Isaiah 9:2-7; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.” Thus Isaiah celebrates the coming of the Messiah.
Not many of us enjoy the dark. The night can be a time of fear and uncertainty or even deep loneliness and suffering. Sometimes it is the time of death. Our body rhythms are at their slowest in the middle of the night when we are in deepest sleep.
When I took up my first appointment as an accountant in my early twenties, our busiest time of the year was in the depth of winter when the nights are long. I couldn’t believe it one day when the boss said that he would pick me up at 5:00am in the morning to drive to Timaru in time to start at 7:00am when the client’s office opened for work. Nobody gets up in the middle of the night to go to work, I thought in my naivety. Sadly, I was very mistaken and ended up driving down myself to meet rest of the team in the middle of the morning. To add salt into the wounded pride, my pay was docked accordingly. It did seem to me to be odd to be getting up ridiculously early when it was still night to go to work. Other people did that, but not me. The night, nay the world, is a scary place, and I was frightened. We lived in the inner city in those days, and there were people I would rather not encounter hanging around our place in the night. Homeless people or drug addicts sometimes walked around our house and through our garden in the dead of night. The police kiosk had just been built in the square, so there were all sorts of disturbed and unsavoury characters moving into our street from the square. Our insurance company were nervous and demanded that extra security measures be taken. When I was a child I loved the sound of the rain on the roof at night or even the sound of a thunder and lightening, because I felt warm and secure in bed with parents just down the hallway. But in the inner city, the night and I became suspicious of each other. We ceased to be close friends.
Yet, the night could be such fun. Think of romantic walks along the Sumner beach with lights reflecting off the water and waves gently lapping the shore; or partying with friends in a bar, or going to a big game in AMI stadium, a candlelit dinner at a favourite restaurant, or pondering life in quiet peace when everyone else is asleep. Some people love the night; that’s when they come alive.
Night time is a time of work for many people, like the shepherds in tonight’s gospel. The night can be a time of fear, but it can also be a time of peace. It can be a time of sleep, but for some it is a time of fun and even great creativity. Some of our best ideas come to us in the peace of the night.
We often talk about people having something of the night about them. We call it ‘having a dark side’. We think of people who have a shadow side that we might not see immediately. Sometimes this is part of a person that needs developing. Sometimes it is a negative aspect of their personality, a place of pain and hurt that is hidden away from view, but always present. We also think of communities having something of the night about them. We talk of communities with dark underbellies, parts of our community that we wish did not exist and even try to shut away. In our modern society those people are criminals or perhaps the mentally ill; people that we prefer to have living elsewhere, or people we avoid. This is how the people regarded the shepherds to whom the angels revealed the good news of Jesus’ birth. Shepherds were the night workers. They lived on the fringe of society and people avoided them. Their animals infringed so many religious laws that shepherds were permanently ritually unclean. They probably smelt of their animals and they were not welcome company. They were part of the dark underbelly of 1st century society. They were the ones associated with crime, drink, and violence. They were the convenient scapegoats when crimes had been committed. You kept your children away from the shepherds. They represent the dark side.
The astounding thing is that God chose to reveal the birth of his Son to these people first. The news was first broken to the uneducated, to the socially disadvantaged. The educated and the wealthy people, such as the Magi, came later. God is saying something here; here is the beginning of the pattern of the kingdom, the last will be first, the proud scattered, the mighty put down, the lowly will be exalted and the hungry will be filled with good things. This is not an easy message to hear. The gospel calls us not only to see Christ in those less fortunate than ourselves, we are called to serve Christ in them, and hear God speaking to us through them.
Lots of dark things happen in our city at night. We have issues with binge drinking and anti social behaviour on our streets. There is drug dealing, boy racers doing burnouts and street racing, there is death on our roads, violence against old people in mall carparks where they should be completely safe, fights, tagging on the odd fence here and there, smashing of the odd letter box, burglaries, even people being shot at from time to time. We also know that some of this happens in broad daylight. And this darkness is not confined to what happens on our streets. Just think of the shady dealing and corporate greed that has gone on in world financial institutions over the last few years. While some people become ridiculously wealthy, others face unemployment, damaged self esteem as prospects for work fade and promising careers disappear.
Well, most of God’s saving acts took place in the dark. God comes into the messiness of our world over and over again, culminating in Christ. Christ comes into our darkness to redeem and restore and re-create. Think of Israelites crossing the Red Sea in the night (Ex 14:20) into freedom. Jesus’ resurrection took place in the darkness of the night to bring about the dawn of a New Age. Jesus was birth was during the night watch of the shepherds. Into our darkness, Jesus comes. The Light of the World comes into our darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it. God’s love is made visible in Jesus Christ. He comes into the darkness of our world. He comes to bring hope, life, and the restoration of the world.
Tonight we will light candles in the darkness of the night. We do this because Jesus is the true light that has come into the world. He is the light that overcomes our fear, that brings warmth and that guides the path of our life. Christ is the light that overcomes fear and means we need no longer be afraid. The darkness is no longer a place of fear or despair or destruction, but of creation and redemption. Jesus is the light that overcomes our darkness. He comes to make us bearers of his light, partners with God in overcoming the dark; partners with God in restoring a broken world.
May the Christ Child be a light in your life this night and throughout the coming year. May you and yours rejoice in a holy and blessed Christmas.
