Light in the Dark

Summary:

Christmas is seen through the eyes of a child, full of wonder and the call to embrace God’s presence through acts of kindness. A story of a damaged poinsettia becomes a symbol of finding hope in brokenness, echoing Julian of Norwich’s assurance that “all shall be well.” Beloved Christmas movies like Home Alone and It’s a Wonderful Life highlight themes of transformation and faith, while reflections on an Andrew Peterson song explore the gap between hope and struggle. The message centers on loving others, putting faith into action, and trusting God’s guidance to bring light during challenging times.

Transcript:

On this Christmas Eve, I want to invite us all to take a deep breath and to take it all in. Some of us, well, to put it nicely, we've been through a lot of Christmases. And for those of us who have been through a lot of Christmases, sometimes Christmas can lose a of its magic, a little bit of its intrigue. When you're a child, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. When you have children, it's kind of a stressful slash wonderful time of the year. And then for some of us who those days have passed, maybe you find yourself wishing that you could capture that magic back, or to have that jazz that was present there when you were a child, or when you saw Christmas through a child's eyes. But I hope for all of us, no matter where we find ourselves on the excitement spectrum when it comes to Christmas, is that we will each sense the depth of the truth of Christmas, and invite God through the Holy Spirit to fill our lives with his presence and inspire us to good deeds.

And I hope that the joy and the peace which is palpable this time of year, and the mystery of the legends told, some of them true, some of them not so much, but all of them, I hope that they will capture your imagination and lead you to the possibility that there is much more to life than what we are able to comprehend. You know, sometimes we find ourselves in spite of all of the bells and the whistles and the glitz and the glamour of Christmas, we find ourselves in a place where maybe our hearts are heavy. One of the responsibilities that I have here at Journey to Prepare for Christmas Eve is to gather the poinsettias. And every year I go and I try to find the best ones. I don't know if it's just me, or if whatever the situation is, but it seems like the quality of poinsettias is lacking this year. Anybody else with me on that? Maybe you found them and I did not.

But I was bringing them inside and one of them, as best as I tried to handle it with care, slipped out of my grasp and tumbled down onto the ground and just kind of busted. And I did my best to put it back together. And you can see it sitting here on the stage. It's looking a little rough. I was going to throw it in the trash, but then I thought, you know what? Some of us, we might feel a little bit like this poinsettia at times. And even though it's looking a little rough and maybe defeated, it still has a certain beauty to it that we can see.

And I want to say to all of us, but especially those maybe who the Christmas season is a little heavy, or maybe the Christmas spirit feels more like a burden to bear this year. I want to invite you to consider how in the midst of your heavy heartedness, Jesus's arrival might be able to capture your attention and lead you to a place where you see that offering whatever is weighing you down to him will be replaced by the ease and joy of his direction. In the 14th century in Norwich, United Kingdom, there lived a giant of the faith. Her name is Julian, and she is known as Julian of Norwich. She was a mystic. She spent much of her time alone with God. And when I mean much of her time, almost every waking hour, she spent alone away from the world, away from other people seeking to pray and devote herself to God.

Her famous work, The Revelations of Divine Love, is basically a journal that she wrote, and it is the earliest known English manuscript that's attributed to a woman author. And in these writings, she describes what amounts to a near-death experience where the spirit revealed to her 15 what she called revelations of the glory of Jesus. In one of these moments, in the nearness of death, she grieved for herself and for her neighbors. And what was causing her to grieve was the depth of sin and brokenness in the world. Now, I don't know about you, but when I think about a 14th century person, particularly a 14th century mystic, I don't know that I have much in common with Julian of Norwich. But identifying with the brokenness of the world is something that we certainly can understand. And for Julian, she wondered why sin and brokenness was a reality to begin with.

And so in her vision, she saw Jesus coming to her, and she heard Jesus say this, all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. I want us this evening to consider the wisdom that is found in these words, because if indeed the Lamb of God has come to take away our sins, then as the song says, we who walk in darkness deep can see the light of day. And even in the brokenness, either in our lives directly or in the world around us, Jesus's light can shine and lead people out of despair and into the hope, peace, joy, and love that we seek, particularly during the Christmas season. I don't want to speak for all of us this evening, but I'm going to step out on a limb here and say that for many of us, one of our favorite Christmas traditions is watching Christmas movies. Anybody with me? All right. On three, I want you to shout out your favorite Christmas movie. All right.

What's your favorite Christmas movie? On three. You ready?

One, two, three. All right. Lots of great Christmas movies there. For me, my favorite, favorite Christmas movie is Home Alone. It gives me all types of nostalgic feelings about being a kid and seeing all of the gifts and gizmos that are in that movie take me back to when I was a kid. Since I have been married, it is a mandatory thing that I watch It's a Wonderful Life with Kelly and our family that's here today. And I have come to appreciate that movie.

If you can believe it or not, this year for the first time in my life, I watched the new Miracle on 34th Street. Or I say new, I think it came out sometime in the early 90s. But it was the first time that I ever sat and watched that movie all the way through. And also a first for me, I have never in a sermon quoted Santa Claus, but I wanted to quote something that Santa Claus said in Miracle on 34th Street. In the midst of how that story goes, Santa pops up and they're wondering if he's real. Some people believe and some people don't. Santa is having this interaction with the main character of the movie, other than Santa Claus, who is just sort of a calloused person.

