We’ve stayed up!
We’ve stayed awake
to make this night,
this night above all nights, holy.
And we’ve sung praise to this holy night.
Perhaps for the first time tonight in this church
have we sung congregationally the lovely carol, Cantique de Noel.
Noel is a word from Anglo-Norman French. It means birthday.
So when we sing Noel, we are singing a birthday song to the world –
a new beginning sung into the night.
This holy night we see God
as light, forever a-light in our darkness,
a light in our fears, aloneness and confusion.
Tonight we see night as the time God acts.
God’s creation begins in darkness.
That’s our Genesis.
The Exodus began in the dark.
The resurrection begins “while it was still dark”.
God works the night shift.
Tonight we see God –
the very nature of God,
seen and worshipped
as the smallest,
the most vulnerable of life.
This is how we see God,
in a stable, in the busyness
of a crowd of people, in a state
preoccupied by the presence of enemy power.
We see God in that darkness,
and we begin to love the name of that baby,
Jesus, the one who saves us
by joining our darkness with the lightness of love.
As night follows day, he is with us
in the darkness of hurt and disappointment,
rejection, betrayal, the loss of loved ones,
the anxiety of making ends meet,
in a world of war, and a world in flight –
he is with us, our boy, Emmanuel.
Grace doesn’t come with a sword
to overcome the darkness with a spectacular blow.
Instead God illuminates the darkness
with everlasting companionship.
And in this new light, we see ourselves again
as the very image of God.
This holy night, God appears small,
and that smallness reveals what God is always like.
The manger isn’t camouflage, it is revelation.
The manger is our mirror image.
We are made in the image of God,
not born to be high and mighty, first and foremost,
but born into smallness – humble at heart.
And this is the best possible light,
this night, to see one another.
Even though we are in the dark
God helps us see his work begin in smallness,
even with the least, the last and the lost.
God imagines us all worth visiting,
all worth illuminating, all worth saving.
And perhaps, finally,
this holy night invites us
not only to consider how we see God,
or how we see ourselves,
or how we see one another –
but how God sees us.
God does not look for the impressive,
the sorted, the strong.
God looks with delight
upon those awake in the night,
those keeping watch,
those doing their best to get through.
This is the light God shines upon us:
not a searching light,
not a judging light,
but a warming one.
A light that says,
You are worth visiting.
You are worth staying with.
You are worth saving.
This holy night,
God sees us as beloved.
And that is blessing enough
to carry us back into the dark,
Unafraid.
Good night.
Tag: Luke 2
Darkness needs light: a reflection on the coming of holy night
I assume that everyone’s feeling tired by midnight on Christmas Eve. Midnight is not the time to be preaching long and hard. Here’s my offering for a group of churches in rural Warwickshire.
Wherever we look in the story of Jesus’ birth there is darkness.
Matthew’s gospel begins with Mary’s disgrace and how Joseph saved her from being cast out by marrying her. Then we’re told that the Magi’s search triggers the slaughter of the innocents by Herod – he killed all the children in Bethlehem and around who were under two years old! Then Mary and Joseph become refugees to escape Herod’s slaughter.
Luke’s gospel begins with the darkness of Joseph and Mary being forced to make the long journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem by order of the Roman emperor -just to be counted – just to become numbers in the machine of a foreign empire.
John’s gospel begins with the life which was to be the light of all people, the light that shines in darkness.
Darkness is never far from us. It’s within us – all those dark thoughts, and it’s all around us. On this night of darkness we celebrate how the light comes to us, how the light comes to us as love (all vulnerable), how the night becomes holy – thanks be to God.
I wrote this for tonight.
One light,
so much darkness. If truth be told
what Christmas needs
is the longest of nights,
the shortest of days,
and the time when people
are at their coldest
and meanest.
For truth to be told
darkness needs light
for the night to find its way to day,
for those who walk
through the dark night of the soul
lost in a cloud of unknowing
frightened in the valley
of the shadows of death.
If truth be told
darkness lies
in the distance between us,
what we do to one another in war,
rape, rubble, ruin in Gaza and Kyiv.
It rides the nightmares
of suffering, anxiety, despair.
It’s the cost of living.
The data of darkness
is hidden in official secrets
and personal shame,
in the blindness of prejudices
in the lies of truth twisters
in the scheming of profiteers
in the denial of freedoms
in the erections of borders
that divide darkness
from darkness, hiding the terror
from which so many flee.
It’s in their denial. Yes,
there is no room.
It’s in their small boats
not built for the darkness
of the deep and stormy sea.
If truth be told, it’s told in numbers:
in the homeless numbers,
the foodbank users,
the choosers choosing
heating or eating,
the children killed in war.
It‘s in the numbers of those
who are just numbers.
It’s the middle of the night,
when even the clocks
put their hands together
in time to pray.
They pray for first light
to end the night, a baby flame
in the frame of shame,
and then they pray us awake
and in the darkness, see,
shimmering and flickering
in the world which,
if truth be told,
has no room for Light,
where the only place
to rest his head lay
in the love of a mother
and the kindness of a stranger
in the inn the light came in,
casting shadows with halos,
our light never dying.
With the angel band backing,
all hallelujah singing,
watching shepherds
dance the night away.
Joy to the world. Happy Christmas.
© David Herbert 2023
Grits and Grains 