In the darkness - light

Sermon for Christmas Night – Eucharist – 24.xii.2023

 

(Isaiah 9.2-7; Titus 2.11-14; Luke 2.1-20)

 

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.

This is the Christian hope – and the hope at the heart of Christmas – the hope to which we need to hold. Light entering into the darkness; light shining in and through the darkness. The words are those of Isaiah who wrote several centuries before the birth of Jesus. But we hear them at Christmas because he looks to the coming of a Messiah – a Saviour for his people. And those words about light resonate perhaps because we think of the birth of Jesus being at night: 

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Saviour’s birth;
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
'Till he appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn…

In the darkness of the night, the Christ-child comes to bring light. In the darkness of a stable, his is the light that shines from the manger.

I began with those words of Isaiah:

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.

These are the first words of our first reading in this Eucharist. But in fact I find myself struck still more by the words which follow on in these words of prophecy:

You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy;

they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest,

as people exult when dividing plunder.

For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders,

the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.

For all the boots of the tramping warriors

and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.

Isaiah is writing about the hope of his people – that after all their sufferings there will come a time of joy and release from all that has burdened them. Isaiah had written about the failings of kings and other rulers. He knew the failures of his own people and the desire of their neighbours to raid, pillage and conquer. Much of his writing is a foretelling of his nation’s fate, to be defeated in war, to have their cities and towns laid waste, for so many of their people to be displaced and deported to a land which is not theirs. You read Isaiah and you realise that there is nothing new in the sufferings of our world today. His oracles prophesy devastation for the nations who bring war upon Israel – and amongst them the cities of Damascus, southern Lebanon, Babylon and Philistia. Isaiah looks to the time when the Israelites will put aside their own differences and instead, “they shall swoop down on the backs of the Philistines in the west” (Isaiah 11.14). There is violence through and through – and this is a particular vengeance directed at those very people, the Philistines, who lived roughly in the area of the modern Gaza Strip. Remember that Philistine is the word from which the modern term Palestine / Palestinian derives.  We switch on the news and what we see is a warfare and enmity known all too well to Isaiah, writing over two and a half thousand years ago.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” We can be only too aware of the continuing darkness of war, oppression, injustice and fear, hostage-taking, hunger and the longing for deliverance. But Isaiah does give us some hope in the midst of his grim survey of a world he knew to be like ours:

For all the boots of the tramping warriors

and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.

It must be our prayer that this should be so – the yoke of burdens lifted and the rebuilding of homes and nations to be places of peace.

In the darkness we pray that God’s light may shine.

 

I first visited Bethlehem, the place of Christ’s birth, in the darkness. I’d lived so near – in Jerusalem – for several months, but I’d never made that short journey of only six or seven miles. When finally I went there it was Christmas Eve 1977. Normally you could simply take the Arab bus from Damascus Gate to get there. But at Christmas there were extra security precautions in place. Applications to travel had to be made in advance, passports produced and tickets for special buses purchased. On Christmas Eve itself those special buses stopped short of Manger Square. We had to show our passes and passports, go through one security checkpoint and then another. There were soldiers and border police in abundance. As it happened people considered the journey worth it, and there were crowds out in the square with a festival of choirs, a huge tree and lots of decorations, the Post Office open to stamp letters and cards with Christmas Eve, Manger Square, Bethlehem. That was light in the darkness – and lots of noise. We made our way to the Church of the Nativity. You might have expected more crowds there – but the big congregation on 24 December is in the Roman Catholic Church next door. The Church of the Nativity itself is shared by the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Churches which celebrate Christmas on a different date. But they had given permission to a few western pilgrims – amongst them our group of Anglicans from Jerusalem – to visit the shrine. I remember standing in the cold and dark waiting to go in. I remember hearing an explosion and wondering if it was a firework or something worse. And then the descent to the chapel which marks Christ’s birth. In the dim interior there was a group of sisters in silent prayer. And then we made our way to the silver star set in the floor which is said to mark the place of the manger.

The next day I was up early to play the piano for the 8am service of Holy Communion in our church – Christ Church, Jerusalem. I remember sitting there, thinking how incredible it was to try to mark the actual place of Jesus’ birth with a star, as if we could say exactly here in this subterranean chapel was the exact position of Mary at the time she brought her son into the world. Round the corner and up the street – aptly named Milk Grotto Street – there’s a church which is built where milk from Mary’s breast is said to have spilt and turned the stone floor white. How could that be true?

But the truth of the Incarnation, the mystery of Christmas, is that God’s Son is born into this world in a particular place at a particular time. Somewhere, at some actual precise point, Mary gives birth to Jesus. Heaven touches earth. Is it true?

That’s what the poet John Betjeman asked:

And is it true?  And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?

When we tell the story in stained glass, we are telling a story which is real – of the muck and blood and sweat of childbirth – a reality in that place which is Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. We need to remember not only the pain and toil and tears of that moment but also the joy which comes with birth, and the love which made it possible – the loving purpose of God, the love of Mary and Joseph for this new-born child.

I visited Bethlehem again in January 2020. I actually wanted to visit the monastery of Mar Saba, out in the Judaean desert, and thought that going to Bethlehem would give me the best chance of finding my way there (it was, thanks to a Palestinian taxi driver we found in Bethlehem). But when I asked advice on the journey from an American nun in Jerusalem, she immediately said, “You can’t go to Bethlehem. It’s on the West Bank and too dangerous to go there.” Such are the fears we can carry. There can be truth in our fears: it's actually illegal for Israeli citizens to visit Bethlehem and other West Bank cities – very much for their own safety. But we simply got on the Arab bus which took us there without any trouble. Again we visited the chapel of Christ’s birth – this time alongside a large group of Armenian pilgrims. You might think how just a few months ago Armenia was in the news with its ongoing fight with its neighbour Azerbaijan and the expulsion of most of the Armenian population of Nagorno Karabakh. It’s no longer news – for us at least. But it says something about the troubles of this world – and what we think deserves our attention.

Wherever we find people we can find cause for falling out, divisions, fear, hatred and violence. It’s there in the news. Between Israeli and Palestinian, in Ukraine, in so many countries of Africa that news coverage is barely possible. It’s in our fear of boat people and other migrants. It’s on our own streets and even in our own families.

It's when it strikes home that we may want to avoid Christmas. But the message of Christ’s birth is something we need to return to again and again. This year there are no festive lights, decorations or Christmas trees in Bethlehem. But there the true light has been born into our world. We need to pray that that light may be born again in our hearts – and his love shine out through our lives.