First Reading: Isaiah 7:10-14
10Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz: 11“Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” 12But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.” 13And he said, “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? 14Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”
Psalm 110:1-4
1The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” 2The Lord will send the scepter of your power out of Zion, saying, “Rule over your enemies round about you. 3Princely state has been yours from the day of your birth; in the beauty of holiness have I begotten you, like dew from the womb of the morning.” 4The Lord has sworn and he will not recant: “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”
Second Reading: 1 John 4:7-16
7Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 13By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
Gospel: Matthew 1:18-25
18The birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 20But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: 23“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). 24When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, 25but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.
A Great Light
In our gospel reading for this evening we read about Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, and of his discovery, that his soon to be wife is expecting. As Matthew records, Joseph is just man and knows the child isn’t his, but not wanting to cause any shame to come upon Mary, he decides to do the honorable thing and divorce her quietly. However, an angel of the Lord comes with a message, don’t divorce Mary, instead go ahead and marry her, the baby she is expecting is of the Holy Spirit. One could say that Joseph was in the dark about what was going on until God shined a light on the situation. One could also say that the Christmas story begins in darkness, literal, physical and metaphorical darkness.
Then there was the darkness of oppression, for God’s people were a conquered people. They were a beaten and a defeated people. The people were suffering from the darkness of persecution. In fact, it was the despised universal taxation that brought the participants in the story together on that fateful night. There was also the darkness of disillusionment. There was an ever-increasing number who felt that violence, not faith, was the most effective path. Does this sound oddly familiar in describing the mood in our country today? Yes, on that first Christmas, the mood was one of despair and resignation. Thus it was then, and thus it is now.
We too live in a world of darkness. First there is this seemingly unending pandemic. There are protests, looting, wars, terrorism, hunger, unemployment, racism, loneliness, and the fact that we’re separated from our friends and families. In all, there was and is a sense of frustration and emptiness. Perhaps the poet Robert Frost worded it best when he wrote: “I have been acquainted with the night. I have walked in the rain and out of the rain. I have been acquainted with the night.” I don’t believe I have to tell any of you about the darkness, because in one form or another, at one time or another, it has touched the life of each person here.
We’re all acquainted with times of darkness and the night. Thus, we don’t come here this evening to naïvely deny the existence of the darkness. Nowhere in scripture do we receive a prep talk and an argument that things aren’t really as bad as they seem. Rather, it affirms that the darkness is real, and it’s present. But, the Bible also affirms that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
The prophet Isaiah wrote, “people who walk in darkness have seen a great light.” St. John’s Gospel records: The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. And among the Christmas Carols we’ll sing this Christmas season, we’ll sing again the words: “Yet, in thy dark street shineth the everlasting light.” History records for us an interesting footnote. It was during the dark winter of 1864.
At Petersburg, Virginia, the Confederate army of Robert E. Lee faced the Union divisions of General Ulysses S. Grant. The war was now three and a half years old and the glorious charge had long since given way to the muck and mud of trench warfare. Late one evening one of Lee’s generals, Major General George Pickett, received word that his wife had given birth to a beautiful baby boy. Up and down the line, the Southerns began building huge bonfires in celebration of the event. These fires didn’t go unnoticed in the Northern camps and soon a nervous Grant sent out a reconnaissance patrol to see what was going on. The scours returned with the message that Pickett had had a son and these were celebration fires. It so happened that Grant and Pickett had been contemporaries at West Point and knew one another well, so to honor the occasion Grant, too, ordered that bonfires should be built. What a peculiar night it was.
For miles, on both sides of the lines, fires burned. No shots were fired. No yelling back and forth. No war fought, only light celebrating the birth of a child. Sadly, it didn’t last forever. Soon the fires burned down and once again the darkness took over—the darkness of the night and the darkness of war. The good news of Christmas is that in the midst of a deep darkness there came the Light, and darkness could not, and can not overcome that Light.
The Light that came to our dark world wasn’t a temporary flicker. It was an eternal flame. It’s important that we remember that. There are times, in the events of the world and in the events of our own personal lives, that we feel that the Light will be snuffed out. But the Christmas story affirms that whatever happens, God’s Light still shines.
The ancient Hebrews were afraid of the darkness. They were particularly afraid of a place they called the outer darkness. To them creation began when God said: Let there be light. To them, where there was only darkness, there was only void and emptiness. What great meaning and hope it must have been for them when they heard Jesus refer to Himself as the Light of the world. We need to hear and share these words of hope and promise this Christmas season as families across the globe are suffering. We need to hear and share these words of hope as the families of oppressed and war-torn areas are overwhelmed with grief. People are in despair and the darkness they’re experiencing is real. But thanks be to God, because of Christmas, it will never get so dark that you can’t see the light. Into the darkness God sent an eternal Light.
As you leave here this evening, take a moment to notice that the darkness doesn’t intrude upon the light. Quite the contrary, it’s the light that intrudes upon the darkness. Light is always stronger than darkness. And the forces of Light are stronger than the forces of darkness. The greatest need in our hurting and confused world is to let people know that there is hope. That life is worth living no matter what. We have no reason to be discouraged to the point of despair. In Jesus Christ we can cling to the fact that God’s Light has overcome the forces of darkness, to the hope that life overcomes death, that love conquers hate, and that truth will prevail over falsehood. We are the people of the Light and we must share that Light in a dark and a dreary land.
Why do you think that God chose to use a star to guide the Wisemen to Bethlehem? I’m convinced that it wasn’t an accident. It was an eternal reminder to them, and to us, that in a sea of darkness, it’s the light that keeps us going forward. It’s the light of hope and the light of Christ that leads the way and dispels the gloom. It’s my prayer this evening that the light of Christ will shine and illume the dark corners of all our lives and that all who are living in the darkness will discover the pathway to the Light of Bethlehem.
Amen
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