True Light

 John 1:1-18

A week or two ago, I picked up the last string of white Christmas lights on the shelf at Target, and spent an hour or so rigging a way to hang them in my street-facing window downstairs. 

I’ve never been especially enthusiastic about hanging Christmas lights before, but this year I really felt the need to put up lights that other people could see; a need to reach out in the dark evenings and mornings with a little light of seasonal cheer.

And judging by the scarcity of holiday lights available online and in stores, I’m not the only one.

The light shines in the darkness, John says, and the darkness did not overcome it.

That’s the promise of Christmas, that the light of God can come into any dark place, and cannot be extinguished. 

Not just any light, though. The “true light”. The light that gives life.

You and I, here at the end of 2020, probably have a very different relationship with light and darkness than John did. 

A different experience of darkness and light than John’s first hearers, or most of humanity for 1500 years or so after John wrote those words.

Because we live in a world of artificial light, and have to go far out of our way to find serious darkness – wilderness camping, mostly. Occasionally, though, we might find ourselves in a place where the stars are extraordinarily visible, but can’t help you place your feet, or tell if the person next to you has moved. A place and time where the darkness feels deep, textured, and strong.

Instead, you and I are immersed, most of our days and nights, in a flood of artificial light: streetlights, house lights, TV and phone and computer screens. We live in a world where, most of the time, natural darkness can’t even gain a foothold and light seems to be at our beck and call. 
There’s so much light it’s actually hard to see, sometimes. 

The power of light and darkness is different for us now, but we can still understand the one thing about darkness that’s most important to John. 

It’s not that darkness by itself is bad. Or that light itself is good.

It’s just that, in the darkness, without light, you can’t see.
And for John, seeing is believing.

Now, John doesn’t care whether we “see” with bifocals on our nose, or braille on our fingertips, or average eyeballs.  What John cares about is that we have the direct experience of God that Jesus brings, the experience of our “eyes being opened”, of the reality of God being revealed directly to our senses.

John uses “seeing” and “sight” to describe that experience of the closeness, the realness of God, which transforms our sense of the world around us, so that we perceive the glory of God here and now, well up with living water, and notice miracles and love in what used to be ordinary.

That closeness of Jesus in our senses transforms our sense of self so that we can never again experience ourselves as alone, or disconnected, but rather as one with each other, part of God’s heart.

“Seeing” God among us, in us, moving into our neighborhood, is believing: living a life that is full of the joy, forgiveness, service, love, and abiding peace that Jesus lived and shared.

That’s what John means, that the light came to give us power to become children of God. That experiencing God in the midst of this world transforms us so that our connection to God can never be broken, cut, or shaken.

That’s why God comes into the world.
The baby comes, the fully human Jesus comes, to put a face on God, make it easier for us to imagine the realness, the concrete presence of God.  The eternal light comes, the true light, to help us “see”: to show all of our senses the evidence of God at work in the world.

To show us love and miracles in Christmas gifts and masks and vaccines and lights in the window. To show us the best of ourselves and of our co-workers, family, neighbors, and even politicians, in spite of all the frustrations and errors and irritations and general sins of everyday life.  To show us joy when the world around us insists on anxiety; trust when the world shouts doubt; possibilities and power when the world insists on zero-sum answers.

The noisy light we live with here and now can obscure the true light just as much as darkness can.

But just like darkness, artificial or noisy light cannot overcome the true light.

Instead, the true light gives life; life abundant, vibrant, and unstoppable, in the midst of strong darkness or bright noise.

In a Zoom meeting, where the artificial light shows the shadows under your eyes or the mess on your desk, the true light shows the life-giving human connection that can be built in spite of distance and distraction.

When stress or fear, conflict or pain, darken our lives, the true light keeps shining love into us, until we perceive it and can respond. 

When the noisy light of news and entertainment, of alerts and stories, show a world of urgency and competition, the true light shows the solid foundation of trust and peace that God builds for us in the midst of it all.

