Christmas Eve — Andy James

Light in the Darkness

December 24, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 2:1-20, Isaiah 9:2-7, and John 1:1-14
preached on December 24, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Sometimes it is hard to see the light. Even on these shortest days of the year, we are surrounded with more lights than we can every imagine. The bright lights of our city shine even more brightly surrounded by the festive bulbs of this season which seem to get brighter with each passing year. It turns out that our nation uses more electricity on Christmas lights than El Salvador, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nepal, or Cambodia use in an entire year! Yet even with all these lights around us, the darkness of our world seems to prevail so easily.

As I look back over this year, I have seen so much of this pervasive darkness around us. In this darkness, we have been able to see refugees turned away in fear after putting their lives at risk to seek safety. In this darkness, we have been able to see war and strife escalate around the world as prayers and actions for peace seem to go unheard. In this darkness, we have been able to see people treated unfairly because of the color of their skin or the faith they choose to practice. In this darkness, we have been able to see countless people harmed by acts of terror, in startling acts of violence driven by perverted interpretations of faith, in the senseless and preventable tragedies of mass shootings, and in the deep hurt of violence perpetrated in the unseen recesses of homes far and near. And in this darkness, we have been able to see the politics of fear and hatred rise up with a new vengeance.

The darkness of our world is all too familiar, but there is plenty of darkness in our lives closer to home, too—maybe in the pain and hurt of divided families, perhaps in the midst of friendships challenged by change, maybe in distance of time or space that drives us apart from those we love, in illness and loneliness, in the search for meaningful work, in so many things that we can easily name, and in so many things that cannot so easily be named. Sometimes, oftentimes, it is hard to see the light.

When we look back to that first Christmas, it is easy to imagine that they had an easier time of seeing the light, but I think that the first Christmas had plenty of darkness, too. After all, the whole story began with an unexpected and unplanned child, conceived before the socially acceptable time. There was a special government edict that required a pregnant mother to put her health and life at risk to travel so close to her baby’s due date. There was a shortage of rooms in the inn that left this family with no place to stay other than in the manger out back. And a fear of the angel of the Lord left a bunch of shepherds cowering in the field.

Yet the events we celebrate tonight assure us that darkness is not the last word and that God is with us in all the darkness around us. “The glory of the Lord shone around them” when the shepherds were afraid, and they saw that there was light in their darkness. “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,” and they saw that there was light in their darkness. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it”—and so we too can see that there is light in our darkness.

Even so, this good news of the birth of Jesus that we celebrate tonight does not mean that all the darkness of our world is suddenly flooded with light. Rather, the birth of Jesus at Christmas assures us that this light shines in the darkness, that there will be enough light from the glory of God in our midst to show us the way through to the new day that Christ will bring into being. I think author and preacher Barbara Brown Taylor puts it well:

Even when light fades and darkness falls—as it does every single day, in every single life—God does not turn the world over to some other deity. Even when you cannot see where you are going and no one answers when you call, this is not sufficient proof that you are alone. There is a divine presence that transcends all your ideas about it, along with all your language for calling it to your aid… But whether you decide to trust the witness of those who have gone before you, or you decide to do whatever it takes to become a witness yourself, here is the witness of faith: darkness is not dark to God; the night is as bright as the day. (Learning to Walk in the Dark, p. 15-16)

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” So in this world where it is so often hard to see the light, may we be people of the light—people working to shine God’s light into our weary world, people seeking to be a light shining in the darkness, people watching and waiting and working for a new and greater light to come into our world—so that we might see the glory of God in Jesus Christ this Christmas and every day until he comes in even greater glory to make all things new. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

Light in the Darkness

December 24, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 9:2-7
preached on Christmas Eve 2014 at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

These are strange days to be talking so much about light. We’ve just journeyed through the shortest day of the year, but there’s plenty of other darkness in our world, too. Turn on the television or radio any day and you can hear it right away—darkness is all around us. Wars and conflicts rage around the world, and there are refugees and displaced persons everywhere who have been forced out of their homes to live in refugee camps for years on end. Violence and injustice keep inching closer and closer to home, not to mention all of the people in need of a warm and dry place to sleep. Those chosen to lead us in so many different places and ways toss about harsh words of blame that ignore the way we all participate in the difficulties of our world and so get in the way of the possibilities of reconciliation and new life. Peace and light just seem far off, dreams surely not to be realized in our lifetime if ever at all. So when Isaiah talks about “the people who walk in darkness,” we have a pretty good idea of what the darkness he might be talking about.

