O Holy Nights

O God, you have caused this holy night to shine with the brightness of the true light. This is a holy night, shining with the very brightness of heaven itself. Among the great holy days of the church, Christmas alone is celebrated most powerfully and most popularly at night. We are gathered here in worship to seek God and to praise God on Christmas Eve. When I was growing up these "midnight" services were typically later than most parishes schedule them now. There was the sense that the service at least had to end after midnight… to stretch into the real Christmas Day. I don’t worry about that now, because I think what is most important about this particular service is just that we gather in the darkness, the darkness of night. We gather this holy night, Christmas Eve, to welcome and celebrate and experience the true light of God coming into the darkness.

(There is a nighttime service at Easter, too, the Easter Vigil, and I am glad to see it growing in popularity. But its character is different. The Easter Vigil is meant to draw us, theologically and literally, from darkness into full dawn, to journey from night to the sunrise of day. We need that promise of resurrection dawn at Easter time, but tonight is different. Tonight we do not see the dawn. We see heavenly light born into the midst of night’s darkness. And we need that, too.)

Light born in the midst of darkness. Light coming to us when we are in darkness. The prophet Isaiah writes: the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined. The people who walked in darkness. The people who lived in a land of deep darkness. Them. These people are the ones to whom the light has come. Good news for any of us who have ever walked or dwelt or tarried in darkness. And that must be all of us. Why else would we who are here now have come out in the middle of one of the longest, darkest nights of the year if not to reaffirm, to reassure ourselves, that it is into the darkness, our darkness, that Christ’s light comes.

We know many kinds of darkness in our own lives or the lives of others in our world. The bitterness and cruelty that can infect the human heart and turn it dark and cold. The loneliness or despair that drain the light out of life. Lives that are absolutely filled, cluttered with senseless idols… meaningless idols… that take up so much space they cast dark shadows over everything we do. Idols that block the light in our lives, rather than bringing light. The incomprehensible existence of war, fought for whatever reasons good or ill… war that snuffs out life after life. Individuals and peoples who cherish and nurture old grievances until they eclipse life’s light. Poverty, which paints all of life a somber gray.

We cannot escape or avoid the darkness that is a part of living. And God does not offer us escape from darkness. But God does come to us in the very depth of darkness bringing light. That is what Christmas is all about. That is what the incarnation is all about, God taking on human flesh and being born among us. To make the even the night, especially the night, holy with the presence of God. To bring the light of heaven into every dark corner of human existence. God, we need Christmas. As individuals, as a world, we need the heavenly light of this holy night.

And what a wondrous and powerful light it is. Have you ever really thought about how powerful light is? About how the smallest light has greater power than the greatest darkness? This is true for the flickering of a single candle. And we are talking about the light of Christ. Typically at some point in the Christmas season we hear read from the opening of John’s Gospel: "The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it." The darkness did not/could not/cannot overcome the light.

I suppose it is physics as well as faith, but darkness has no power. It is powerless. Darkness cannot quench the light. And yet light always dispels darkness. A single candle’s flame brings light into the darkness. The light of a single star led the Magi hundreds of miles to worship the newborn Lord of Light. I don’t know exactly how that journey happened meteorologically or historically, and it doesn’t really matter to me. I have no trouble at all believing in the wondrous power of one star’s light… One point of light in the night sky to illuminate the truth and guide us there.

Light always conquers darkness. And the true light that shines forth from a manger in Bethlehem cannot be quenched or overcome by any force in this world. The light of Christ is tenacious. It is powerful. For over 2000 years it has been indomitable. And the Light of Christ is holy. It shines in the darkness bearing in its light God’s love, God’s hope, God’s guidance, God’s comfort.

We need those things. And they are given to us as God’s Christmas gift. Here. Now. This night. By God’s grace, the light of Christ is born into tonight’s darkness in our hymns of joy, in the mystery of the Living Christ given to us in the sacrament of bread and wine, in our sacred fellowship, and in our deep and faithful yearning for the Messiah born in Bethlehem. "O God you have caused this holy night to shine with the brightness of the true Light." The Light of Christ is God’s gift to us this night. Let us rejoice and sing.

It wasn’t quite dark when the earlier Christmas Eve service began this evening at St. John’s. But in that service, too, we powerfully celebrated and experienced the birth of Light in the darkness. In fact, a child carried a star into this sacred space. Light came among us. This particular kid is a neat kid; he is also an inhabitant of the foster care system. There is darkness in the world even at 4:00 in the afternoon. By God’s grace he brought the brightness of the true light into that Christmas Eve celebration. And I also trust and pray that, by God’s grace, he has found the Light of Christ here, surely in the Christian woman who is giving him a home, but also in the broader life of this Christian community. God has given us the gift of Light. It is our blessing and our joy to share it with others.

We often express our deepest faith in the hymns we sing. I am struck by how many of our Christmas hymns speak of night, of this holy night, and of the gift of Light that is born into the darkness.

This is a holy night. But the true gift of Christ’s birth this night is to make all nights holy, to birth the Light of Christ into all of life’s darkness. May the true light of Christ shine with the brightness of heaven in your lives, this holy night and all holy nights.

Amen.