What We Need Is Light

What We Need Is Light
Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 98; Luke 2:1-20

Once upon a time a church received a legacy from one of its members. This member had often commented that she wished that the church was brighter. The memorial committee thought long and hard about how to spend the money. They took their recommendation to the session. The committee proposed that the legacy be spent on a chandelier for the sanctuary. Session discussed this a while and finally one session member said with exasperation, “We don’t need a chandelier. We can’t spell it, we can’t afford it, and, besides, what we need is light.”

One of the details about the birth of Jesus that is indelibly etched in our minds is the fact that Jesus was not born at high noon. The announcement to the shepherds came in the dead of night.

There’s a reason Jesus was born at night and not at midday. He came into a world that was indeed dark. People were figuratively stumbling unseeing through life with no hopes, faded dreams, and blinding oppression. This was a political darkness. A series of geo-political power shifts had happened since the time of Isaiah, nearly 600 years earlier. First Assyria, then Babylonia, the Medes, the Greeks, and then the Romans in succession conquered the land. Isaiah was active when Israel was being overrun by Babylonian forces who exiled much of Israel’s upper and middle classes to Babylon. Anyone held in captivity as a prisoner of war knew something of anguish and darkness. 

For Isaiah, the announcement of having seen a great light was also about people – leaders and followers – who consulted their gods, their “ghosts and the spirits that chirp and mutter” (Isaiah 8:19). When we fall back on our idols and neglect to desire and to wait in hope for God, then gloom and darkness fall upon us. Captivity results from consulting our own rituals and fantasies. People can be held captive without chains and locked cells and armed guards.

That captivity reflects the spiritual darkness which had existed since the time when God evicted Adam and Eve from the garden of creation. They had openly disobeyed God’s instruction about the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The first created human beings broke down the barrier between themselves and God thinking that they should be creators as well. Since then humanity has dwelt in a land of darkness constructed from the hopelessness of oppressing sin. 

Human existence has been a cycle of sin, repentance, belief, confidence, delusion, and downfall. This cycle has repeated itself through the generations with little deviation and no hope of being able to be broken by human effort.

It was a lightless, darkened world into which the promise of a Messiah was given. It was a lightless, darkened world into which Jesus was born. The population of this dark social void ranged all the way from the lowest of the lowly – the marginalized shepherds who received the first news of Jesus’ birth – through those who recognized God and those who administered God’s ways – rabbis, church lawyers, educated elite – all the way to people who were beyond the bounds of the Israelite faith community – foreigners, aliens, star-gazers in distant lands.

What the darkened world needed was light. That light shattered the night sky with a sound and light show the likes of which had never been seen. The startled shepherds received the announcement from an angel who was backed up by the great assembly of the heavenly forces singing, “Glory to God in heaven.” I like to think that the heavenly light was so brilliant and powerful that the shepherds were radiant in the aftermath, that the angelic light had burned itself into their countenances so that their experience was etched on their faces for the rest of their lives.

That same effect was certainly the spiritual reality for all who encountered the new born Jesus, particularly Simeon and Anna who saw him in the Temple when he was presented and named according to rabbinic tradition. The magi so marveled at him that they knew instantly that Herod must never be told where the child was. And at the age of twelve the elders and scholars at the Temple were amazed at his understanding and knowledge. The spiritual darkness was retreating as the Light of the world advanced into and through the world.

Isaiah gave four compelling descriptions for this desperately needed light. They were memorialized in scripture long before George Frederick Handel put music to the prophet’s words.

“Wonderful Counselor.” In the world of business and other professions, one current strategy for supporting leaders is coaching. This is not the yell and berate style of many professional sports coaches. This form of coaching quietly asks questions of the individual about the situation at hand and elicits from that person observations and ideas that they already have within them, allowing them to better order their thoughts and to see the best ways to proceed. These coaches stand along side their coachees and help them sort things out. They don’t tell them what to do or how to do it.

Jesus – Emmanuel, God with us – enters our battered and bedraggled sphere of human existence to wonderfully counsel – coach – us into living the life of faith which God had designed for humanity, but which humanity more often than not determined that it could do better. Jesus asks questions, Jesus tells stories, and when necessary Jesus interrupts the prevailing order of things to illumine, demonstrate, and promote what holy living was supposed to be. 

“Almighty God.” As the gospel writer John reminds us, Jesus was with God in the beginning and through him everything came into being (John 1:2-3). Genesis tells us that the first piece of creation was light. Then the first comment about God is made: “God saw how good the light was” (Genesis 1:3-4). Everything else is dependent on the light that came first. The problem is that human beings through their self-willing to be in charge of their own lives have dimmed the light, as soot darkens the glass globe of a candlestick, as putting a lamp under a basket darkens the room. Sin darkens each life, each community, the whole world. As “Almighty God,” the creator of light reintroduces light into human lives one by one.

“Everlasting Father.” Now it seems a stretch, as Walter Brueggemann says, to call Jesus “Father.”(1) After all, Jesus numerous times speaks of and to God as Father. We need to step back and think about what fathering can mean. 

Near the end of his earthly ministry Jesus tells his followers, “I will not leave you as orphans” (John 14:18). Jesus takes up the father’s role. He welcomes children to him. On the cross he makes family by linking his mother, Mary, and the beloved disciple (John 19:26-27). 

Throughout his ministry Jesus takes up the role of family-making, family protecting, family generating. He addresses his disciples as “little children” (John 13:33). He exercises family responsibility like a father. He gives his children a radical commandment within the intimacy of family to “love one another.” In a world of broken relationships, of betrayal, and of domestic violence, Jesus sheds light on the ways God’s people are called to live together in community.

“Prince of Peace.” What is peace? Is it the holiday truce of combative families wearing pasted-on smiles and pretending to like each other? Is it the old-style notion of two people grasping right hands because they couldn’t attack each other with their left hands? We live in a Herod world of duplicity, greed, false truths, and narcissism. We recognize that yet we often deny it. 

It is as if we live in a constantly-shaken snow globe. We know there is an idyllic scene in there somewhere, but we can’t find it for the churning of the snow particles. We are powerless to do anything about it. And the shaking goes on.

Jonas Ellison wrote in his blog the other day about there being two emotions – love and fear – and that only one of them was real. “Love is the fabric of relationship in all of the universe. Atoms stick together and break apart in a certain way. They don’t try to trick each other or harm themselves. They just… Dance.” 

Fear is a story, he goes on to say. “Fear is an arrangement we humans made up when we created the idea that we’re separate from the all, and we’ve passed this story down, generation to generation — not only through our words, but through our genetics.”(2) 

The apostle John wrote that “there is no fear in love, but that perfect love drives out fear, because fear expects punishment. The person who is afraid has not been made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18). Jesus shines an irradiating light of love on our human-constructed fears and drives them out. When we fully and joyfully receive his light, we can be fear-less. That is the peace over which Jesus is prince.

In this world which knows too much warfare, famine, natural disaster, human negligence, and bullying words and actions, we need this midnight clear, silent, holy night which erupts with a light that is unmatched and inextinguishable. What we need is light, a light for all people, the light of the world. It begins with a flicker like a breathed-on ember in a borrowed, rustic setting. It begins. It continues. It will reign in the place of all other lights. May that light be yours this night and forevermore.

(1) Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), 44.
(2) Jonas Ellison, https://medium.com/higher-thoughts/only-love-39888ad55d4a#.5lb73r1uq 

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.