But even amidst all the struggles and pain of our world, we have nonetheless seen a great light. The prophet speaks of three great marks of light shining in his own day: joy rising in the nation as it grows and reflects more and more the fullness of God’s mercy, freedom finding expression and hope as all the marks of oppression and pain are torn away, and the fullness of peace coming as the garments of war are burned up as fuel for the fire of hope.

These great marks of light find their greatest expression in the child born “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” His authority is taking hold to show new and different ways in all the world. He will reign with justice and righteousness “from this time onward and forevermore.” And God’s power and promise will bring all these things to fruition even in those times when it seems so completely impossible and improbable.

In our time, the light comes to us, too. Just as Jesus was born on that Christmas two millennia ago, so Jesus is born anew in us and in our world each year in this celebration. So on this night when we hear the familiar words of Jesus’ birth again, when we wonder with Mary and Joseph about the gift of this newborn Jesus, when we join our voices with the angels to proclaim the birth of a baby who changes the world, when we welcome the presence of God into human flesh as Jesus is born of Mary, when we experience the promise of light shining into the darkest corners of our world, we see the light coming to us.

But we cannot simply sit still—we must respond. How are we to live now that we are people who have walked in darkness but now seen a great light? This light shines so brightly that it not only illumines our lives but also guides us as we seek the transformation and renewal of all things and energizes us as we seek the peace and wholeness that can come only from the Prince of Peace. This light shines forth from the strange event we celebrate tonight. Writer and radio host Krista Tippett reminds us well of the mystery and wonder of this night:

There is something audacious and mysterious and reality-affirming in the assertion that has stayed alive for two thousand years that God took on eyes and ears and hands and feet, hunger and tears and laughter and the flu, joy and pain and gratitude and our terrible, redemptive human need for each other.

In the midst of all that troubles us and our world, Christmas shows us that God’s light shines through in the way that God comes to know our human condition so very personally and then seeks to transform it. And this light shines forth when we carry the light that we have shared in this gathering tonight into our lives, honoring the humanity of all as Jesus did in his life and ministry and working for justice, peace, and reconciliation in every corner of our world.

Who better can share the light of life than people who have known darkness all too well? Who better knows the depth of struggle that must be addressed in our world than the people who have faced it directly and emerged to bear even greater light? Who better to make God’s presence real in the everyday than the very people like us who have seen him here, who have shared this great feast and been fed in this holy meal? Who better than us to help bring God’s light into the darkness? And if we don’t join in this work, who will?

So as we go forth from this Christmas Eve, as we bear the light of this night into the darkness and uncertainty of our world, may God strengthen us to shine this light in the darkness each and every day until it shines so brightly that all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God! Amen.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

December 24, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on John 1:1-14
preached on Christmas Eve 2013 at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

When I was growing up, it would be about right now on Christmas Eve that we would be opening presents. In my mom’s family, we open most of our gifts on Christmas Eve, then Santa Claus brings us a few more on Christmas morning, though we’ve had to negotiate a new arrival time with Santa in the years since I’ve been working on Christmas Eve and can’t join them until Christmas Day! Every year, I remember some conversation about the schedule—when I was younger, it was usually me trying to get to the gifts earlier!—but it almost always worked out the same way: we would go across the street to my grandparents’ church for a 5:00 service, come home, finish preparations, and eat dinner about 7:00 or 7:30, then move into opening presents around 8:30 or 9:00. In the end, whatever the scheduled worked out to be, the gifts were really the focus of the evening. That’s what it’s all about, right? Why would we think of doing anything else on this holy night other than opening presents??!!

