Luke 2

Reflection December 24, Christmas

The Sum of all Light

Christmas, besides being about giving, is about light and lights.  The further north we go, the less light there is at this time of the Winter Solstice.  So we have to create it.  We have to hook ourselves increasingly up to the electrical system to create light.  But then there are so many lights sometimes, we have a hard time deciding which one really matters.  It’s as if we are trying to say: what’s important is that there are as many colors lights shining as brightly as possible.  It doesn’t matter so much what the light is really all about. It’s almost as if the lights are there to drown out what we don’t want to see, the darkness and the cold.  That’s why Was so intrigued that the Congregational church of Murphys has a “Blue Christmas service” for people who are sad and in pain this Christmas and that Trinity Episcopal Cathedral has a memorial service for the homeless this time of year.  Because the lights don’t blind out the reality of people’s lives.  It is one of the contradictions of Christmas.

The comedian David Sedaris (NPR) has a book called Santa Land diaries where he talks about being dressed up as an elf in some giant Christmas theme store.  Parents are stressed because they want everything to be perfect.  The light of the season has to be just so.  One sold out item could ruin it all.  The funny part of the writing is how people are all pretending to be someone they’re they keep slipping out if their roles and showing their stressed, imperfect selves. It is another of the contradictions of Christmas.

In the old European paintings of the Nativity you will often see the Christ child’s face lit of as if the producer of the set has plugged a spotlight into a generator.  In any case, it looks like some external light is focused on the baby, making everything secondary.  You know, I think one reason why we churchgoers love Christmas so very much is that this is the only time of the year that all of Western society and much of the rest of the world buys into the Christian story. It is as if in these few days, everybody wants to be part of story, in the way that everybody wants to feed the homeless at Thanksgiving.  The point we want to make today though is that Christmas is not about shining a light on the baby Jesus, it is about God in that baby shining a light on us.

The Presbytery requires we review our membership as a congregation every once in a while and last Tuesday I found myself in this building with all the lights off, except the one in my office. And I found myself losing track of time as I leafed through the century old membership book, seeing names of those who have come and gone. Every line is a person, with a small box for baptism, membership, transfer, end of  life etc. I found myself updating this book in places, like some “transcendent” gatekeeper.  I know I was shining a light on these lines, but really the lines were shining light. Each line was a story of many Christmases, of challenges and tears and smiles and joy.  Each line spoke of light being shone into the lives of others as God’s grace permitted.

Friends, we try to put a verse on the front of the bulletin cover.  Today we took a line out of a film, “the year of living dangerously,” (MGM , 1982). There are three parts: “the misery in front of us,” “adding your light,” and “the sum of all light.” We have already talked about the first two.  Now we come to the sum of all light.  In the Christian faith we believe that God is light, that God is the source of all life and energy and that at Christmas in the baby God becomes the Sum of All light.  This is why Christmas is so powerful, because it just seems that at this time of year everyone wants to believe that.  A little part of almost everybody becomes a believer.  Now the amazing thing is that at the very moment that God becomes the most fragile creature, in cold of the Judean uplands, in a dirty place, with no place to belong, at that instant of vulnerability, God also embodies the most radiant light.  It is one more contradiction of Christmas, but the one that really matters. Friends, that light shines all year round. In this coming year may God help us take our light from it and add to it at the same time.