The Breaking Dawn

As I (along with everyone else) prepare for Christmas, and the services that come with it at church, I thought I'd post this brief sermon from Christmas Eve 2008:


The Breaking Dawn

Christmas Eve, 2008

Our daughter Emily wakes up early each day, and I have the morning shift with her. She wakes up sometime just before six most days – this time of the year, for all practical purposes, the middle of the night. And the darkness in the morning can be oppressive, can hang like a curtain over us. But for the past ten days or so, when she and I get downstairs to the living room, the first thing I do is walk over to the corner and plug in the tree. Suddenly the room sparkles, Emily’s face lights up, her eyes brighten and her mouth widens into a smile. It’s Christmastime.

This is the time of year when we celebrate the coming in a manger of the one called in Scripture the Light of the World. But this is the time of year when it’s darkest. The winter solstice was just a few days ago, the shortest day of the year. These winter months take their toll on many people. We find the darkness suffocating and lonely, empty and tiring. Seasonal depression plagues many people.

We anticipate the first fall of snow, dream of a white Christmas, enjoy the opportunity to go skating or spend a week at a ski lodge, or just tear around the woods on a snowmobile. But by January and February most of us are ready for the darkness to lift, for the light to break a little earlier and last a little longer. You get tired of driving to work in the morning before the sun rises and coming home for supper when it’s already dark.

In many ways the world is a dark place. There is suffering, there is pain. There is inexplicable evil. We can’t avoid sickness, can’t dodge death. We are unable to ensure that our lives are going to turn out the way we’d like, with fulfilling jobs, loving marriages, healthy children, strong communities. People are often deliberately unkind to one another. Sometimes, maybe even worse, people are simply callous and uncaring toward their neighbours. Then there are the extreme situations: natural disasters and life-changing tragedies, wars and outbreaks of unexpected violence. In more places than we can imagine there are people willing to give up their own lives in order to take the lives of others. Meanwhile Scripture shows us one who gave up his life in order to save others – the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.

It’s his birth that we celebrate this evening. We recall that dark night in the middle eastern country of Israel and in the midst of that dark night a star shining, guiding wise men from the east to the little boy and his family. We commemorate the one who himself said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” Along with those wise men, we worship the one of whom it is said in the gospel of John, “In him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Those of you who spend time at camps in the summer or any who have ever slept outdoors know that when summer sunshine breaks in the morning it pretty much starts your day for you. With the sun in your eyes it’s hard to pretend it’s still time to sleep. A few years ago I stopped and stayed in a friend’s house while on a road trip. The room I was given was comfortable and made up nicely for me, but it had no curtains and was on the east side of the house. It was early June. By 4:30 the sun was shining brightly and straight into my window. I couldn’t sleep anymore – the dawn had arrived and I couldn’t convince myself it was night no matter what my watch told me.

Now some people are able to turn over, to ignore the light and fall back to sleep even though everything is illuminated. Others sleep with blindfolds to keep away this troublesome light breaking in on the darkness. And if we have darkening curtains we won’t see the light until someone opens them upon us. There are many ways to miss the light but still the darkness can’t win a battle with the light. As a friend of mine mentioned once, you can’t flash darkness into a room and have the light disappear, but as soon as you shine a flashlight in a room darkness loses its power.

The world we live in, the one we all experience, from our daily aches and pains to our marriage difficulties, from disputes with family members to tragic loss, is a world in need of the light. We see glimpses of light all around us, moments when kindness and sacrificial love show themselves, when people seem to have a great capacity to care for one another. But still the darkness nags at us – motives are questionable, true feelings are often hidden. We live undercover, holding ourselves back from others. We are afraid to open ourselves up to others, for fear of how we may be treated. We have trouble trusting. Darkness appears to be more powerful than light.

But the light is there. The light has broken in on this world of darkness and has changed our outlook on the landscape around us. Like the sun coming into that east window at an hour that seemed like the middle of the night, Jesus’ birth, and his life, death and resurrection that followed it, is the decisive light breaking into our world. We may not always be able to see it clearly, we may be able to go on our way in spite of it, we may be able to deliberately ignore it, but things are not the same now that he has come.

In his life he showed the power of God over sickness and sin as he healed and forgave people. As he stilled the waters on the sea, he showed that, one day, creation itself, with its wildness and storminess, would be tamed, giving way to calm. In his death he showed his willingness to share our plight, to give himself up freely for those who did not know him or love him. In his resurrection he showed that, one day, death itself, the penalty for sin – the price our sin and evil earns for itself – would be overcome. Through his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus has opened the way for us to enter the light and freedom of God’s new world. All we need to do is follow him who is the light, trusting that in him we are enabled to live in the light.

Those lights on our Christmas trees began as symbols of Jesus as the light of the world, and the evergreen tree was a picture of the eternal life that is found in Jesus. And that is the challenge of Christmas – once the light has come, things are changed in a real and lasting way. Unlike our days, which begin with a sunrise and end with the sun going down again and giving way to darkness, the Bible speaks of the eternal city of God as having no need of the sun or moon because it is lit by God’s glory and by Jesus himself. Many people live their lives apart from God, and then at Christmas time come for a few minutes to recognize that he is the one we celebrate at this festive time. The year is clouded in darkness, with a little light at the holiday season. But if Jesus is the light of the world we’ll want to walk in that light every day, not just at Christmas time, so that we can live for that day when the light is all that we can see, when God makes everything new in eternity. This Christmas let us celebrate the light together, and in gratitude take up the challenge to live in the light all year round.