More and more, this whole Christmas season becomes about the gifts—about the things that we exchange with our family and friends, about making sure that the value of the gift we give matches that of the gift that we receive, about finding the perfect gift for the right price with the least amount of effort. In the end, there is something about all these gifts and presents that matters, but only as much as they point to the real gift of Christmas: the gift of God coming to us in Jesus.

Our reading from John tonight takes us right there. It may not be the familiar story of angels and shepherds in a manger, but ultimately it tells us everything we need to know:

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.

All things came into being through him,
and without him not one thing came into being.
What has come into being in him was life,
and the life was the light of all people.

The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it….

And the Word became flesh and lived among us,
and we have seen his glory,
the glory as of a father’s only son,
full of grace and truth.

This is the real gift of Christmas, the gift that really matters, the gift that keeps on giving: the presence of God who comes into our world, who walks and talks with us, who eats and drinks with us, who laughs and cries with us, who puts up with us, who loves us and cares for us beyond our wildest dreams.

This is the best gift we could ever imagine: the presence of God among us, the vision of Immanuel, God-with-us, the reality of God visible and available and living right here, on earth, beside us, among us.

The greatest gift ever is that God comes to us, living a human life, struggling human struggles, walking the same ground and breathing the same air and drinking the same water.

God set aside God’s power, glory, and honor so that we could come close to that power, glory, and honor in Jesus, so that we could not just glimpse God from afar but encounter God up close, in person, face to face. As Quaker theologian Elton Trueblood is said to have said, “The historic Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ does not simply mean that Jesus is like God. It is far more radical than that. It means that God is like Jesus.” (quoted by Rachel Held Evans) When we encounter Jesus, the ultimate gift, we encounter God.

So on this Christmas Eve, when it is so easy to look to our gifts to give our lives meaning and hope, we can turn our eyes instead to this ultimate gift that changes everything about our giving—not simply because we’ll never measure up to it but because this gift is truly unlike any other before or since. When we welcome this gift at its fullest, we can do nothing but set aside the presents that so easily define this season and instead embrace the presence of God in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, dwelling among us, the presence that really matters. We will find this presence of God around us and among us—maybe in the time we spend with family and friends over the coming days, maybe in the people who care for us and help meet our needs, maybe in the people who inspire us and challenge us and even frustrate us, and maybe even at this table, in this simple meal, where we trust that God will host us and meet us.

The presence of God in Jesus, embodied in these and countless other ways, gives us confidence and hope of God’s presence each and every day, not just to make us feel better or to get through the difficult moments of our lives but most of all so that we can be the presence of God for others. Ultimately the gift of God in Jesus Christ keeps on giving to us and to all people as we give it to others, because we take the light of Christ that we have received and reflect it out to others, because we embody the love of God in our daily lives, because we are not afraid to share this wonderful gift of glory, grace, truth, and love with everyone we meet.

So as we go forth to celebrate this Christmas, exchanging gifts with our family and friends and celebrating a bit of time away from the everyday routine, may the gift of God’s presence in Jesus Christ be the only present that we need, and may we share the wonder of God’s love with everyone we meet, in word and in deed, this Christmas and always, until all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to all, forever and ever! Amen and amen.

Where’s Jesus?

December 24, 2012 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 2:1-20 and John 1:1-14
preached on December 24, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

One of my most memorable Christmas gifts growing up was the wonderful series of Where’s Waldo? books. They featured a tall, lanky, strange, bespectacled man named Waldo who popped up in a variety of very interesting scenes. The goal of the books was to find him amidst these very busy scenes. He was best distinguished by his bright red striped shirt, but sometimes when he hid behind a tree or something he was a little more difficult to spot. For several years, each Christmas brought a new book in the series, and I remember spending many hours looking carefully for Waldo and the many other things hidden in these scenes. It was a fun game and a great way to spend those lazy Christmas days with family and friends—and even a welcome break from all the toys that seemed to get a lot of attention too!

