Will Rice - Sermon #55 - "Christmas Light"

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

Christmas Eve 2007

What has come into being ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

I contend that even if we didn’t have Christmas, we would have Christmas lights and we would probably put them up about the same time of year. There is something about the end of the year. There is something about the cold (the little we get of it here in South Texas). There is something about the dark. There is something about the end of the year that has the tendency to plunge many of us into an emotional and spiritual darkness.

There is something about a tiny, twinkling light that has some temporary ability to pull us back out of that darkness. My wife and I love to take our little boy and our two not-so-little dogs out walking at night, especially when there is a little chill in the air. The other night we were out around 7 o’clock and it was already very dark. We were on a street with no functioning street lights. I have to tell you with a toddler in a stroller and two dogs, walking in the dark is a little tricky. I was having trouble keeping the whole caravan together when we rounded a corner and found our path lit by about four houses with enough lights to bring a bit of daylight to our journey.

For those of you who are new to us tonight, I have to be upfront, this is only my seventh Christmas since becoming a practicing Christian. I grew up in a home where we did not go to church on Christmas or Easter or any other time for that matter. But we did put up Christmas lights. My Dad hung them every year from the roof of our porch. We did have a tree, we bought it in town, a different child got to pick it each year. Of course we had presents and stockings and candy canes.

Some people like to differentiate between this idea of a “secular” Christmas and the real Christmas. But, in some ways they are the same thing. Whether we are hanging Christmas lights, buying a tree, hanging stocking, buying presents, or coming to church, most of us are doing it for the same reason. We are doing it for some light in the midst of darkness.

The world we live in can be a scary place. As a pastor, I get to walk with people into some dark and scary places and I get to go to some on my own. This year I have watched people stand by the graves of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, spouses and even children. I have watched people struggle with finances and addiction, divorce and troubled children. And on this night of nights, people in our country and in our world are dealing with really frightening things. Homes are being foreclosed upon in America and lives are being threatened in Africa and the Middle East. Some of our very own brothers, sisters, sons and daughters are in harms way in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We all need a little light in the darkness. So when December comes, we put up lights.

But for all of us, those who call ourselves Christians and those who just like the ritual of celebrating Christmas, the light is more than just light. It is a light that represents hope.

We all put up lights because we are all looking for the same thing.

Here in the Christian church we know what that thing is. We know that the hope, the promise, the life and the light comes to us in Jesus Christ. We believe a very important truth about this dark and scary world. We believe that God is so in love with it and with us that he came into it. True God of True God, decided to be born, in poverty, in a stable, in a world where people suffer, where people die and where people are frightened. We celebrate at Christmas that God came into this world in Jesus Christ. We celebrate that this miracle grew into a young man who loved God’s people so much that he hung around with the poor, the outcast, the sick and the mourning. We celebrate that in Jesus, God lived with us, not to condemn us, but to save us, to bring some light into the darkness.

I have been preaching for a few years, but this is my very first time preaching Christmas Eve. I now understand the temptation that leads many preachers to try and preach the whole Bible on Christmas Eve. There are so many faces, many I know, many I don’t. I want to be able to tell you the whole story. I want to tell you the full meaning of the incarnation, God’s coming to us in Jesus. I want to tell you everything Jesus said and did, especially how he loved people so much, especially those who were hurt, sick, mourning or outcast. I want to tell you how his love for us didn’t end when we nailed him to a cross. I want to tell you how, in Jesus, God would not allow death to have the final word and gave us our other major celebration we call Easter. I want to tell you all about all of this, but you are here to celebrate.

But on this night of nights, I want to offer you an invitation. God is with us in Jesus Christ. The miracle of Christmas is that the creator of all there is came to be with us. I want to invite you into the journey of discovering what that means. Some of you here tonight have been Christians all your life, some may be sitting in a church for the first time tonight. To all of you I make the same invitation: I invite you, starting tonight, to really enter in to the journey of discovering what it means that God came to dwell with us in Jesus. What does that mean about God? What does that mean about us? What does that mean about how we are called to live our lives?

What has come into being ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

In just a couple of weeks, my wife and our little boy and our dogs will take that same walk in the dark on that same street and the Christmas lights that once lit our way will be off and packed neatly back in people’s garages and attics. I will be reminded that while the light has come into the world and while the darkness did not come overcome the light, the darkness is still there. As we celebrate the coming of God into our world, I remember the world God came into. I remember that next year, I will again walk with others to scary places. That until that day that Christ comes again in final victory, there will still be death and despair and addiction and brokenness. All that stuff is still here and that is exactly why we so badly need Christmas, we so badly need Jesus and we so badly still need our Christmas lights.