December 24, 2019 “Great Light” – Isaiah 9:2-7

Isaiah 9:2-7
“Great Light”
December 24, 2019 – Christmas Eve

That probably seemed like a strange Christmas carol we just sang. I first heard it last year and learned it was a French Canadian favorite. When I asked my musical Canadian son-in-law about it, he said, “Yes, we sing that all the time at Christmas. It’s known as ‘The Huron Carol.’” Then I discovered it was in our own Covenant hymnal. So there you go. We sang it tonight.

“But wait,” you say, “all that stuff about native hunters coming to a stable in the forest to see the Baby wrapped in rabbit skin is just not right! That’s not how the story goes.” Yes, that’s absolutely true, and in these days of so many public lies it is important to hold on to facts, especially the facts about our faith. But in another way, a little embellishment and what missionaries call “contexualization” of the Christmas story is completely in the Spirit of what our Lord did when He came to be born as one of us.

That carol about fierce hunters and faraway chiefs coming to see baby Jesus may actually near to the spirit of what Isaiah prophesied in the text I just read. In describing the joy of “people who walked in darkness,” who “have seen a great light,” Isaiah talks about farmers rejoicing to bring in their harvest and warriors dividing up the spoil of a great battle. He tells of slaves being released from oppression and the clothing and equipment of war being burned up. The poets and prophets use all sorts of images to convey to us the wonder and beauty of what God has done for us.

Some of us have also been reading together Advent devotions based on bits from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The devotional writer does a wonderful job of weaving the spiritual messages of Christmas into and around the story of stingy Scrooge and the poor Cratchit family. But, truth be told, Dickens hardly mentions what Christians might call the “real meaning of Christmas” or even God.

I did a little Christmas shopping at Fred Meyer yesterday and even early in the morning I saw people scurrying to grab the last two rolls of Christmas wrapping paper in the store and clerks busy stocking shelves with plastic storage boxes for people to put away all their Christmas stuff until next year. None of it had much to do with the true heart of Christmas, what Isaiah declared here in verse 6 and which was echoed by the angel who spoke to the shepherds, “unto us a child is born, to us a son is given.”

We could get upset about all that, upset with Christmas songs and stories that aren’t really about Christmas, angry about all the shopping and decorating which totally forgets about the baby Jesus, annoyed with those who wish us “Happy Holidays,” instead of “Merry Christmas.” Like some Christian cults and like the Puritans who banned Christmas in New England in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, we could just dump the whole thing. We could decide Christmas is just a pagan celebration of the winter solstice with a thin Christian veneer and just sit quietly praying and reading our Bibles, then go to work tomorrow like it’s any other day of the year.

Yet I’m not ready to do that. Isaiah prophesied that “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.” It may get it all wrong, but all those “Christmas” movies and songs and stories which have nothing to do with Jesus; all that shopping and decoration and overeating that seems contrary to the spirit of Jesus or at least contrary to common sense; all of it means that people have seen something in Christmas, seen at least the glimmer of that great light.

At our homeowner’s association board meeting this month we talked about the fact that our neighborhood has no street lights, nothing except yard lights we struggle to get ever homeowner to keep repaired and turned on every night. Then someone, not a Christian at all as far as I know, noted how nice it is in December that Christmas lights add so much more illumination to our dark streets.

It may be hidden in plastic reindeer or lost in an avalanche of tweets and posts about politics, but the Great Light which Isaiah foretold still shines in the darkness. All the mess of a too commercial and too sentimental and totally unspiritual Christmas celebration still catches and reflects some of that light.

And for anyone, like you all here tonight, who deliberately and thoughtfully came in out of the dark for a few minutes to remember where all that light originated, there is a glorious glimpse of how it shines in the darkness.

Things are dark outside, and it’s not just the shorter span of daylight. I think most of us feel we live in darker times than we did just a few years ago. I’ve lived long enough to have felt that way before, when we lived under an imminent cloud of nuclear war, when thousands of young men were dying in Vietnam, when another president was impeached. And I know enough history to know people down through the ages have felt their own times to be especially dark, during the plagues of the middle ages, during the peasants’ war at the time of the Reformation, during the world wars of the last century. But still there seems to be a particular spiritual and moral darkness around us this year. We’ve totally lost trust in government and, as a recent editorial I read says, greed and fear seem to be the order of the day.

