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Jan. 3, 2010, 2nd Sunday after Christmas. MLC, H. Fege, D.Min. What do you love most about this time of year? How did Christmas come to be celebrated on Dec. 25th? The exact day or month of Jesus' birth is not known. There are references in early Christian
literature to the birth of Jesus in March, April, May, and Nov. Around 350 Pope Julius declared Dec. 25th as
Christmas, which also happened to be the festival of the winter solstice. So the Roman birthday of the sun became the Christian birth
of the SON. Light/Dark, Day/Night play themselves out like sunlight and
shadows in this season of seasons. ·
Silent
night, holy night, all is calm all is bright ·
Oh holy
night, the stars are brightly shining… it is the night of our dear Savior's
birth ·
O, little
town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie,
beneath the deep and ·
dreamless
sleep the silent stars go by. Yet in thy
dark streets shineth the everlasting light. ·
It came
upon a In the middle of the night on the longest night of the year,
the time of deepest darkness, Jesus is born. As today’s Gospel lesson from John has it – speaking of the
Baptist, “he comes as a witness to testify to the light… He himself was not the light – but he comes to testify to
the light. “The true light which enlightens everyone”. And in vs. 14 the word “glory” appears two times, “We have
seen his glory – the glory of a father’s only son.” The word trans. “glory” means radiance, luminosity… the sacred, holy. God said
let there be light and there was light and God separated the light from the darkness and God called the light day
and the darkness he called night. This light is not the light of the sun and the moon or
stars, they are not created until the 4th day. The light in Gen. 1. 3-5, is a primordial light, a light
that is the essence of God’s own presence… a light that existed before the sun,
moon and stars. Our Jewish brothers and sisters to this day celebrate
Hanukah – the Festival of Light, which just happens to coincide with the winter
solstice and our Christmas. Written near the end of the 1st century, the
Gospel today begins not with a birth announcement but with a creation account. In the beginning was the word and
the word was with God and the word was God. The light was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness
did not overcome it. The light of which John writes of course is Jesus. I have given you only a small sampling of the light/darkness imagery of the Bible but
enough to hopefully start us off on this season of shadows and light of
Christmas to begin another year, as the darkness of the night begins to yield to
the dawn of longer days of light. So for this first Sunday of the year 2010, I would like us
to consider the meaning of light for our own lives. I recall an incident from my college years. I was a student
at MTSU in As it happened, on one such expedition four or five of us
came upon a large underground room which had a number of smaller passages going
off in different directions. It would have taken us too long to crawl down each of those
passages to see if it was a dead-end or worth further exploration. We split up and agreed to meet back in the “auditorium” as
we called the large room, in 15 min. Each of us took a different passage. In
those days we used carbide lamps which shot out a bright flame (the lamp was
worn on a helmet that had a fitting for just such a lamp). There are a number of advantages to such a lamp. Carbide is
a chemical which when mixed with water provides a gas that emits a bright light,
and if there is bad air in the cave it will go out… so it’s a safety measure as
well. I crawled maybe 20 yards when the passage opened into
another large room filled with stalactites and stalagmites… I was so in awe that I walked around until I realized I had
not marked the passage out of which I had come… and there were at least five or
more passages leading off from the room I was in. I knew I was in trouble when my lamp started sputtering… I decided to sit and wait until the others found me. The
light went out… There is no darkness as dark as darkness in a cave… The silence is only interrupted by the dripping sound of
water in the deep recesses of the cave, creating another column… Talk about scared. Talk about learning how to pray… After a while you begin to
see light that does not exist… a phantom light, created by your brain in the
absence of all stimulation… So when I finally saw a flickering of light, a pinpoint glow
that did not go away but got brighter … I said, as my Southern Baptists friends say, “Thank you
Jesus…” Finally there were muffled sounds. I once was lost but now I’m found or something like that, go the
words to “Amazing Grace.” It is light, they say, that awaits those whose heart has
stopped and they have been brought back from the other side. What I remember from that cave in middle It was light that I longed for, hungered for, prayed for and
cried for. It was the light that rescued me from the darkness and
brought me home. As we begin a new year, I would like each of you to join me
in asking that God would again find you and bring you out of whatever darkness
you might find yourself in. That the joyous light of Christmas would find you and bring
you life and bring you home. Did you ever notice the tense of the verb in “joy to the
world” is the present? It is not “Joy to the world the Lord has come”. It is Joy to the world the Lord IS come. Most New Year's resolutions are about self-improvement, or
financial concerns… why not try something that will cover all resolutions. Resolve to meet God daily in prayer, weekly in worship, as
you give of yourself to Him in service, as you are able, as you live your life
in the light of grace. Amen |
