John 1: 1–18
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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be
acceptable to Thee, O Lord our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
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All last week — as Christmas day swiftly approached — there
was a kind of struggle going on in
me . . . between the happy anticipation
of a holiday I love . . . and the uneasy
sense that we weren’t quite ready for it. I didn’t feel
ready for it, personally. I was much too distracted by all the
things on my various lists I hadn’t found time to do — to focus
much on the promise of Christ’s advent into this world. And the
world around me didn’t seem ready either. The world around
me was focused on the pandemic . . . on
travel delays . . . on gun
violence – and not on the promise of Christ coming into this world.
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So as I finally sent out our last Christmas cards, wrote one last sermon,
hassled with FedEx about a lost package, and served my husband one more
meal of leftovers because I didn’t have time to cook, I kept before
me a favorite Rembrandt painting of the Nativity that seems to express
perfectly the ambiguity of the season. It’s a painting the
artist completed in 1646 called The Shepherds Worship the
Child. And when you first look at it you aren’t sure if
its subject is more about the bright white light that seems to emanate
from the baby sleeping in the hay of the manger, or more about the
darkness, the nearly black darkness of the barn all around him. Mary,
sitting behind the baby on a bale of hay, and Joseph, standing behind
her, are both illuminated and colorful. But of the eight shepherds
gathered nearby, only two of them are close enough to the baby’s
light for us to distinguish their features at all. The others are
shrouded in darkness.
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It was only on Friday morning, as I turned my attention to our readings
for this morning and read in St. John’s prologue, “The light
shines in the darkness and the darkness has never encompassed
it” that I began to catch on to what that painting seemed to
be saying to me, and realized why I’d been focused on it all week
long.
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For all around us this year, there is dark news indeed. The Omicron
variant of the Covid virus has spread so rapidly, no one is sure whether
it’s safe to travel anywhere, safe to visit or embrace the ones we
love. Anxiety and fear for our safety have once again spread all
over our land. And it’s not just about Covid. Global
warming has spawned violent storms, landslides and
floods . . . or else has shifted
weather patterns to droughts, wildfires and famine. And no one
wants to speculate about what Putin’s doing in Ukraine, what Xi is
doing in China, what Kim Jong–Un is up to in North Korea. And
finally, here at home, despite many efforts to unite us, we are still a
deeply divided nation. So yes, the news stories this year paint a
picture that’s at least as dark as that 17th century stable.
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But no power on this earth — no violent storm or sneaky virus or
malevolent ruler — can snuff out the love of God that seems to
shine all the more brightly when the news around us is dark indeed.
That light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never been able
to extinguish it.
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For even though we tend to believe that our times are darker now than any
other times have ever been, things weren’t any better in the days
when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea. God simply
wouldn’t wait until everything was safe, everything was ready for
the birth of his Son into our world.¹ So love was birthed in
the middle of winter — into all the messiness of a stable –
under the brutal control of the Roman Empire – to a vulnerable
teenaged girl and her fiancé. God’s love simply
wouldn’t wait. For God comes when our need is deep and
great.²
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That’s what attracted me, drew me deep into Rembrandt’s
painting of the nativity – the warm love of God, emanating from
the baby into that cold dark stable and drawing everyone in the picture
closer. Love was birthed into the messiness of our world, right in
the middle of it. It came to the vulnerable ones – like a
teenaged unmarried girl, who knew full well that the society around her
wanted to stone her for what they imagined to be her shameful
behavior. It came to the brokenhearted – to Joseph, who had
to wonder if Mary had been unfaithful to him. It came to the
ostracized – like those shepherds, who already lived on the
outskirts of respectable society, and now, with their crazy testimony
that Messiah, the Son of God, had been born in a stable in
Bethlehem – were even more likely to be scorned and excluded.
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But no matter. Light always breaks through darkness. And this
time the Light of the World was breaking through the pain and darkness
of His world in such a warm and loving way that no one who encountered
it – no one who encountered Him, that is – would ever forget it.
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And the best part of that whole story is that it has no end. For
those who encountered God’s unconditional love, God’s
forgiveness, God’s acceptance of the marginalized and excluded
then learned, by the grace of God, to practice this unconventional
behavior themselves. It’s the story of the Church. The
light of God’s love had penetrated their darkness and begun to
transform them from within. So they too began to forgive enemies,
turn the other cheek and respond to violence with love. They too
learned to welcome all, without exception, to the banquet table. In
fact, they were becoming light bearers themselves.
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It happens that way every year. I might not have been ready for
Christmas. But Christmas was ready for me.
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Amen.
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¹1 I am indebted in this sermon to the poem by
Madeleine L’Engle, First Coming.
²ibid
God did not wait till the world was ready,
till . . . nations were at peace.
God came when the heavens were unsteady
and prisoners cried out for release.
God did not wait for the perfect time.
God came when the need was deep and great.
God dined with sinners in all their grime,
turned water into wine.
God did not wait till hearts were pure.
In joy God came to a tarnished world of sin and doubt,
To a world like ours of anguished shame, God came,
And God’s light would not go out.
God came to a world that did not mesh
to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.
In the mystery of the Word made flesh
the Maker of the stars was born.
We cannot wait till the world is sane
to raise our songs with joyful voice,
For to share our grief, touch our pain,
God came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!
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