Sometimes, I feel like we are playing a bit of a game of “Where’s Jesus?” in our world at Christmas nowadays. Signs of the holidays are everywhere, but Jesus is a bit more hidden. Our streets and homes are decorated with trees, garland, Santas, and even nativity scenes, but too often for me at least it just feels obligatory and not all that real and meaningful. Religious celebrations that talk about Jesus take a back seat to family gatherings that focus on gift-giving and eating. Many people are now even saying “Merry Christmas,” but do they even know what that means? Even one of our own parents in the church told me the other day that her child had never made the connection between Jesus and Christmas—to this youngster, Christmas was all about Santa Claus and giving and receiving presents, and, based on our celebrations, I for one am not really all that surprised. Some in the church go on and on about the “War on Christmas”—all the supposed places in our civic culture where the seemingly more generic “holidays” have replaced a proper celebration of Christmas—but I think we have to answer for our own actions and reclaim Christmas for ourselves before we can point to anyone or anything else.

You see, regardless of how we might act or behave in the church or elsewhere, Christmas is not about Santa Claus, giving or receiving gifts, or even the glorious music that shapes these days. When we focus on these things, the world can so easily close in around us. The very shallow joy of this view of Christmas becomes insincere when things get hard or tragedy strikes as it has so often in recent months and years. Between the destruction of Superstorm Sandy and the highly-visible gun violence around us that culminated in Newtown and continued even earlier today, we need something more than the traditional holidays has to offer, a deeper, more real, more transformative joy that brings us new life.

At its core, Christmas should be exactly that. This is the day when we celebrate God’s presence in our world, Immanuel, God-with-us, God’s coming to us in human form, in the birth of Jesus. This is the day when we remember that God doesn’t ever give up on us but shows the greatest possible love for us: love in a simple babe in a manger, love in a wise and challenging teacher, love in a miraculous and astounding healer, love in a life-giving death, love in an astounding resurrection. This is the day when we see that God can’t be pinned only to the powerful, only to the religious, only to Christians, only to the church, for on this day we celebrate how God in Christ was born to Mary, a poor, unmarried girl, in a dark, dank, messy manger, with only strange shepherds to greet him.

So when we look around in these days and wonder, “Where’s Jesus?” the answer may surprise us. We might like to try to get Jesus more fully into our holiday celebrations. We might want to confine the religious element of this season to life in the church or to something that we can do when there is time. And we might even recognize that Jesus is the reason for the season. But when we ask “Where’s Jesus?” the answer may be more like those Waldo books than we could ever imagine, for he is dwelling in our world, not so much hiding as hanging out. He is very much present with us, even when we don’t know it, even when we least expect it. He is ready for us to watch and look and search for him, waiting for us to discover him when and where we least expect it. Our reading tonight from John puts it beautifully:

The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it.

The Word became flesh and lived among us,
and we have seen his glory,
the glory as of a father’s only son,
full of grace and truth.

And so our call this Christmas and every day is simple. Live like this all this has actually happened. Act like Christmas is not about giving gifts or gathering with family and friends but about celebrating God’s life in our midst in Christ. Make Christ’s presence real in our world. And keep asking “Where’s Jesus?” as we look for him to be at work in the expected and unexpected places in our world, for we will certainly encounter this baby boy, this radical teacher and preacher, this astonishing healer, this self-giving servant, this resurrected Christ, in our world.

Sometimes it will be easy, with joyful music and easy signs to point the way. And sometimes it will be hard, when we are lonely, when the walls seem to be closing in around us, when violence and war seem to have the last word. Yet in joy and in sorrow, when we ask “Where’s Jesus?” we know that he is among us. In our songs, in our words, in our celebrations, in our sacrament, we trust that Jesus is among us. In our sorrow, in our sighing, in our living, in our dying, Christ walks with us all the way to show us God’s love each and every day.

So may we seek Jesus and find him this Christmas and throughout the year to come so that our joy might be complete, our hope restored, and our world renewed for these days and always.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to all, this night, this Christmas, and always. Amen.

The Meaning of Christmas

December 24, 2011 By Andy James

a sermon for Christmas Eve on Luke 2:1-20 and John 1:1-14, 16
preached on December 24, 2011, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

What is the true meaning of Christmas?

