Introduction
Here we are a couple of days after Christmas, which means soon people will be packing up the Christmas decorations, if they haven’t already. The artificial tree will be dismantled, section by section—remember when it used to be branch by branch? Or the live tree will be dragged out for recycling, trailing dry brown needles in its wake. The wreaths and garlands will be lovingly laid, one upon another, in boxes and bins. The ornaments will be sorted into partitioned containers, where they will endure a drab existence in the attic or basement for the next 11 months. The church will return, reluctantly, to what the Christian calendar bluntly, and almost harshly, calls “ordinary time.”
Every year I am disappointed by how abruptly we turn the lights of Christmas off. But the truth is we’ve just started the “12 days of Christmas”. The light of Christ just got here so we should not be so quick to turn the lights of Christmas off.
And so as we move further into this Christmas season—that has barely just begun—I want to do so by looking at the third Christmas story, the one told by John.
We all know very well Matthew’s account of the magi, and Luke’s of the angels and shepherds, but John has a very different birth narrative. It is though, kind of like the days right after December 25th—not very Christmasy in the classic sense, and not very merry and bright. But we will see it is just bright enough.
Read Text Here
Move 1
“What has come into being in him was life …”
You’d have a hard time writing a children’s Christmas pageant based on John’s gospel. John tells of no expectant parents journeying to Bethlehem. There are neither shepherds nor angels. Nor are there wise men clambering over hill and dale, following a star. There’s not even a baby lying in a manger: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. …”
A Christmas pageant based on the Gospel of John could be a real boon to budget-conscious churches. You’d have no need for bathrobes or cardboard crowns. No manger of 2x4s, stuffed with straw. No foil-covered shoeboxes, representing gold, frankincense and myrrh. You wouldn’t even need actors. All you would need is a single candle.
The church would be bare and dark, the chancel stripped of all furniture and decorations. The only thing visible would be a small, insignificant table, and on that humble table would sit a single, unlit candle. The worshipers would file in and sit for a very long time, silent as a Quaker meeting. They would sit long enough to begin to feel uneasy at the silence— and maybe even a little scared of the dark, as childhood fears bubble up out of distant memory.
Then, at long last, someone would march solemnly down the aisle and, without a word, light that single candle. The darkness would be pierced, shoved back by the one thing that has power, ultimately, to push all darkness back: the light. And that would be that. Pageant over.
Had I thought of this sooner we could have done this one in place of our children’s choir usual pageant that couldn’t happen this year. But no one would, of course, ever seriously try to put on a Christmas pageant based on John’s Gospel because having conducted this little thought experiment, you can see how different John’s Christmas story is. No color, music or pageantry: just one blazing, incontestable truth, a single statement so profound that maybe the only way to appreciate it is to sit in utter darkness and watch the candle-lit shadows play across the ceiling: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
How the light of a candle can push back the darkness is a remarkable sight, one we seldom witness in these days of electricity. Even the smallest, solitary flame can accomplish that, but no amount of darkness can make that candlelight retreat even an inch.
Move 2
“In the beginning was the Word,” says John. But there really isn’t much comfort in that Good News, because in this wired world of ours today words are cheap and plentiful.
Fire up a search engine in your web browser, and in the twinkling of an eye, you can do a word search that ranges over unimaginably vast cyber-acreage. How many words surge through that portal before its funnel clamps shut, leaving you with precisely the phrase you were seeking? What becomes of all the rejects, the unwanted verbiage the search engine examined for the briefest instant before discarding them? Well, we don’t care, because talk is cheap, as they say; even more so when living syllables are converted into bits and bytes and consigned by the trillions to solid-state drives on server farms located in some cyber space configuration.
But that’s not the way the Bible looks at words. And it’s certainly not how the Word is. Words, in the Scripture, are almost living beings. In Genesis 1, God speaks a word and creation comes into being. Psalm 33 reminds us, saying, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of [God’s] mouth.” God’s word is remarkably enduring: “The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever” a text from the second week of Advent. (Isaiah 40:8).
We know from experience this is true of certain words we speak or hear in our own lives. There are the swiftly forgotten words, the social pleasantries that help pass the time in a doctor’s waiting room. But then, should we pass from there into the examining-room and hear the fateful words fall from our doctor’s lips, “I’m sorry to say this, but you have cancer” those words take on a different character. They linger without regard to person, marking for all time the dividing-line between life as it once was and life as it will never be again.
