The Pridgen-Bennett Family shares the Light of Christ in the Christmas Eve service
© Seth Olson 2020
December 27, 2020—First Sunday after Christmas
God Incarnate, dwell here among us, let my words illuminate your Word and when my words do not illuminate your Word, let your people be cunning enough to know the same. Amen.
Merry Christmas! No matter what time of year, we in the Church love to REMEMBER! We say remember your baptism, even though those who were baptized as infants have a hard time actually having any memories of that day. We pray in words that Christ Jesus said on the night before he died, “Do this in remembrance of me.” One huge reason for the Church’s very existence stems from us coming together to re-member or put back together the Body of Christ. We love remembering! Today though, I want you to forget—at least for a moment.
I ask you to forget if you can everything you know about God. Everything you know about Christmas and Easter, God Incarnate and Our Risen Lord, everything you know about our doctrine, discipline, and worship. Everything you learned in Holy Scripture, Tradition, or Christian Formation (the Atrium, EYC, EfM, or other classes). I need that machine from the Men in Black movies that makes us forget. I know you aren’t really going to forget all of this, but let’s pretend—it’s Christmas time and we use our imagination well at this time of year.
So now that you have forgotten all that you know about God, let’s go back—way, way, way back to the beginning. No, it was not back in February—even though it might feel like that was the dawning of time—I want us to go back to the time before there was time and space and matter.
Millennia ago, millions, even billions of years ago, eons ago there was… nothing? Maybe. But, then there wasn’t nothing. Okay, that’s a double negative… So, really there was; there was something. How did it happen?
If we could not use our normal words (that God created)… if we could not use the familiar pieces of our religion and culture, how would we tell this story? Do we resort to some other mythology? Some alternative fable to explain the way the vast expanse of interstellar space came into being? What about science? It pursues the truth just as our religion does but using different language.
If you were to Google images of the universe you would see some spectacular photos. The entirety of what we have been able to capture from satellites like the Hubble Space Telescope shows a still evolving picture. Science uses the evidence and a process to tell the what, how, when, where, and why of it all. And, this information is supremely useful. It can take us all the way back to the beginning, but what about before the beginning?
Before the ages when all things burst into being what was? Nil? Utter obscurity? Complete nothingness? It is hard for my feeble mind to do that sort of calculation—trying to take everything away—then somehow produce a source for all that was, is, and will be. This sort of balancing the equation mathematics using quantum physics is not my forte. However, deep in my being something cries out—even if I forget everything that I have ever known—there is something that lets me know that before there was—God was (I know I told you to forget all that you know about God, so we can use some other name for God if you want, like Fred? Before there was… Fred was… That doesn’t sound right.)
Still, if we were to seek the truth about how all things came into being, one place we might not look is within ourselves. Our interior lives, the still center of ourselves, the quiet place, which resides at our deepest point can be like a compass, which guides us toward a true north. The more I speak with people about the challenges of 2020 the more I hear a common truth about this compass within us. Many are observing a reliable data point that tells the story of our beginnings. This year has taught us that our very origin is community.
In talking with some care providers who have made the shift to virtual programming I have heard that their patients are struggling. Not because the caregivers have been lacking in offering passionate service. No, it is because previously these patients were having communal time together on a regular basis.
What happens when we take away the gift of community? We suffer. People with dementia have more memory issues. Those with mental illness become more symptomatic. Even seemingly healthy people with substantial means are feeling the weight of isolation, disconnection, and loneliness. We see this here at Church. So, these issues point to the truth that we know if we listen to that inner compass within us. We are made to live in community, but why? This is where it gets a bit heady and theological and to be honest fun!
We are made to be in community because we are made out of community. Yeah! All those times you hear Mary Bea, Charles, or someone else closing a prayer with “through Jesus Christ who lives and reigns with you (Father/Creator) and the Holy Spirit, as one God forever and ever” we are essentially saying, “God you are community!” So, if we use this data point to understand the very beginning of everything, what we can see is that before there was… there was community.
