Saturday, December 24, 2016

This is for you! A Christmas promise to shatter the darkness

Luke 2:1-20

“Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord!”
            The great thing about tonight is that I don’t need to preach—not really. I mean, everything tonight preaches itself. These are words that shatter the darkness where the shepherds are standing. Whatever I say is just pointing back at what angels have already given us. Then again, many who receive a great promise hear it suspiciously, as if it, like most things in life, are really too good to be true. Sometimes it’s not enough to hear the words; we have to actually believe and trust in them.
You see, the shepherds knew the words of the prophet Isaiah when he said, “You who stand in great darkness shall see a light” (Isa. 9:2), but who really thinks Isaiah meant that for them specifically? Which people actually believe they are the ones to whom God is speaking? Do any of us? Into a world of darkness comes this word: Tonight, a Savior is born for you! The reason I have to preach and the reason we need to do communion and light candles and all of this is because you need to hear these words tonight over and over again: this is for you. For every last one of you!
            We who stand in the darkness will see a light. There is a long history in the Bible with darkness. God created out of darkness. Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was wild and waste and darkness covered the face of the deep…” That’s where we always start: Sitting in darkness… waiting, watching.
            This has been our history: From the time before there were stars, before the sun, before the universe came—bang!—out of the mind of God into the reality we call “life.” This is the story we tell over and over again. Darkness versus light. Good versus evil. Dark is scary; it has a weight and a power to it. Deep darkness seems eternal, overwhelming, impossible to overcome. And, yet, the strongest darkness cannot match the tiniest flicker of light.
            We crave those stories of light triumphing over dark. We resonate with it because that battles wages within us. We are dark, we are light; if we are to believe Martin Luther we are fully both. And what we need to know more than anything else is the answer to one simple question, one little idea that, if true, changes everything. We need to know which is more powerful: The light or the dark?
            We know we are both. We know both options exist for us. We know that we are shepherds, waiting, sitting in darkness, wondering whether light wins or not. We know we are all this. The question is just that: Which is more powerful?
            God gives the answer to this question to simple people in this Christmas story. Not the elites, not the smartest or the most handsome or the richest, but to simple shepherds. In Luke’s account there are no magi; it’s just the shepherds. These are our people—the representatives of all humankind—to meet God-incarnate, lying in that manger. These are the ones who get to discover whether it is light or dark that wins out at the end of the day.
Shepherds, like most who work for the well-being of others, are underappreciated. Shepherds were the nurses of the day, the caregivers of the day, the Special Ed teachers and social workers and advocates and grandparents and foster parents and mission directors and those who tend homeless shelters or shelters for domestic violence of the day. They are the people we tend to take for granted and who never make what they deserve but whose reward is to sit in darkness and watch patiently for a light.
If you spend time with these people you will begin to realize pretty quickly why it is that the angels appeared to ones such as these. In order to see the light you have to be looking for it. And in order to be looking for it you need to want to find it; you need to be children of the light, sitting in the dark and waiting for it. So, of course, the angels come to the helpers, because they’re the ones who have entered the darkness without fear for their lives and waited, most desperately, for some salvation from the night. Of course God-incarnate would come to people such as these; they are the ones serving as the hands and feet of God for the world on a daily basis. God comes to the helpers for the sake of those who need help. God comes in darkness because darkness is where all our worries come out to play. God comes to those who wait.
Simply, God comes to you! And it is not dependent on the work that you do. Sure, some of you are helpers every moment of the day—you spend your lives looking for light in the dark—still others of you use your free time in service, you spend time that could be spent doing something for yourself. Some of you think you hate serving but then you find, to your surprise, that when the opportunity presents itself and you are forced to consider the darkness for the first time maybe in awhile, you aren’t so afraid of it after all, and maybe in those moments you discover that life has meaning you never recognized before. In one way or another we all serve, like shepherds, and this is how we spend our time, as Christians, sitting in darkness. Waiting, watching, wondering.
Are you ready?
That is one of those questions that sometimes feels accusatory, like pastor, who are you to ask such a question? Isn’t it a bit uncomfortable when Jesus, the grown-up Jesus, goes around saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand!” I mean, isn’t that the opposite of grace? No, and here’s why: Grace is the air we breathe, grace is the son of God born to us in a manger. But we are to be ready so that tonight doesn’t pass in vain, so that the Christ-child matters for us—not just eternally but right now. Christmas is a call to awareness of God’s call to you right now. This is for you—right now!
The Christmas season comes upon us so quickly, it exists alongside all the bustle of our daily lives and piles on the added stress of gifts and family and travel—and what on earth is your crazy uncle going to say about politics around the dinner table. My goodness, so many things to worry about! And then, we have a sense of relief when all the work is done. Or, if we’ve lost somebody near to us, then we are suffering until it is over. Blink and you’ll miss it, or suffer through it with an emptiness in the pit of your stomach. Christmas is made complicated by the pressures we face. Which is why it is all the more important to be ready, not because you need another thing to do, but because, like the shepherds, there is a way to tune our souls to listen for God every day of our lives. The light doesn’t just flicker on Christmas morning, come back for a bang on Easter, then retreat into the darkness of the calendar-year of normal, ho-hum life events that exist between the two dates where church attendance feels more mandatory.
Instead, we are called by the promise of Christmas morning to be ready like a shepherd by probing the darkness for light every day of our lives, by choosing to accompany the most vulnerable, by searching out good where good may be, and living in response to the good news that those angels brought those shepherds those many years ago. “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord!” That is your promise. God brings this message for you from the darkness. God speaks through angels, who tend to look like ordinary people—the kind sitting next to you tonight. God sends his son into the world to be light in the midst of this tremendous darkness. Do not be afraid! That’s the first thing the angels say. Because the darkness is deep, yes, because the darkness is long, yes, but the darkest dark is broken by just the tiniest candle. So how much greater will the light of the world be when it comes in the deepest, darkest of nights!
This is Jesus. Light of the world for you! Do not be afraid. Rather, be a shepherd for your people. Whoever your people are be a shepherd, because that is how you find the Christ-child. Yes, on Christmas but every day. Find your people and shepherd them. Christmas is about a baby in a manger, a baby who came to save the world, but the proclamation of the good news of Jesus comes to shepherds every day. So live the story! Know the story! Be shepherds! Tonight is for you!

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