Light into Darkness (Isaiah 9:2-7, Christmas Eve C, December 24, 2012)

Light into Darkness

Isaiah 9:2-7
Christmas Eve C
December 24, 2012

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

The prophet Isaiah begins with darkness.  He begins in “a land of deep darkness.”  He begins with “the people who walked in darkness.”  People walking in darkness…in a land of deep darkness.

If Isaiah had lived in Decorah he would have experienced deep darkness at about this time every year.  The sun’s light comes late these days and night’s darkness comes early.  Carol and I get up before dawn and it’s hardly light by the time she gets to work.  She works in an office with no windows and comes out into the dusk of late afternoon when her work is done.  Even if you’re lucky as I am to be near windows and required by my work to be outside some of the time, there’s a lot of darkness and precious little light this time of year.

It’s no wonder that our ancestors were alarmed as the day was swallowed by the night.  They came up with ways to encourage the light.  They kindled a new fire and burned a Yule log to summon the light to return.  We don’t do that, but we do light candles tonight, and we still bring a green tree into our homes.  We still look for the light to come back, bringing with it warmth and life.

It’s no secret that no one knows when Jesus was born.  Birthdates were not recorded in those days, at least not among peasant families, as Jesus’ family was.  We celebrate the birth of Christ on December 25 because there was already a Roman festival—and a not very virtuous one at that—called the Saturnalia that fell on the same date.  Celebrating Christmas on December 25 was a way of luring Christians away from the Saturnalia.  So we celebrate Christ’s birthday on December 25.  And we postpone the Saturnalia until the night of December 31.

We can’t tell it yet, but we’re actually past the darkest day of the year.  The days are already getting a little longer.  So as likely as not there will be another spring and another summer and life will not end because the sun went south and never came back.

But that’s not really the darkness that Isaiah is talking about.  Isaiah lived in what anyone would call dark times.  The darkness was the shadow cast by a greedy empire to the north, the Assyrian Empire.  It had already swallowed up Syria and Israel.  Judah was next on their list.  These were times of terror for the people and king of the little kingdom of Judah.

We’ve seen our dark days.   Too many families in our nation are dealing with being out of work for a very long time.  In most states unemployment benefits run out after 99 weeks.  That’s nearly two years.  In September there were 1,800,000 people out of work for more than 99 weeks.  And that doesn’t count those who have simply stopped looking.  They and their families are living in a land of deep darkness.

Men and women in our nation’s uniforms have been through their own darkness and for far too many it is a darkness that they do not leave behind when they leave the combat zones.  There are shadows on their souls.  They have seen things and done things that no one should have to see or do.  They are wounded in places you cannot see.

Some are living these days with dark clouds hanging over them.  Some know in their hearts what their families and friends are reluctant to say out loud: that this is the last Christmas they will see from this side of the river.

We have seen our terrors, too.  In a movie theater in Aurora, CO, and an elementary school in Newtown, CT, terror struck us in the last places we look for it. 

Especially the killings in Newtown have cast a shadow over our joy this season.  We’ve begun a conversation about how to keep such awful things from happening again, and it’s good that this is happening.  After all, shouldn’t we able to watch a movie without worrying that the violence on the screen will suddenly become all too real?  Shouldn’t we be able to send our little children to school and know that they will be safe?

We haven’t talked much about the deep darkness in the hearts and minds out of which this violence erupted—other than to lump it under the catch-all category of mental illness.  But surely that darkness has particular qualities that make it different from the millions of folks who suffer mental illnesses without harming any of us.

Yes, we too are a “people who [walk] in darkness…in a land of deep darkness.”  What light can light up the land?  What light can guide our footsteps?  I believe I speak the truth when I say that it will take more than the returning sun to dispel that darkness, more than Yule fires, more even than a lovely candlelight service while singing “Silent Night.”  If the light that Isaiah is talking about isn’t brighter by far than all of those together, there is no good news tonight.

Isaiah surveyed his world.  He heard the tramping boots of the Assyrian army.  He saw their might and knew their purpose.  He looked deeply into the shadow that hung over his people and he saw…a child born.  It was a royal child, in Isaiah’s context probably the heir to the throne of Judah.  This child born in the darkness under the shadow would fulfill his people’s hopes for light and liberty. 

He would do this not because he would be a shrewd politician who would negotiate a peace that was favorable to Judah.  He would not be a brilliant general who would be able to take Judah’s puny little army into victorious battle against the might of the Assyrians.  He would do this because God would act: “The zeal of the God of the heavenly forces will do this.”  That’s what Isaiah saw, and that news was a light that was brilliant enough to scatter even the deep darkness that his people lived under.

We, too, gather in darkness.  We have walked in deep darkness.  We walk in darkness, some of it shared, some of it private.  As we gaze into the darkness with Isaiah, we see…another child born in another dark time and place.  His light shone.  His light still shines.  We have seen it shining in him.  We have even seen it shining through us.  That light will light up the path in front of us.  It will shine in our land’s darkness.  It will light up the world.It will be bright enough to do that.

And it’s not because we are so clever, nor so strong, nor even so good.  It will happen because “the zeal of the God of the heavenly forces will do this.”

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