When boredom, indifference, and distraction close our eyes to both human need and human capability, the true light keeps showing us compassion and wonder, strength and hope, woven into every human life, and every human question.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. … And to all who received him, he gave power to become children of God…who believed in his name.

Not Normal

Luke 2:1-20

It’s not the same, is it?
Christmas church at a distance is just…odd.

Family isn’t gathered as usual, or we’re gathered with lots of new precautions and stresses. We’re missing folks around the table and tree – and some of us are actually seeing more family on Zoom than we would with usual holiday travel.
Parties, shopping, decorating, caroling are all changed because of job losses and social distancing. The Christmas rituals of celebration and love are just different this year. 

For some of us, it just doesn’t quite feel like Christmas. 

For some of us, it’s actually better this way. 

Either way, we don’t need to pretend it’s the same.

Because disruptions, change, difference, and the disorientation that comes from all of that, is exactly where Christmas starts.

Nothing was usual in Bethlehem, after all, in that particular season and year we remember today.

They weren’t in the middle of a pandemic, staying home and separate out of care for one another. They had a global tax census forcing people to leave home, travel across the country, and crowd together where there’s not enough room. Mary and Joseph are out of their element, in a makeshift guestroom – maybe with more extended family around them than ever before – and now holding a brand-new infant: an adorable, unpredictable bundle of disruption and change. 

Everything’s just as different in first-century Bethlehem as it is in twenty-twenty New Jersey. Nobody’s ready for what’s happening, we’re all off balance, and – right in the middle of that – God shows up!  In a manger.

I wonder if that detail about the manger – which Luke repeats three times in telling the story of Jesus’ birth – is meant to be a signal about the disruption, the change, the not-the-way-it’s-supposed-to-be-ness of God’s coming.  Putting a baby in a feed box draws our attention to just how not-like-we-planned it this whole arrival is.

And if that’s the case, then everything that is wrong with Christmas this year is actually right.

Maybe we’re really not supposed to be prepared for how God really comes.

Maybe things aren’t supposed to be “normal’.

That’s great news. Let’s be honest, we’re never going to be really prepared for the coming of God, no matter how predictable things are.  So thank God we don’t have to “get back to normal” to receive and share all the blessings of Christmas; to experience the peace or joy or hope or love we long for.

Maybe the disruption of our habits, our homes, our workdays, our relationships is something that creates a perfect space for God to be born, to become one with us, to be with us.  

I don’t think that God needs us off-balance and uncomfortable to get in to our lives. I do think that when things change, when traditions aren’t the same, it gets our attention and helps us notice God at work. So we’re more ready to see and feel God’s real, physical presence – in a manger of all places! (Or whatever our 2020 version of ridiculous substitute for a baby bed or a heavenly throne would be.)

So, today, as we remember the story of God slipping into a feed box in a crowded hill town, changing everything, look around at your life. Look around your Christmas that isn’t what you’re used to, the things you’re not prepared for, and think about how that might be showing you where God is turning up in your life; or what God is up to, here and now.

After all, in this whole year of worshipping together in so many different places – out of sync with the people who’d ordinarily be in the next pew – new spaces have become sacred, time has become holy in new ways.

Bible study and classes, prayer and worship, visits and friendships are traveling through the electrons and data-packets of the internet this year, as Emmanuel, God-with-us, moves into our disrupted spaces and lives. Required registration has made worship more intentional for some; live-streaming has made it more serendipitous for others. 

This building has become a place to launch prayer into the world, instead of a destination for prayer. 

God-with-us is establishing our homes, our neighborhoods, and even the wilderness of the internet as holy and sacred, filled with power and love and the complete presence of God.

Where else has God become noticeable in the disruptions in your life?