Life has dealt her a difficult hand on one side, and she's very successful on another, but she's found herself in a very empty and alone place. And Santa says to her, I'm not just a whimsical figure who wears a suit and affects a jolly demeanor. I'm a symbol, a symbol of the human ability to suppress the selfish and hateful tendencies that rule the parts of our lives. If you can't believe, if you can't accept anything of faith, then you're doomed for a life dominated by doubt. And of course, if you know the remainder of the story, sorry for the spoiler alert if you, like me, have not seen the movie until now. But at the end of the movie, she finds herself agreeing with Santa Claus and recapturing the joy and wonder of the Christmas spirit. You see, we humans at our core have a desire for good and peace and love.

But over time, life can deal us cards that rob us of joy, leaving only calluses as a reminder of what was once a dream. And another Christmas classic, I heard somebody yell this out, The Grinch. Anybody who yelled that out? Right here on the front, The Grinch. I love The Grinch too. Grinch had a problem.

What was his problem? Anybody know? What was it? Yeah, his heart was two sizes too small. It wasn't that Grinch was born with a small heart, right? Life made him that way. Life shrunk his heart.

His experiences jaded him. He's been hurt and disappointed and left out and left behind. And now he's lashing out on what he witnesses as an empty promise of what could be. One of the reasons why this movie speaks to me is because I can see myself in The Grinch's story. My life certainly isn't as bad off as The Grinch. And in those moments where I feel a bit jaded or disappointed, um, most of the time I can hide it a little better than he did. But for many of us, we live in this tension of what we hope for and the reality of what is.

What do we do with that? What do we do with that during this time of year when there's so much focus and celebration of the magic of the Christmas season? What do we do with it in our minds when, as we gather with our families and sing the songs and hear the story, we are filled with skepticism and doubt. And our initial reaction is to scoff. Not out of spite, but simply because we are struggling in this gap of disappointment at the moment that is. And one of his songs, Andrew Peterson, which is the album that we've been going through during the season of Advent, he has a song where in the verse of it is a cry for God to deliver people. The profound prayer is simply, deliver us, deliver us.

Sometimes we have circumstances in our lives from which we need to be rescued. Sometimes the lights go out and you need somebody to push the light button to turn them back on. Maybe we or a loved one are facing an illness. Maybe we are in a situation where we need a new job or we need something different to happen in our lives. Maybe there are physical hardships that we face and we need to find freedom from those. Wherever we are in that moment, deliver us is truly a prayer to expand our hearts, to open up our minds to the grand possibility that God is near, that you don't have to travel far, that you don't have to get it all together. And all the while, as you've been trying to figure it out on your own and searching for answers, God has been with you.

That's what God does. God is faithful. Emmanuel is God with us. God coming down to be here with us. A Methodist minister by the name of Will Willimon was asked to summarize the gospel in seven words. Thankfully, he is much more responsive and has a better intellect than I do because I would not come up with anything as brilliant as this. What he says is in seven words, the gospel, God refuses to be God without us.

As we journey through life, we will undoubtedly be wounded. Consider the arrival of Jesus. Jesus's life was shrouded in woundedness. Just from the very beginning, there was not even a suitable place for him to be born. There was King Herod who wanted to end his life as an infant. There's the scheming of the religious leaders and then his death at the hands of the Romans. And that just covers the major ones.

In between, there's lots of woundedness that Jesus received, wound after wound after wound, which is what Isaiah prophesied years before. From Isaiah 53, he says this about Jesus. He will, he was despised and rejected by others. A man of suffering and familiar with pain, like one from whom people hide their faces. He was despised and we held him in low esteem. This is what is told about the God of the universe who became a person. One might ask the question, to what end must the son of God endure this?

Well, for that, when I move over to the New Testament in Titus chapter two, these are Paul's words. Paul is the New Testament. And he writes this about Jesus's arrival. He writes, for the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. Our wounds tend to isolate us from others, but Jesus's wounds made room for us. It opened up salvation for each of us. Back to the prophecy in Isaiah 53 verse six, Isaiah writes this, we all like sheep have gone astray.

Each of us have turned to our own ways and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Jesus's arrival sets us free because on him is laid the sin and brokenness of the world. As a result of Jesus's appearing, we are led out of brokenness and taught to live. Back to Paul's words in Titus this, it teaches us to say no to ungodliness and to worldly passions and to live self-controlled and upright and godly lives in this present age. While we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify himself of people that are his very own eager to do what is good. There's a secret in life and it's a secret that Jesus was very clear about. Almost every instance of Jesus's teaching on earth contained something that little other teachings contained.

And it was this, that whatever faith and love and hope you have in God, you are to take that faith and hope and love and to put it into action by loving your neighbor. That is the central theme. So the invitation in Jesus's arrival was that his woundedness, his frustration, his, the difficulties he experienced, instead of hiding himself away and closing himself off, he opened himself up. And I want to encourage us tonight that if we find ourselves in a place where we feel as if life has treated us a little bit difficult lately, if we feel like this bird, there is a burden that we are carrying that is heavy for us, I want to invite us to make a move to find some way of trusting in this lesson of Jesus, this lesson of God, and seeking to take the love that we have for God and to put it into action by loving our neighbors, being eager to do what is good.