December 24, 2020 (Christmas Eve) – Luke 2:1-20
Our Christmas Eve Service can be found on Youtube here:
Luke 2:1-20
Light Clashes Against the Dark
Christmas Eve – Nativity of our Lord – December 24, 2020
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
We usually gather at night on Christmas Eve.
We gather and then . . . we light candles against the dark.
In the Bible, night often represents the darkness of the world, the darkness of
poverty, social inequality, depression, loneliness, grief, and ecological crisis.
This year, as we are prevented from gathering, we add the darkness of isolation.
As well as, sadly, the rising spectre of racism.
If you are tuning into this YouTube video, though, you are engaging in an act of hope.
For you are lighting a candle against the dark.
You are placing your trust, once again, in the One who shines in the darkness,
and whom the darkness cannot overcome.
For on this night comes a person, full of the light of love,
to banish our fears and fuel our hope.
Tonight comes crashing into our world one who promises to save us from all that harms us.
We know this story well.
I mean, there is so much that has changed this year, and so much that is different,
that this story reminds us that some things are constant.
Some things do not change.
God’s love for us and for this world does not change.
God passion for us and the Divine mission to love, bless, heal and feed this whole world and
every person in it does not change.
For God has joined God’s self to us and to every nook and cranny of our world forever.
And it began on this night long ago,
with a story that has not yet found its end, but that will.
A story of the restoration of this world to its original intention in
beauty and goodness and harmony.
A story of the restoration of you to your very best self.
A story of the restoration of community to its proper place in life as a
site of laughter, joy, hope, support, and human dignity.
There has been much that has worked against this restoration in God’s love this year.
But God’s love is constant, like the story we tell on Christmas Eve each year.
Of a light coming into the world.
Of a light that crashes into the darkness and which the darkness does not overcome.
The well known story begins like this:
The angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will bear a child who will save the world.
But Mary wonders how this can be since she is a virgin.
Nevertheless, she sings a song in response to this announcement
A song that sings of the reign of love this child will bring,
who will turn systems of power into matrices of mercy and justice.
Then, near the end of her pregnancy, Mary and her husband travel a hundred miles to
be counted in a census, an imperial census intended to help
the forces of darkness keep Mary’s people enslaved.
Finally arrived in Bethlehem,
there is no room at the Inn when it comes time for the child to be born.
And after giving birth, there is nothing to lay him in but a feeding trough for the animals.
Nevertheless, the clash has begun –
a new reign of light that is in opposition to the old reign of darkness has been born.
Suddenly, an angel army appears in the sky announcing peace, shalom:
peace and healing and safety and well-being on earth.
Shepherds see and hear this and rush to find the child and tell Mary and Joseph about the angels.
The shepherds leave, the angels depart, and a single spotlight remains on Mary.
“Mary,” the story says, “treasured everything the shepherds said about the child
and pondered them in her heart.”
This leaves us with a very peaceful image of Mary on Christmas Eve.
And perhaps that peacefulness is something we can only aspire to on this day.
Perhaps that peacefulness is not very relatable.
I want to suggest, however, that this year Mary is the single person in the story who could
most understand how we feel and what we have gone through this year.
Like Mary, we have been through 9 months of bewilderment and disorientation.
9 months of wondering and anxiety what the future will hold.
9 months of worry.
And now, on this night, when she has finally given birth,
` angels from heaven announce to her that her child will be a king like David,
that his reign will challenge Rome’s,
that in fact he will take Caesar’s own titles of “Saviour” and “Lord.”
That he will save the world – and substitute for Caesar’s reign of darkness God’s reign of light.
Our translation says she “ponders” all these things, as if she were placidly thinking about them.
But that is not at all what it says, really.
The Greek word translated “ponder” is the word sumballo.
And it literally means to throw things together.
“Mary stored up all these things, tossing and turning them over in her heart”
is a better translation.
Far from placid pondering,
that sounds more to me like what happens in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep.
The word sumballo can even refer to an invasion or an enemy attack.
“These things clashed violently inside her” is what Luke is suggesting.
And what I am suggesting is that this is an experience we can relate to.
We have been churned up inside, like Mary.
There has been so much grief, so much death, so much violence, so much racism, and
so much darkness.
We are rightly churned up by these things.
But what really has Mary churned up is that something has come to work against these things.
Something has come to clash with them, and to challenge them.
Something has come to run into them and not let them have the last word in this world.
And that something is a someone, full of light and full of love, who crashes into the darkness.
And she has been part of it.
She said yes to her part in it all those months ago when Gabriel first announced her pregnancy.
At the time, she couldn’t see all that that would entail.
And as old Simeon will tell her in the temple, it will entail some difficulty going forward:
the child will turn the world upside down as the vulnerable are prioritized and
the mighty are challenged – but her own soul will be pierced too.
She will see her child arrested and hung on a cross and laid in a grave.
But that darkness will not hold him – for the light has come, and darkness cannot overcome it.
Mary is, I think, our patron saint this Christmas Eve.
Far from being at peace this night, Mary is in turmoil.
But we have the advantage here, for we know the Easter story that she does not yet know.
The darkness really will not overcome the light.
The light clashes against it, and there is turmoil for a time, but the end is not in doubt.
“On earth, peace” – that is the end.
Friends, we are experiencing a turmoil like Mary’s on that night long ago.
We do not need to pretend to a peace that we do not have,
but perhaps we can take comfort in Mary’s experience that is so like our own.
We trust in the light but wonder about the forces of darkness and their presence in our world.
Friends: the darkness will not overcome the light.
We are bound together by bonds of love – and they will not diminish.
9 months ago we were uncertain of our future but now it looks bright.
First Lutheran Church continues to be a place of inclusion and justice and
care for the vulnerable.
These ministries have continued the whole time – these are candles you have lit against
the darkness of these times.
Like Mary, you are part of the light –
yes, you feel the clash because you are capable of both hope and grief.
You feel the clash because you are not uncaring.
But the light has not been overcome.
So let us move forward in hope.
Let us continue to be people of community, people of care, people of peace.
And let us continue to be a place where Jesus is born in us today, tomorrow, and everyday,
a light shining against the dark at Sargent and Victor in the heart of Winnipeg.
Amen
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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