People have offered countless answers to this question over the years. Ask a child, and you might hear something about receiving toys and other gifts. Ask a parent of a child, and you’ll hear about how much more expensive the toys get every year! Ask a corporate executive, and you’ll hear about the importance of the holiday season in cementing the year’s sales and profits. Ask a worker, and you might hear something about the gift of time off to spend with family and friends. There are probably as many different meanings of Christmas among us as there are people in this room.

One of my favorites, though, comes from that insightful character Charlie Brown. In the great and wonderful Charlie Brown Christmas special, Charlie Brown asks his friends about the meaning of Christmas as he struggles to get into the spirit of the season. They give him a lot of different answers, and his dog Snoopy even gets into the act as he wins first prize for the decorations on his doghouse! If that weren’t bad enough, even Charlie Brown’s attempt to find the perfect Christmas tree goes awry, and he ends up with the world’s smallest and scrawniest tree. As his friends berate him for his bad taste in trees and inability to grasp the meaning of Christmas, he ends up wondering out loud, “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?”

In response, his friend Linus takes the stage and begins to tell the story that we heard tonight from the gospel according to Luke. Gradually the mood shifts, and Charlie Brown’s friends finally warm up to his little tree as they all realize that Christmas is about something more than they had expected, about a baby born in a manger in a very different and distant time and place.

But there is more to Christmas than even this. The manger, the angels, and the shepherds are wonderful elements of the story, and they help us begin to understand what was going on when Jesus came into the world. But our reading tonight from the gospel according to John gets even closer to the real meaning of Christmas, I think. While Luke – and also Matthew – give us important details of the birth of Jesus, John focuses on the meaning of Christmas without getting into any of these details at all.

For John, Christmas is a part of something more – a little piece of a much bigger puzzle, a glimpse of God’s larger work in the world, a candle lit in the darkness to make things brighter and clearer. So John’s reflection on the meaning of Christmas starts much earlier – “in the beginning,” as he puts it. The Word – Jesus Christ, the one who comes at Christmas – was with God in the beginning. The Word always had a real and vital part of everything that God had done and was doing and would do, and the Word was an active and present participant in the difficult and wonderful work of creation. This Word brought life and light to all people, and there was no way that darkness would or could overcome it. John the Baptist came and testified to all these things, but still not everyone understood what God was doing in those days. And yet God’s purposes were not thwarted. God became real and human, revealing glory unlike any other glory, showing grace and truth to all the earth, and giving all of us the grace we need for each and every day.

And so this is the real meaning of Christmas to me. That God became human; that God became like us; that God became one of us, walking the earth with us, journeying the twists and turns of life alongside us, knowing the fullness of our humanity. As our opening hymn tonight put it so well:

…he feels for all our sadness,
and he shares in all our gladness.

But God didn’t stop there. Jesus came and transformed our world, bringing light to our greatest darkness, sending justice and peace into every corner of our world, showing us that we cannot fix things ourselves but can and must rely on the powerful grace of our merciful God.

There is little that can measure up to this. Not even the latest and greatest toy received by the most excited child can match the wonder of receiving the very presence of God in human form in Jesus at Christmas. Not even the greatest profits from the sales of the season can compare to the great gift that we receive in Jesus Christ. Not even the best time spent with family and friends can measure up to the power and possibility that comes as God journeys beside us in the human form of Jesus Christ. The best we can do to measure up to this probably comes tonight as we gather at this table, this place where we get the best possible glimpse of this great gift. As we receive this bread and this grape juice, we join with the faithful of every age in anticipation and hope, celebrating God’s presence here and now in this feast even as we look forward to the time when we will know the fullness of God’s presence in Jesus Christ at the great feast of all the ages.

And so this Christmas, may we remember the true meaning of Christmas – the wonder of God becoming human as a little baby, the power of God stepping into our world not as a wealthy and powerful ruler but as a tender child, the justice of God transforming the darkness and pain of our world into the greatest glory we can imagine, and the grace of God journeying with us wherever we go to make us and all things new, once and for all, until Christ comes again.

Glory to God, tonight and always. Amen.