Light in Darkness

In this brief message for Christmas Eve, I’d like to share with you a few lines from one of my favorite spiritual writers, Jack Kornfield. In his Christmas letter this year he writes:

This season arrives with lights in windows, familiar songs in the air, and the pull of gathering with family and old friends. For some, it is warm and full. For others, it is complicated, quiet, or heavy with memory and loss.

If your heart is tender this year, you are not broken. You are human.

The holidays have a way of stirring everything—the love we long for, the grief we still carry, the disappointments, the sweet moments we wish we could relive. Sometimes we sit at a table that includes both joy and sorrow. Sometimes we aren’t at a table at all.

And yet, even here, something luminous can be born.

Dear People, in this, the darkest time of year, the long dark nights of winter can seem endless. And yet, there is light. We read in the prologue to John’s Gospel, “The light shines in the darkness.” Even in the darkness, even in our darkest hour, there is light. Even in our sorrow, even in our despair, there is light. When we look for it, we can find it. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it. And even when we cannot find it, this light finds us. This light illuminates us. This light is seeking us. We think we are seeking God, but all the while, God has been seeking us.

On these dark winter nights when the sky is clear, I look up and see the stars, and it takes my breath away, to look up and see the stars, so bright, so shockingly bright and brilliant. There the constellation Orion shines bright, with three supergiant stars forming his belt. Orion’s belt. The ancients named it Al Nitham, “the string of pearls.” These three stars in Orion’s belt were named by ancient Arabian astronomers. They named them Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. Their intense light is blue-white in color. Alnitak is a triple star system. Mintaka is a six-star system. Altogether, these three supergiant stars are a million times brighter than our sun. And yet, they are so far away from Earth that it takes twelve hundred years for their light to reach us.

Looking up at Orion’s Belt has a way of shifting my perspective. It sends me into a timeless place when I realize the light from Orion’s stars has been pouring out into space for millions of years. The darkness cannot overcome it. There it is, bright, shining, and real.

Here is the message of Christmas. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. We only need to shift our perspective, to look up, to see the light that is here. And even when we can’t do that, the light is here anyway. Right here and now. It is here. God’s light is here. God’s light never goes away. Even in our darkest moments, the light is here.

Tonight, once again we celebrate the birth of Christ, the birth of God’s love and light into this world. The light has always been here. Since before creation, since before the beginning, it was here. What has come into being in him is life. And the life is the light of all people. The light is life. And it shines, even in the darkness.

You know, maybe it’s difficult to believe in God sometimes. Belief in God can seem so abstract. Belief in God can seem so archaic, so old fashioned, so out of touch. But put it in different language. Can you believe in life? Can you believe in light? These things don’t even require belief. There’s nothing to think about. They simply are. You simply open your eyes, and there it is. The fact. Life and light are direct experiences. It’s just the way things are. The stars in the sky. The wind in the trees. Birds and fish and mountains and rivers. The great wide ocean. Only open your eyes and see. Life and light.  See this miracle that is always here, even in the depths of winter.

This is message of Christmas. Emmanuel, God is with us. God is here. Right here, and right now.

May it be so for you this night as we celebrate the birth of the Christ child.

Amen.