The First Sunday after Christmas, Year C
The Rev. Joshua Rodriguez-Hobbs
The light shines in
the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
Over the past few months, our world has slowly grown darker
and darker. Night has
fallen earlier and earlier each successive night. For the
past four weeks, the darkest four weeks of the year, we
have lit our Advent wreaths, kindling
small sparks of light in the midst of the darkness. Each night
for four weeks now, we
have engaged in this ritual of human defiance, a
way of struggling to exert our mastery over the world around us. And now, the
days are slowly growing brighter. The
nights are shorter. The
light has come!
Of course, we know
that our world is not just physically dark. We bore
witness to wars and rumors of wars this past year. We bore
witness to the violence of terrorists and the Islamic State. We bore
witness to Christians martyred around the world. We bore
witness to violence in our churches, schools, and streets. It has been a dark year. And we have
gathered together what small sparks of light we could to stave off the darkness.
But now, Light has come! Unto us a
child is born, God
from God, Light
from Light, True
God from true God, begotten,
not made, of
one being with the Father. And that Light shines in the midst of our dark world, a world
that we know is both literally and metaphorically dark, and we are
promised that the darkness will not, cannot, overcome it. God has heard our prayers: Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O
Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all
perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Savior
Jesus Christ. God has stooped low and heard our cry. And the Son of God, who was with God from the beginning, from
before creation itself, the Son of
God has become flesh, born
of the Virgin Mary, born
in a stable, born
a peasant, but a king, born
to die. And with his birth, the true
Light has come among us, and this
Light promises us that the darkness that surrounds us will never overcome it.
Some of you, I am sure, are more
familiar with this passage in the lyric translation of the King James Version: And the light shineth in the darkness; and
the darkness comprehend it not. That is, at first glance, a very
different promise. But the
Greek word that John uses in this sentence is one of those words with multiple meanings that are hard to pin down. It can mean “to over power by
force,” as the New Revised Standard Version translates it. It can mean “to grasp
intellectually,” as the King James translates it. Or, it can mean “to suddenly come
upon,” just as night suddenly falls in the winter months. So, for
hundreds of years, translators
have debated which of these meanings John intended.
Personally, I think
that he meant all three. Our dark
world will never overpower and snuff out the Light, just
as Christ promised us that the Gates of Hell would not overthrow his Church. Our dark
world will never fully grasp what God has done for us in Christ Jesus, for
it seems inconceivable that our Lord and our Maker should become so powerless, so
willing to sacrifice, so willing to die on our behalf. This is a love too
deep, too broad, too high for us to grasp. And our
dark world will never overshadow this light. It
will always burn, just
as the sanctuary light above the aumbry always burns, a
symbol of the fact that Jesus Christ, the Sun of Righteousness has dawned upon us,
and will never set.
The Light of Christ, which comes to us each Christmas, is a beacon
in our dark world. William
Temple, an English theologian and former Archbishop of Canterbury, compared
John’s description of the true Light in this passage to
a lighthouse, whose light cuts a clear path through the darkness. This
is the Light of Christ, through
which we are shown the way to the Father. This
is our beacon in our dark world, where
things are so uncertain, where
our path is so often dim, where
it can be difficult to discern the glory of God around us. And
this Light will always burn, like
a lighthouse’s beam on a dark, storm-tossed sea, guiding
us home.
For this is what Christ came to do. Christ
became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, Christ was
born, lived, and died so that he might, on the hard wood of the cross, bring
us all into his saving embrace, reconciling
us before God the Father, and
giving us the power to become God’s children. Christ is the Light of the World, revealed to
us in the words of Scripture, revealed to
us in the waters of baptism, revealed to
us in bread and wine. Christ is our beacon, our guide upon our earthly pilgrimage. So let us rejoice, for on this holy day, we are assured that
God has answered our prayer: Lighten
our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all
perils and dangers of this dark world;
for the love of thy only Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
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