Christmas meditation

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him; nothing that has been made was made without him. In him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.—John 1:1-5
Have you ever wondered why Jesus was born at night? We sing about it in any number of our carols—“Silent Night”; “It Came upon the Midnight Clear”; “O Holy Night”; “Lo! How a Rose E’er Blooming,”; “O Little Town of Bethlehem”; “Away in a Manger”; and of course, the various references to the shepherds watching their flocks by night. Above Bethlehem’s “deep and dreamless sleep,” “the stars in the sky looked down where he lay”—where, if you believe the carols, he lay sleeping peacefully next to his mother, then woke up without crying, which would make him a most implausible newborn. (We like to imagine it that way, but somehow, after three kids of my own, I don’t buy it.)  But in any case, we have this mental picture—still, quiet night; sweet hay, contented animals; quiet, happy baby, radiant mother; and the stars shining serenely down on this beautiful scene—have you ever asked why it should be that way? There’s no particular reason Jesus couldn’t have been born at 3 in the afternoon or 10 in the morning, after all; why was he born at night?Some might say the question’s meaningless, that there was no reason, but I don’t believe that—God doesn’t waste anything, and he doesn’t do anything without a reason. Granted, we can’t know for sure what that reason was, but I think it’s a question worth asking, and trying to answer. You might argue it was because of the star—so that the star could shine, and be seen, from the moment of his birth; there’s probably truth to that, but for my part, I think there’s something bigger going on here. I think, just as with God’s command to Hosea to go marry a woman who would be unfaithful to him, what we have here is a parable brought to life. Jesus wasn’t born when the world was bright and sunny, he was born in the darkest part of the night, when there was little light by which to see. He was born at the time when the rhythms and the energy of human life are lowest, when we are most vulnerable—physically, emotionally, spiritually—when it’s hardest to think clearly and easiest to make mistakes. I don’t think that’s just a physical fact—I think it’s a metaphor, and one to which we need to pay close attention.Now, you might think this is just me, but it isn’t. Here’s another question: have you ever wondered why we celebrate Christmas in late December? No, it’s not because he was born in December; I know we have carols like “In the Bleak Midwinter” and “Do You Hear What I Hear?” with their images of “snow on snow on snow” as the baby Jesus “shivers in the cold,” but he wasn’t born in December; rather, he was born in March or April. That’s why the shepherds were out in the fields with their flocks—it was lambing season. But when the early church was formalizing everything, the date for the Christ Mass was set in late December, not early April, for two very good reasons. One, having Easter and Christmas about the same time would have left the spring calendar way too crowded—not an insignificant point.  More importantly, though, they wanted the symbolism of celebrating the birth of Christ during the darkest part of the year, the time when the night is longest and coldest. The early church picked up the image of the Light of the World coming in the dark of the night, and they set Christmas at a time which would emphasize it, just past the longest night of the year.This is an important thing for us to remember when we think about Christmas. After all, if you stop and think about your images of this season, you probably think of Christmas trees, gifts, ornaments, stockings . . . and lights. Lots of lights. Lights on Christmas trees, on houses, on businesses; light-up wire deer in people’s yards, and flashing lights spelling out “Season’s Greetings” over the garage door of a house; icicle lights, strings of white lights, blue lights, colored lights; during our vacation in Arizona a couple years ago, we even saw people stringing the cacti in their front yards with Christmas lights. No evergreens? No problem—just put the lights on whatever you have. We can go without a real pine or fir tree, but it seems we can’t celebrate Christmas, we can’t even imagine it, without lights everywhere and everywhere.Which is good, and as it should be, because Christmas is about light, as John shows us—it’s about the Light of the World, born as one of us. But if we only focus on the light, we miss half the story, because the Light didn’t come into a world full of light; the star didn’t shine at high noon of midsummer. No, the Light came in the darkness of the night, to a world in desperate need. It’s all too easy to forget that, when things are going well, when we have family and friends around us; it’s easy, when we have food on the table, money to pay the bills, and lots of love and joy in our lives, to wrap ourselves in a little bubble of light and let ourselves forget the darkness. It’s easy to forget that there are those in darkness who need the light.That’s a sad thing, because there are many for whom this world is dark indeed. Those who are lonely, those who feel unloved or rejected, know well the darkness of the world; so do those who are struggling to keep their marriage together, or who are trying as hard as they can to help someone they love get free of an addiction to drugs or alcohol, or to do so themselves. For those among us who have recently had someone they love die, who have lost the light they knew in that person’s life, the world can be very dark, and it can be very hard to see any light at all. There are a lot of hurting people in this world, a lot of people for whom life is very dark; and unfortunately, for many, the way the world celebrates Christmas only makes matters worse, which is why depression rates worsen significantly at this time of the year. After all, if you’re unhappy, what help is it to hear the constant message, “Don’t be sad! ’Tis the season to be jolly”? To quote the singer/songwriter/worship leader Dwight Beal, “it’s like seeing a great party and not having an invitation.”This is why, as much as we emphasize the light, we need to take our cue from John and remember the darkness, too. “Light” is one of John’s favorite words, popping up all over his gospel, but he never forgot where the light shines—it shines in the darkness. And note that present tense—not “shone,” but “shines.” God said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” and that light hasn’t stopped shining yet. The light of the Word, who is the Light of the World, shone into the darkness at the beginning of creation, lighting everything as the world was spun out of nothing; the light continued to shine on, and in, the first human beings; after their fall into sin, it continued to shine through the darkness of our fallen world; it shone most brightly of all in Jesus, when the Word was born as a fellow human being; and it continues to shine through his teaching, and—however imperfectly—through us, the church he left behind him, who are his body. In the darkness, the light shines. The darkness tried to put out the light, nailing Jesus to a cross, but even there, it failed, for the light only shone far brighter when he rose again from the grave. The light shines, and the darkness did not overcome it, for it cannot. Though battles may still rage, the war is over; the victory is won. Jesus has won.These are the “tidings of comfort and joy” which we bring at Christmas—not just “be happy because everybody else is happy,” but “be happy because no matter how dark things get, the light still shines.” As the carol has it, “Let nothing you dismay; remember, Christ our savior was born upon this day to save us all from Satan’s power when we had gone astray.” To celebrate Christmas by pretending for a while that the darkness isn’t there is to miss the point entirely; the message of Christmas is that God knows the darkness in this world—including the darkness you face, whatever it may be, however deep it may be—and that Jesus is his answer to it. Jesus came because of the darkness, to light up the darkness—and ultimately dispel it.