When my wife and I arrived home Monday night after a 5 day delay in getting there due to
“snow on snow” (12 feet, or 4 meters for my Europe friends) as the Christmas carol says, the house was dark because the power had gone out. As a result there’s darkness, and lots of it. This far north on the earth, with this many clouds, our world is dark most of December by nature; without intervention we’re in the dark about 17 hours a day!!
Inside, a few candles dispel the total darkness that would otherwise be ours. Now, into our fourth day of power outage, I’m musing on the powers of darkness and light – and perhaps there’s no better day to muse on this than Christmas Eve…
“The Light Shines in the Darkness” is how the great mystic disciple of Jesus named John put it, “and the darkness did not overpower it…”
That’s the way of it of course. Monday night, near midnight, the power had returned and my wife and I were startled awake by the hum of various motors and the return of lights. I turned the all off and returned to bed, but the relief was short lived; another moment awake in the middle of the night was when I realized we were in the dark again. In this total darkness it’s in you to freeze up, afraid of hitting a wall or running your foot into the edge of something. Every step’s tentative, and this is visceral. It’s deeply embedded in our ancient brains to move tentatively, if at all, when darkness shrouds our world.
Then I light a match, there at 2AM, and then a candle. That’s all it takes to dispel the freeze of tentativeness, instilling in me a confidence to move, to live, to take action. Light dispels more than darkness. It dispels fear, uncertainty, and the kind of disengagement that shrinks our lives.
It’s literal of course, but it’s metaphor too, because John is saying that the meaning of Christmas is that light, in the form of Christ. “In Him was life and the life was the light of humans” which means that in a world of darkness, there’s a light to dispel the kind of fear, disengagement, and uncertainty that leads to the racism, tribalism, and violence that so saturates our world.
When the young man who shot and killed people in a South Carolina prayer meeting appeared in court, he was met by family members of the victims declaring their forgiveness. Light shines in the darkness.
A young man, at cost of his life, shelters three young girls in a different shooting. Light shines in the darkness.
Light doesn’t just show in martyrdom though. It shows up in generosity, words of encouragement, crossing social and racial divides, opening your home, visiting prisoners, and o so much more. Light shows up in powerful beacon-like ways, and tiny acts with no more lumens than a single match. It matters not: light is always light. It always wins.
In a world punctuated by the darkness of violence, war, betrayal, and loss, 2015 has been especially dark on a global scale. I don’t need to pour out details of mass shootings, insane dictators, blatant racism, millions of refugees, and the scourge of human trafficking that courses through the veins of our tired earth like a cancer. You know it all already. This is the face of darkness.
I find it poignant that it’s always at the sites of mass shooting or other great losses that there’s a gathering of candles. It’s almost instinctive in us to light a candle at those spaces such as Paris and San Bernadino where darkness has sought to overtake us. It’s a small way of saying “NO! In the name of God, we won’t let darkness prevail. Light wins!”
For years I’ve had a little poster in my office that says, “Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness” and o how we need to hear this word as we enter 2016, when most of what I hear is how bad the world is, and how stupid politicians are, and how stupid people are for voting for politicians. Blah. Blah. Blah. Enough already.
How about being light instead?
We need this word because it’s not a platitude, it’s a powerful reality. Jesus said it this way when he spoke to his followers: “You are the light of the world…let your light shine…!” There’s much more to the text but the essence for this moment of darkness is to realize that you and I have a calling. Having been granted the eternal light that is Christ as our indwelling source of hope, it’s incumbent on us to let that light shine, so that all the hope, mercy, generosity, service, wisdom, grace, and reconciling power that is found in Christ alone will find expression in your life and mine.
Every action that looks like the love, generosity, service, sacrifice, wisdom, forgiveness, and joy that is Jesus, is light! And the thing about light is that it always wins; always dispels the darkness as a hint that, when history’s fully written, we won’t all have been sucked into a black hole. Rather, “there will no longer by any ight; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them…”
One little light, born in a manger, is spreading still, and will overcome all darkness in the end.
So tonight when you light your candle (or join us online if you can’t make it to ours or your own), remember that all the light which fills the dark room comes from one source. We receive it gladly and pass it only until the darkness disappears. This isn’t some cute little service. This is the hope of the world.
Go. Be the light, even as you celebrate the source. Merry Christmas!
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