THROUGH DARK TO LIGHT
12 24 09 CHRISTMAS EVE
ISAIAH 9:2
JOHN 1:5
ANTHONY E. ACHESON, M.DIV.
Near the start of John’s Gospel we hear that, ‘the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not put it out.’ We often assume that these words are proclaiming something highly triumphant. If we look more closely, though, this verse is actually saying something much more modest than that. It doesn’t tell us that the light came into the world and completely triumphed over everything bad, dark and difficult. It doesn’t tell us that light and good was fully victorious over dark and bad. If it tried to tell us that, the experience of history would surely contradict it. What these words do tell us is that when the light came into this world, in this instance in the birth of Christ, even though that light may not have been fully able to triumph over dark, it was nonetheless strong enough to keep on shining despite the dark; it was strong enough to maintain its presence no matter what the dark might throw at it.
There is a professor of Christian education at Austin Theological Seminary in Texas called Laura Lewis. She has told the story about a student who was preparing a lesson plan on the verse in Isaiah 9 that says, ‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness-on them light has shined.’ As part of her project on the passage, this student decided to scout out the darkest place on campus. After hunting around, she discovered a little-used racket ball court in the sub-basement of a classroom building. To get there you have to go down two flights of steep steps, and pass through a few heavy doors. This enterprising student discovered that when you get inside, close the doors and turn out the lights, it is extremely dark in there, with barely a stray photon bouncing around that could make much impression on a human eye.
When it came time to present her project, she took her classmates on a field trip to that building. She led them down the stairs, through the doors, and sat them down around the edges of the court. She said slowly, ‘You are people who live in a land of deep darkness,’ and immediately turned out the lights and called for quiet. Then she waited. In the hush and dark, they sat. They sat and waited, and waited some more, and did so for five minutes. Five minutes might seem pretty short, but those were five surprisingly long, silent, and profoundly dark minutes. At the end of that time she recited from memory these ancient words, ‘Those who lived in a land of deep darkness-on them has light shined.’ With those words she struck a match and lit a single small candle, about the same size as one of these that most of us were given as we entered this Christmas Eve service. The light of that single candle could not come close to fully illuminating that racket ball court and the seating area above it. But the students experienced that single candle as bringing a dramatic change into that moment. It transformed their sense of that time and place. With the flickering of one small light, the people there saw themselves: they saw each other; they saw the community they were part of in that moment; they felt the relief of knowing the others’ presence and company around them . They saw faces: surprised faces, puzzled faces, even a couple of faces streaked with tears. For those in deep darkness, all it took was one modest light to shine in order to make a large and significant difference.
‘The light shines in the darkness,’ writes John, ‘and the darkness did not put it out.’ In this finite, imperfect world, the light does not fully remove the darkness. It will not do so in our lifetime. But that is not the important point. The important point is not that the light fails to fully remove the darkness. The important point is that the darkness is incapable of removing the light. The light does not have to be large. It just has to be there. It just has to be present, to exist. And even when it is small and modest, it nonetheless has a great power to give us the means of sight with which to be aware and move forward. It allows us a sense of the spiritual pace in which we can feel safe and live confidently. The truth about light is that there is no power in this universe that can make it not be. In the material universe, that is a fact of physics. Throughout its galaxies and atoms, throughout its vast spaces and smallest nooks, there is no force that can extinguish light as a fundamental phenomenon of nature. The same holds equally true in the spiritual universe of hearts and souls, spirit and persons.
In a few moments we will carry these candles, symbols of the light of this night, in the concluding procession of this service. May we remember that that light in our hands stands for a light that lives and dwells in the center of our beings. This light exists in the center of our beings because it lives in the center of Being Itself. It stands for a spiritual light that can never go out, that no darkness can extinguish. And let us remember that no matter how modest any particular light may be; no matter how modest the light of YOUR life may feel; that same light that lives and dwells in each of us can make a large and profound difference for each person around us, for those we know and love, and indeed for each person we meet.
I ask and pray that this would be deeply and newly so for each of us, in each of the hours and minutes of these days of Christmas that are now ours to live and enjoy. We ask these things in the name of the living Christ, whose birth we mark this night and week. Amen and Amen.