Words can be hallow and empty—small and shallow. Or words can be powerful and life alternating—inspiring and moving—devastating and heart breaking. But no words can encapsulate the magnitude of The Word…the Word of Life.
Move 3
“What has come into being” in Jesus Christ, says John, “was life.” That is what John is getting at when talking about Jesus and what he is. But what is life? Especially in these days?
Usually at Christmastime life includes festive gatherings, caroling in the snow, busily shopping in crowded stores, baking cookies and candy, lines at the post office, office Christmas parties, an exuberance of cheer, the “life of the party” as the saying goes. But truthfully, the life of the party is exclusionary for it’s a party to which the poor, the sick, the grieving are uninvited. For who can afford parties when you’re worried about finding enough food to eat, or a trying to put a roof over your head? How can the sick and disabled come to the party— unable as they are to venture out and see the sparkling lights on houses, or to rub elbows with shoppers at Kohl’s and Target. It is not a party to which those who are grieving feel especially welcome. Those who have recently lost loved ones to death find themselves regarding Christmas with wistful sadness—a Dickensian Tiny Tim character who gazes through the toy-store window at treasures he will never hold.
There’s no life of the party for those who are trying to find one last drop of life.
Which is maybe the blessing to be found in this Christmastime— this year of coronavirus. I have to believe there is an opportunity for all of us to dial down the holiday merriment, broaden our perspectives, heighten our awareness’s, and find the value, the power, and yes even the life of the single glowing candle.
No color, music or pageantry: just one blazing, incontestable truth. A single statement so profound that maybe the only way to appreciate it is to sit in utter darkness and watch the candle-lit shadows play across the ceiling: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Because for too many, that single glowing candle, is the only life that could possibly be seen in the dimness of their days.
Conclusion
This has not been the Christmas any of us wanted. That’s just the truth of the matter. So this year I am being a bit more lenient in my distain toward the abrupt end that always comes on December 26th.
But I still believe it’s way too soon because the light we all want and need has finally just come. John’s vision of life in the dead of winter, of a glowing candle piercing the darkness, is so powerful and important we shouldn’t be so quick to blow it out because it is the life we are looking for, especially in these dim days.
We don’t need to have had a perfect Christmas…
We don’t need to have received the gift we always wanted…
We don’t even need to have celebrated Christmas at all for the light of the world to give its life.
All we need is to have encountered the One at the heart of the celebration—the true “life of the party.”
For when we have such an encounter then the cold dimness is replaced not through shallow, superficial, and temporal merriment, rather the cold dimness is replaced with Word, with light, with life.
*******
So if you must pack up your Christmas—or if you have already—I understand. This has not been the Christmas any of us wanted. But before you haul all the boxes and bins to the basement, do yourself and those around you a favor—leave out a single candle, and light it. Then let it remind you of the Christmas Story we too often forget… “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
For that is life… especially in these days. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer, December 27, 2020
God of new beginnings, Christmas has come and gone, but the work of Christmas is just beginning.
So with awareness of such, we pray you guide us as we follow in the footsteps of the one whose birth we celebrate. Grant us the grace to order our lives so that others might know that we have seen a great light shine in the darkness, that we followed it to the place where knelt in Bethlehem and worshiped the newborn king who gave us the assurance that because of his advent, we would never be left alone.
Wise and wonderful Giver, for all your gifts of Christmas, we are grateful.
Even when we are distant from you and must make space and time for you, we are grateful that you lead us to you unfailingly.
So we pray you continue to provide for our own lives that light of life—the light that we will always give us your direction to find the treasure of the Christ child with each step we take. Grant us the courage and boldness it will take to keep this light shining for all to see and share, allowing it to shape us into the Disciples you would have us be.
Source of Life, Christmas Day may be over but the work of Christmas is just beginning.
So on the threshold of this New Year; let us remember to follow the light of Christ instead of the crowd. If we lose our way, help us to remember the angel songs and the gift born to us in the dimness of night and in the depth of winter that we might have life and have it abundantly.
And in all things, may we know your love is constant and true as you give us the blessings of the Christian life each day.
We ask that you hear and listen to the prayers of our hearts as we offer them in this time of holy silence.
All this we pray in the name of Christ Jesus, Immanuel, God with us, who taught us to pray saying, “Our…”