The greed is obvious. We’re being encouraged to make our economy better by buying more things. This past Saturday was the greatest day ever for sales in our country, bigger than Black Friday or Cyber Monday this year. And people seem happy about it. It’s darkness masquerading as light.

The fear is purely dark. People are afraid of telling the truth, of criticizing immoral and vicious leadership which takes delight in cruel insults and power plays which only benefit the wealthy. We are also afraid of criticizing an immoral social order and the influence it wields over both education and entertainment. Even more seriously, while some boast of a strong economy, thousands of Americans are afraid they are right on the edge of losing jobs and homes, of landing on the streets as part of the increasing numbers of unhoused folks we see around us in our own community.

Just as it has been so often in the world, just as it was 2,000 years ago, it’s dark and we need light. That’s why we came here to listen to the prophet tell us about the Child that has been born, tell us that one day the government will be upon His shoulders, and that He is “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,” and that “His government shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace.”

We are here to hear again that there were men out in the dark near Bethlehem long ago, watching over flocks of sheep. Into that darkness flew an angel and “the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.” But the light that angel brought had nothing to do with fear. “Fear not,” the angel said, “behold I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

The light which came into world as a Baby is for all the people. That’s why it was brought specifically to shepherds, to people at the bottom of society then. It’s a light not just for people who can afford to pay their electric bills or have homes or living rooms to string glowing bulbs around. It’s a light that reaches right out into the darkest countryside, into the darkest street.

You can be sure that stable was dark the night Jesus was born. A couple weeks ago Beth wondered aloud what ancient people would have thought to see all the electric light we have. We have to go out into the wilderness to get any idea of what it must have been like just a couple centuries ago. When night fell everything was truly and completely dark, especially inside any building or shelter one had. Mary and Joseph would have had only a lamp or candle to illumine a dark space meant for animals.

Yet Jesus showed up there, in the darkness. That tells us something about where to look for Him. It’s going to be harder to see Him where other lights are so bright, where illuminated signs invite you to shop and screens glow to entertain you. To truly see Jesus we may need to look more closely at the dark places around us, and in the dark places of our own lives.

Years ago, Karl Barth occasionally preached sermons in the prison of Basel in Switzerland. He went into the darkness of a jail and told the inmates that, through Jesus Christ, God was with them even there. In a Christmas message in 1958, he invited those who listened to think about Jesus coming to the dark stable, the abode of animals, rather than to a comfortable brightly lit inn. Then he said,

You see, the proud or modest inns, and our behavior as their inhabitants, are but the surface of our lives. Beneath there lurks the depth, even the abyss. Down below, we are, without exception… only poor beggars, lost sinners, moaning creatures on the threshold of death, only people who have lost their way.

Then Barth gave this light and hope to men who would leave that service to go back and sit in dark cells:

Down there Jesus Christ sets up quarters. Even better, he has already done so! Yes, praise be to God for this dark place, for this stable in our lives! There we need him, and there he can use each one of us. There we are ready for him. There he only waits that we see him, recognize him, believe in him, and love him. There he greets us.

My hope and prayer is that Jesus who was born to greet shepherds in a dark stable in Bethlehem will greet you too in the dark places, whether it’s the deep, gross darkness of the wider world, or the small, confined darkness of an ugly or lonely place in your own soul. May Jesus Christ enter in and fill that dark with His light. May He bring you so much joy that you too are ready to give Him praise for the dark places, because in them you see Him shine just that much brighter.

And as the light of Christ shines on you and me, let’s not forget that He wants to shine on everyone. That’s what that “Huron Carol” is about. Jesus comes into all the dark places, whether it’s a stable or a forest, whether it’s a prison or a tent by the side of the road. Jesus is on His way there tonight and always. Let us do what we can to go there with Him.

For the many who cannot see they are in the dark, for people go to movies that are opening tomorrow, for those who open expensive gifts with no thought of the greatest Gift, for the ones who drink too much and spend too much and eat too much, may we pray for them all to see the Light. And, as God gives us opportunity, may we do what we can to show them and share with them the true Light of Jesus Christ.

So as you speak kindly to someone at work or in a store on Thursday, or help move chairs or take shift for the Warming Center this week or make an extra gift to a charity or make a point to call or visit someone who might be lonely after Christmas, may our Lord’s great Light shine both for you and through you. He promised that it would. John 1:5 reminds us: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Amen.