When Dawn Is Still Dark

Sermon

Christmas Eve Meditation

Wondrous things happen at night, according to these beloved Christmas stories. Wondrous things happen when most people are asleep, when the livestock has bedded down, when the stars come out. I imagine that one can see the luminosity of the angels more easily at night, if indeed they shine as artists across the ages have claimed.

Tonight for just a few minutes, I want to share with you this idea that God chose the stillness of night as the time to be born in this world, that darkness can be holy. The writer of Genesis tells us, God is the one who made the night, who separated it from the day. Why wouldn’t God come to us at night—in some ways, isn’t that when we need God the most?

I do not know if you have had what one of the mystic writers called “the dark night of the soul.” If you have, you know exactly what that phrase means. Mental-health professionals might call it depression or anxiety or paranoia; medical doctors might call it Seasonal Affective Disorder; the Greek philosophers would call it melancholia, caused by an imbalance of the four humors.

After twenty-two months of living in this COVID pandemic, we know all too well the dark night of the soul. Our souls are weary, depressed, anxious, and exhausted. Every time we think we have rounded the corner on this virus, a new variant pops up and we’re back to masking and staying home.

There was no worldwide pandemic when Jesus was born, to the best of our knowledge, although Joseph and Mary and the shepherds and the innkeeper knew their fair share of hardship. They lived amid the high taxes by the Roman government which really didn’t care about these people living in this colony in a far corner of the empire. Life expectancy was three or four decades, and child mortality rates would horrify us. Famines were common, as was random violence.

Still, they had faith, these characters who come alive in the Christmas stories. They had faith enough to heed the teaching of scripture, to care for the widow and orphan, to love one’s neighbor as oneself. They had faith enough to understand that in the middle of the night, when an angel appeared, it was something from God. They had faith enough to bring a child into their imperfect, scary world.

And so the baby was born at night. Actually, Luke says nothing about what time of day Jesus was born—the angel visits the shepherds at night, and the shepherds visit Jesus, Mary, and Joseph at night. If Mary went into labor in the day, given how things go sometimes, maybe night welcomed this infant savior.

I like to think that Jesus was born at night, that those last few heroic pushes that Mary made, when things are hardest and the mother is so exhausted, happened when Bethlehem had quieted down for the night. Gone were the throngs milling about to be registered; no one gathered at the well; no one was milking the cow or preparing a meal or debating things in the town square. It was quiet, and Mary had no distractions as she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths.

Author Cole Arthur Riley puts it this way. “… we put all our hope in the sacred blackness of a womb. As we wait, we remind ourselves that darkness … actually has the unique capacity to bear the divine. [This time of year] we reclaim the holy dark.”

It is in the holy dark that we see the stars. It is in the holy dark that the angels shine the brightest, are at their most luminous.

Let me share with you a story about luminosity.

My dear friend had surgery this week for the brain tumor he has lived with for the past four years. His wife is a rock star in countless ways, including the following that she wrote on his Caring Bridge page.

“A few years ago, we watched a Nat Geo documentary on the mantis shrimp, some of which have bioluminescent qualities that medical innovators have learned from to develop a bio-fluorescent contrast solution used in surgery. This allows surgeons to better see the aggressive and deceptive glioblastoma cells as they infiltrate different parts of healthy brain. [Before his surgery, he] ingested a syringe full of this liquid which will ‘light up’ the little buggers so the docs have the best chance of removing them thoroughly and safely. Amazing, right?”

Of course my friends have been on my heart all week, but reading about the luminosity of the mantis shrimp and the evolution of that to brain surgery, I could not help but think of the angels. This has not been an easy journey for my friends, not at all; there have been rainy days after rainy days after rainy days with no silver linings and no stars at night. But they would say, I think, that there has been a holiness amid all of this—a time to get rid of all the silliness we distract ourselves with, a time to focus on grace and goodness and generosity, a time to practice hope every single moment.

Friends, our faith, our hope, our desire for the good has never depended on the light; darkness is not a sign of evil or godlessness or despair. Darkness is from God, too; darkness can be holy; the night is a time for rest, and on Christmas Eve, we remember that night was a time not of death but of birth.

We will gladly welcome the rising of the sun tomorrow, with or without snow, with or without giddy children tearing through their presents. We will gladly welcome the longer days with less rain. But let us hold on in this holy darkness, and await whatever birth God is bringing.