I’ve noticed that the disruptions of our face-to-face life have made phone calls – ordinary, just-voice phone calls – special, holy, and life-giving for me this year. There’s something sacred, a presence of God, in recognizing a voice, seeing you with my ears, whether we are talking about grief or joy or money or the weather.

The changes and disruptions of this year have reconnected many of us to God’s creation. People take up birdwatching from an isolated room; others get rooted in the earth by digging into our gardens. Many of us have been tuning our lives to the demands of walks and kibble and playtime as animal shelters empty and God’s creatures move into more of our homes. 

Disruptive protests have reminded us to notice the face of God in the black lives cut short by violence and neglect. Those disruptions have prompted conversations in boardrooms and legislatures and kitchens and driveways about we can use changes in our habits and assumptions, our brands and behavior and budgets, to help free ourselves and others from a history of oppression and separation.

The economic challenges of the pandemic have revealed the breadth and depth of generosity in this congregation.  Long-distance friendships are getting closer when physical connections are interrupted. The disruption of our offices and schools has made fuzzy slippers into reasonable work wear (okay, that one’s a stretch for the presence of God, but it’s a blessing anyway!)

We do need to grieve what we have lost – people who have died, illnesses that break our hearts, jobs needed that have vanished, work we loved that has changed, opportunities we can’t claim again.  But where the change is painful, when the disruption hurts, where we grieve: that’s exactly – exactly – where Christmas comes most profoundly, where Christmas matters most.

Not in the normal, the predictable, the safe, the well-planned times and places of our lives, but in the manger, in the ways we never would have done this before.

Into the middle of everything not-normal, Luke tells us, comes the entire, all-powerful, presence of God, lying in a feed box, bringing healing into the brokenness, love into the cracks, peace into the changes. 

Love takes advantage of the disruptions, the change, the unpredictability, to show up in places we weren’t looking for love.  Love, lying in a feed box, comes in and settles down with our discomfort; makes a home in our imbalance and impatience; moves in to the mess we’re mixed up in, and embraces it all. 

And that’s how the joy, the peace, the hope of Christmas come to us. Not from perfect timing, polished rituals, unbreakable traditions. 

Joy bursts upon us from love welling up in the mess. 

Peace takes hold of our hearts from love rolling with all the change. 

Hope grows from love that takes up our tired frustration or lonely grief and says: yes, this is real, but this is not the end, this is not all, there is so much more. 

There are angels singing, even now.

The miracle of Christmas doesn’t come in spite of the fact that there’s no crib, and no room. The miracle comes because there’s no crib, and no room: so a baby in a feed box catches hold of our attention, makes us fall in love, and loves us into the joy and peace, the generosity and hope, the holiness of God with us, the sacredness of this unplanned, strange and wonderful now.

Set Aside

John 1:6-8, 19-28

I’ve noticed recently that we’re starting to crack, many of us, under the losses and stresses of this year.

Not all of us. Some of us cracked long ago, and papered over, and moved on – maybe repeatedly. Some of us are genuinely doing better than we expected. 

But I’m noticing just how much traditions and transitions, expectations and exhaustion, are rolling together right now with the ongoing strains and challenges of this pandemic, pushing many of us to become what we never wanted to be – and just can’t.

Extroverts, living like introverts.

Parents having to be teachers; teachers having to become tech wizards.

Actual tech wizards having to be in multiple places at once like Harry Potter wizards….

Pastors and principals and HR departments having to become disease transmission experts; actual medical experts having to become pastors and family to the ill and dying.

And so much more.

So many of us, in this pandemic – and in the economic, social, and political dangers of this year – find ourselves with identities and responsibilities we didn’t choose, or prepare for.

And into the middle of all this today this walks John: calmly, clearly and persistently – maybe forcefully –saying No.

I am not the Messiah.

I am not Elijah.

I am not the prophet who leads the people.

It starts before John ever opens his mouth. The narrator introduces John by pointing out explicitly that “he himself was not the light.”

