On this First Sunday After Christmas, we hear a very different version of the Christmas story than the one we heard on Christmas Eve. Rather than shepherds and angels and a family sent to the stable because there was no room for them at the inn, we hear John’s version of “the beginning” of Jesus’s story, a beginning that began not in Bethlehem, but at the beginning of all time, before the creation of the world. John’s account is a cosmic creation story, a magnificent theological poem about the very essence of the Divine breaking into the depths of our world: “the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14).
And in this artistic proclamation of the origins of the Christ, the author of John’s Gospel gives us what I believe to be one of the most powerful summaries of the Christian message in all of Scripture:
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5).
In that one sentence lies the heart of the Gospel: the power of light over darkness, of love over hate, of life over death. Jesus’s Resurrection is the ultimate expression of this truth. Death itself could not extinguish the light that came into the world with the birth of Christ, and it continues to shine through all the ages, despite countless attempts and threats to extinguish it.
This is the heart of the Gospel, the Good News that we proclaim as Christians: that nothing will be able to extinguish the light of God that shines in all creation. The Apostle Paul said in his letter to the Romans that he was convinced “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38). This is the message we are called as Christians to proclaim to a broken and hurting world: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). And we are called to proclaim this message precisely during those times when we cannot see the light, when all seems to be darkness, when the world around us tells us there is no joy, no hope, and no love.
In the wake of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut two weeks ago, many people around the country have questioned how they could go on with Christmas preparations and celebrations in the midst of such unspeakable loss.
One of my colleagues from seminary told me that a sermon preparation resource she reads sent out a message to their subscribers suggesting that they not light the “Candle of Joy” for the Third Sunday of Advent this year, given the deep dissonance many would feel in proclaiming a Sunday of “joy” just two days after such a horrific event.
In the news coverage of the observation of Christmas in Newtown this year, reporters talked to people gathered at makeshift memorials, keeping vigil beside twenty-six candles kept lit all night from Christmas Eve through Christmas morning. Some said it felt too sad to be Christmas this year. One woman said it had taken her longer than usual to finish her preparations for Christmas. “I just felt like my heart wasn’t in it,” she said. Another man said he felt celebrating Christmas at all was inappropriate, given the town’s grief. “Christmas shouldn’t even be happening,” he said. “Life has changed as we know it.”
But it is precisely during those times when the darkness seems to have won, when our hearts just aren’t into the proclamations of joy, when we do not know how we can possibly affirm the goodness of the world and the goodness of God’s providence, that we most need to do so. To not light that Advent candle of Joy on December 16 would have been to affirm the truth of the world rather than the truth of the Gospel. To not celebrate Christmas Eve on December 24 would have been to say that the darkness had overcome the light.
Monsignor Bob Weiss, pastor of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Newtown, encouraged his parish that there was still reason to celebrate Christmas in Newtown, even after he and the community spent the week before Christmas burying eight children from their parish, sometimes conducting two children’s funerals in one day. In the midst of what was surely one of the darkest weeks in the history of that church, Weiss wrote these words to the parish in his annual Christmas message:
“I have been asked so often how do we celebrate Christmas this year. I believe that we celebrate it in its truest sense, putting aside all the secularity and simply sitting in silence and praying that the hope, healing and peace promised to us by Christ will be given to us in abundance… We need to know that even in these darkest hours, there is still light, light that is brighter than that great star over Bethlehem, which will take us to the place where we need to be… it will take us to the heart of Christ who will heal our brokenness, remove our anger and hurt and fill us with the peace and strength we need to not just move forward but to reclaim the life that is ours as a community in Christ Jesus.”The only time we let the light go out in our churches is on Good Friday – in a symbolic recreation of the darkness of the crucifixion, when the disciples thought the light really had gone out, when that light of the world that John’s Gospel speaks of was, for a time, absent. But the light did come back – it burst forth from the tomb in the body of the Resurrected Christ and set ablaze the light that the church has carried ever since, through times of deepest darkness. In the Church, we are an Easter people, a Resurrection people. Except for the one liturgical exception of Good Friday, no matter what else is going on in the world around us, we come to church to see the light. Our calling as Christians is to carry that light even when the darkness creeps in around us and we are certain it will extinguish the light.
This is a difficult task, to be sure, and I dare say it would be impossible for any one person to do. But the good news is that none of us is called to carry the light of Christ alone. We are part of a community of faith, the Church, which is the very Body of Christ, which will go on proclaiming the good news of the Gospel even when we as individuals are not able to proclaim it ourselves. When we fall into despair and find ourselves quite literally unable to say the words of faith, when we have no will power to pray, and when we can affirm nothing but the existence of the darkness around us, the corporate prayer of the Church goes on in endless praise of the One who is the Light even in the midst of the darkness.
What a relief it is to experience the corporate and communal nature of our faith! When we cannot see the light ourselves, we come to church to allow others to hold it up for us. When we cannot find the words to pray, we allow the community to pray for us until we are able to join in again. We are able to carry the light of Christ through the darkness only to the degree in which we are willing to carry one another through the difficult times.
And, thanks be to God, the truth of the Gospel does not depend on our emotional state of being. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” whether or not we believe that is true, whether or not our hearts are in it when we say that statement. Trusting in the truth of the Gospel, a truth that comes from outside ourselves, we continue to say it, even when the world around us screams that the light has gone out. We light the candles of joy, faith, hope, and love even when the world says there is no joy, faith, hope and love. We sing songs of praise and joy even in the midst of great loss. “Even at the grave we make our song, ‘Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia’” (BCP 499). We do so because we are an Easter people. We do so because at the center of our faith lies the proclamation of a Truth that is greater than the truth of the world: “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).
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