Another bit of information this year has given to us is that we are not just made to be in community, but we are also made to love each other in that community. This year has been rough! Understatement of the century. And, even with everything being so challenging so many of you have reached out to care for your neighbor. Many of you are healthcare workers who have sacrificed so much to love your patients. Others are teachers or front-line workers or local small business owners or you have supported these neighbors in large and small ways.
Those sacrifices, those small acts of kindness, those instances of stopping what you would be doing to help your neighbor are what Mary Bea on Christmas Eve described as “Shards of light,” which “stream into our ordinary lives [so that] hope arises anew.”
We are made to be in community and to love in community, and when we are we are given hope. All of this helps us to say something more about our very origin. Before anything was there was community and before there was there was love within that community and that gives us hope! You may be having a harder time doing that forgetting that I asked you to do about 7 minutes back. Perhaps now is the time you can forget forgetting (even though with the mental fog of this year that might be tough), but instead of forgetting now I want you to remember.
Remember a time when you were so loved that you felt as though you were wrapped in warmth and light and a peace that defies our cognitive ability. Do you have that memory? Now remember for a moment a time when you were part of a community where you were appreciated, where you mattered, where you were accepted for who you are and whose you are. Got it? These data points help us to understand something so very powerful—this information tells us about our genesis—where we originated, where everything originated.
In the beginning within Godself—within the magnificent Divinity of Our Triune God was the unity of a community woven together in self-giving, unconditional, and limitless love. And out of that a Word was spoken. That Word was with God and that Word was God. Nothing came into being without God, nothing comes into being without God, and nothing will come into being without God. As the universe continues to expand God still speaks. Any moment of creativity or charitable love or community is us co-creating or speaking with God’s Word. You didn’t know we had that power, did you?
This is the life of which the Evangelist John wrote. This life was most clearly illuminated in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. This life was pure light. Light which we so desperately crave right now. I do not know what was before the universe but I sometimes think that what was was not light. And, right now we have a lot of not light—we have a lot of darkness.
Last Monday night was the longest night of the year. Did you see the Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter? Back on the 21st it got dark at 4:43 PM and the sun did not technically rise until 6:48 AM. That’s 14 hours and 5 minutes of darkness. But it’s not like it the next night was much shorter. Even tonight we get 14 hours and 3 minutes of darkness. It may not have been completely opaque or obscure before creation was created, but if it was, then we have a good chunk of time every 24 hours right now to dwell in the bleakness.
I do not have enough time to unpack all the many, many things we throw onto darkness, like we are throwing unwanted things into a darkened closet, but often we associate darkness with sin, evil, and all things fearful. But, these associations make it so that we fear darkness instead of learning from it. This year has been so filled with other sorts of darkness—uncertainty and change, loss and depression, despair and death.
In the darkest nights of our souls, in these actual nights that are so long, in this year, which feels so hopeless we wait in the dark. Like potential creation waited to experience God’s Big Bang explosion, like Israel waited for a Savior, like Mary waited for her baby’s birth, we wait not in the light, but in the dark—hoping for the light. Yearning for the word, which is coming to bring new life and light to all people.
This time of year, when it gets so dark so early and stays so dark so long, I get so upset when so soon after Christmas everyone packs up their lights and decorations. Is there a sadder sight than a deflated blow up Santa Claus? Or, even worse an inflatable manger scene all flattened out in a puddle of plastic on a lawn? You may have already taken down your lights and that is perfectly fine.
However, in these long nights I ask that as we wait in the darkness for the light of Christ coming to fully illuminate our lives that you remember those times when you have already been given Christ’s light when you were loved in community. Remember you already have that light within you, keep it lit, and share it like we are passing candlelight on Christmas Eve. As St. Francis of Assisi said, “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish thelight of a single candle.”
If you feel the light of hope—hope in a Creator who dwells in the imaginative work of mass-producing vaccines—share that light. If you feel the light of community—in all the beautiful ways the Spirit has birthed new fellowships this year—share that light. If you feel the light of love—that sacrificial kind of love, which Christ Jesus incarnated—then please share that light.
Yes, there is so much darkness right now, but our God who is the source of community, love, and hope comes right now to meet us here. All the darkness of the world cannot quench the light of a single candle, for the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it. Amen.
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