The first thing we know about John is who and what he is not. John’s introduction is all about clearing away the clutter of expectations, so that we can see not what we expect to see, but instead what John does, and most of all, who John points to: God, coming into the world.

Every year (every non-pandemic year!) I attend a conference of clergy leaders in the Episcopal Church. And at each gathering, the first thing we do as we come together is to spend about half an hour talking to one another about what we have to leave behind to focus on the work at hand.
What do we have to set aside, say no to for a while, to be fully present in this sacred time and space?

We talk to each other then about roof repairs and budget revisions, about soccer schedules and worship changes, cable companies, loose teeth, sometimes about a loved one’s cancer treatment or impending childbirth – all the things we can’t affect for a day or two, from a conference center with limited wifi.
And by naming them, recognizing their claim on our hearts and minds, recognizing the truth that these things are out of our control right now, we let go of their hold on our attention, and help one another to be focused on, and open to, the holiness of the here and now.

John’s introduction does the same thing. He proactively, deliberately cuts loose the identities and expectations that keep him or us from being fully present to his mission: to announce the coming of God.

You and I may need to be doing exactly that, right now. It’s the primary task of Advent, of preparation for God’s coming: to clear our hearts and minds to focus on, and be open to, God coming into our here and now.

So what do you have to leave behind, this year, to be fully present to Christ?

What do you have to clear away, what do you have to set aside – for a time at least – so that you can focus on the coming of God?

If that question triggers a racing to-do list in your head right now that has the force of an oncoming train, you’re not alone. Standing here in the middle of December – a difficult December, in a year that constantly demands attention for new dangers, tasks, tragedies, and precautions – and asking you – and myself – what we’re going to stop, set aside, and leave behind feels like a ridiculous thing.

But it may be the most important thing.

Even in the best years – and especially in this year – hundreds or thousands of things grab at our attention.

And naming them, recognizing their claim on our hearts and minds, and acknowledging the truth that they are out of our control right now, can help us let go of their hold on our attention, and help us be focused on and open to the coming of God into the here and now.

I can’t ask you to gather round and talk to one another right now, but I can ask you to think about this now:

What are the things on your to-do list that you cannot do, but are holding your attention away from the quiet coming of Christ?

What are the anxieties that clamor for your time, the responsibilities demanding effort, the expectations and information that snag your heart? What are the things limiting the time and attention you have to focus on the powerful and immediate presence of God, bursting in to the world?

And I can ask you to make some time today to talk to someone else: to name those things, acknowledge their value, recognize the limits of our control, and help one another to set them aside awhile to focus on the coming of Christ. 

Because sometimes, we have to say No in order to say Yes.

John said no, repeatedly, to identities that defined what people could expect of him:

I am not the Messiah, not Elijah, not the prophet, not the One.

So that when he does say yes, he can clearly claim an identity that points to our expectation of God.

“I am the voice in the wilderness, calling out the arrival of God.” Yes.

Every time John says yes, says, “I am….” he says “yes, behold, here is God.”

You and I may need to say no not only to tasks and worries that grab for our attention, but to identities and expectations that others have for us, so that we can say yes to the work of God.

I am not a miracle maker, but Jesus is.

I am not the host, the leader, the comforter for all situations, but Christ is, and Christ is coming.

I am not responsible for salvation, but God is. And God is coming, soon, here, now, always.

The “no” that makes space for God can be very freeing in a fragile and difficult time, full of challenges we cannot overcome alone. The no that leads to yes is how we open our lives to let God take up the burdens we cannot carry, and receive our own much lighter share in God’s work of healing and transforming the world.

John came – two thousand years ago, and again today – to help us clear away everything that stands between us and the coming of Christ, God vibrantly among us both then and there and here and now.

So what do you and I have to set aside, or set free, to join John in that joyful focus, that healing clarity, where we are completely, constantly aware of the insistent, powerful, glorious coming of God into our world and hearts and lives?