, the Assyrian army camped outside the walls started
to experience plague and many of the army died. In the meantime back in Nineveh,
the governing powers started to understand the dangers of a highly centralized
empire which meant the huge costs of constant
warfare, an economic system based on greed and plunder of others, and the
breeding of an insatiable lust for control. All of these factors come to a head
with a series of palace coups and the empire implodes and darkness leaves
Jerusalem.
Over the centuries since Isaiah of Jerusalem, the darkness
kept coming back and the prophets kept turning the people to hope for a light
shining in the darkness. Eight centuries later there are a group of shepherds
watching their sheep by night, and they look for a sign of hope in the middle
of the darkness. That hope is shown to them, and they go to Bethlehem to see
this light coming into the world in the person of Jesus.
As Jesus grows up he realizes that he is that light, and he
forms a group of followers who agree to join with him to shine light on the
darkness of the lives of the people. Out of this Jesus movement will come the
church which calls its members to shine the light of Christ in the darkness of
wherever they may be. Since no one kept good records of the birth of Jesus, the
church decided to remember the coming of the light on the days following the
Winter Solstice when the hours of daylight
start to increase. One of the reasons we gather on Christmas eve is to
shine a light to remind ourselves of that central fact of our faith - light in
darkness. This is the story that was passed on by the followers of Jesus to say
that, although the world was covered in darkness, there was a light that shined
in the middle of that darkness. The followers in the Jesus movement said that
they were to follow Jesus and become the light in their generations, reflecting
God’s light. When the church got to be an official religion, it spent a lot of
time coming up with the right way to think about Christ and Jesus and less time
thinking about following Jesus on a daily basis. St. Francis of Assisi tried to
return us to following Jesus by emphasizing the Incarnation, the entering of
God into everyday life. He said: ‘It is the feast of feasts, on which God,
having become a tiny infant, clung to human breasts.” He set up demonstrations
of gathering people in a dark, damp cave along with oxen and donkeys with the
smells inherent in those situations and proclaiming that God chose this kind of
place to be loving and to bring the light which we would take into our hearts
and lives each day.
The story of Christmas is not told just to point to an event
two thousand years ago, but to give us strength to change the events of our
lives, to no longer be people of our own agendas, to be the people who promise
to hold each other’s hands walking in the cold darkness today, becoming lights
for one another. We come not to this place to imagine a far off land but to be
outward and visible signs that even though injustice and oppression may seem to
be lurking in the dark, the light of Natal Star still shines and a new year
begins.
So where is the darkness? You got a couple hours where I can
start listing all the places where I have seen darkness? I want to work out all
of my frustration with business as usual in this country and the world where
people, images of God, are turned into disposable objects of consumption to
feed greed and lust for control. Oh, how I long to do that and impress you with
the image of my being able to see clearly and get you all upset so you will
rise up and, like in the old movie Network, go to the window, or this
case out the door, into the darkness and shout out, “I'm mad as hell and I'm
not going to take it anymore!”
Let me harangue about the church insurance program that I
have to deal with every couple of months because of my age. They want to treat my claims as a secondary
rather than primary policy. Let me start off with my parade of villains who, if
there had been a decent God of wrath, should have died a horrific death,
instead of my friends whom I loved.
How appropriate that phrase “Mad as Hell” is. In our anger
we increase the darkness and create more hells on earth. Yet it is in visiting
and acknowledging that darkness honestly that it is also the place where the
doors to heaven can be found. So where is your darkness? It is there you will
find your greatest light.
“At the Darkest Moment Comes the Light”
I am mad as hell with all the darkness
hanging over news cycles of each day,
I want to point fingers and proudly say
that you ain't seen nothing yet of mess
until I get through being right and true,
spewing my poisonous venom on those
who have earned my wrath; who chose
to cross my path and their days to rue.
Yet I come to hope in a sleeping child
slumbering so peacefully in my soul
who lovingly awakens me to take role
of shepherd kneeling by an infant mild
asking that I might have a hope abound
that I can walk so gently on holy ground.
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