Christ Born into the Darkness

Intro

This is our first Christmas as a new church

And we sing a song like that?

Listen again to just a few of the words we just sang

Shadows

Scars

Wars

Addiction

Sorrow

Grief

I’m sure many of you are thinking something along the lines of “For all the Christmas songs ever written, Steve you asked us to sing a song like that?”

Where is “Joy to the World”?

Where is “O Come All Ye Faithful” with its proclamation of “joyful and triumphant”?

In fact, as I prepared, I came across a list of “Top 25 Heartwarming Christmas Hymns”

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that “Where the Light is Gone” will never make that list

That song may offer great hope, but not a lot of warm fuzzies

Two reasons for this song

For me, personally, it is pretty biographical right now

I have, in recent weeks, experienced sorrow and sadness I have never known

Someone asked me a few days ago if I was all out of tears

My answer: “I don’t know - every time I think that well is dry, I find there are more tears coming”

Second, joy is the outcome, not the input

What I mean by that is this: Jesus was born not into a world that was filled with joy and excitement

He came into a broken, hurting world - not a world that had it all together

I’m sure that many of you have experienced a Christmas where you kept saying to yourself, “Why can’t I have a little of the joy that everyone else seems to have?”

Sorrow and Sadness in the Psalms

Part of what I love about the Bible is its honest engagement with the human condition

Especially in the Psalms, we see a mirror of the heartache and sorrow our own hearts experience

Let me read a few verses from Psalm 42

Psalm 42:1–5 “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God”

Do you hear the longing in the author’s voice?

He is far off, far away from where God is

He wants to be near God, praising him in the temple with all of God’s people

He hears those glad shouts of those for whom it is going well and it just makes him sadder that he feels so far away, so alone

Instead, he is crying out words like, “My tears have been my food day and night”

He is hearing voices of desperation and deception ringing in his ears, “Where is your God?”

His honest appraisal of his own heart is to ask, “Why are you downcast, O my soul?”

Even the words “Hope in God” feel like he is trying to convince himself that there is a greater truth - that God will save him - but right now, it feels like a longing he doesn’t know if he will ever see filled

The Longing

Series of books I am reading with Micah entitled The Green Ember

It’s the story of rabbits that are under the oppressive rule of the wolves and birds of prey under the awful reign of Morbin Blackhawk

In the midst of their oppression, the rabbits cling to a great promise

“It will not be so in the Mended Wood” - Green Ember

Do you hear the longing?

The waiting, the longing for all to be made right

For sadness to be undone

For oppression to be overturned

This is not right and this is not good

There has to be something better

The Mended Wood - a place of longing to see and experience when all is made right and new again!

Light into the Darkness

We have heard read tonight the story of the birth of Jesus from Luke’s gospel

The book of John begins not by recounting the events of Jesus’ birth

But by using a picture - the picture of light into darkness

John 1:4–5 “In him [Jesus] was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

John 1:9 “The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.”

Yes, it is a dark world - it feels like the light is gone

The dark world is marked by things like wars and scars and addiction and grief as we sang

St. John of the Cross, wrote a book called The Dark Night of the Soul

Maybe this depiction of the dark night of the soul rings true with you

Maybe the worlds of the psalm about your soul being downcast ring true with you

Maybe you see the wars and scars and sorrow and wonder how deep the darkness goes

And here is the promise of Christmas: Jesus, the light of the world came into that world

Not the one where everything was already good and light and holly jolly, holly jolly

No, Jesus was born into the dark night not only of a single soul, but into the dark night of the broken, hurting world

“Where the light is gone, there may Christ be born” - chorus of Where the Light is Gone

The Invitation

Let’s pick up again in John 1, starting with verse 9 again

John 1:9–12 “The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,”

Tonight, for each of us, comes the invitation of John 1

See, the message is not simply that Jesus brings light into darkness

It is that we are invited into the light with him

We, no matter what darkness is overtaking us - no matter what sorrows and sadness you have experienced - are invited to be with him who is the Light

If you would receive Christ - trust that he is the Light in the darkness

It doesn’t immediately make all that sorrow and sadness and grief go away

No, but it does something much greater

It makes you his

The psalmist described a longing to be near God

The promise of Christmas is not that you have to draw near to God

But that he, the Light of the World, comes to you

He meets you in those moments of sorrow and sadness, in that broken, hurting world

Advent: Season of waiting

The season leading up to Christmas is often referred to as Advent

Advent simply means “waiting”

We are waiting for something

Advent reminds us that even as we wait for Christmas to come, we are awaiting something else

We are waiting for the day when words like scars and wars and sorrow and grief are gone forever

We are waiting for the day when Jesus comes the second time

We are waiting for the new creation he will bring

Then joy to the world will be forever and ever

But even as we wait now for that to day, we do so as those who have been called children of God, as those who are drawn into the Light, because “where the light is gone, there was Christ born”

Conclusion: The Magician’s Nephew

Until then, we wait

Now we wait with hope because Jesus was born into that broken, hurting world

As I conclude this evening, I want to offer two promises guaranteed by the birth of Jesus

First, Jesus will surely come again and bring that new creation with all the joy our hearts long for

I mentioned earlier the newer series I love in The Green Ember

All growing up, my favorite books were The Chronicles of Narnia and I am currently listening through the audiobooks

The Genesis story of Narnia is a book called, The Magician’s Nephew

The story follows a boy, Digory, whose mother is deathly ill - expecting his mother to die at any moment

Can’t imagine any more sadness for a boy than that

Through a series of events, he ends up in Narnia as Aslan the Lion sings the world into existence

He is both amazed at what is happening and still overwhelming sad

In his first direct encounter with Aslan, he approaches with his head bowed low in his grief

“Up until then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at his face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.”

And there, my friends, is the great hope

Whatever sorrow and sadness you bring to the Lord, you will find that he is even sorrier about it than you are

For however much you desire to experience joy to the world, he desires it more

For all the longing for the world to be made right that you may feel, he longs more

And he the story of the birth of Jesus - the story of light into darkness - is the story that God will make all things right

Jesus did not come into a world that full for of light joy and gladness and happiness

He came into a world that was dark and sad and full of sorrow

And he came as the light who would cast away all that darkness

Tonight, let us be people who look in hope to the light of the world that will cast out all that darkness

Pray

Transition to Lord’s Supper

As a young church, one of our desires is to celebrate the Lord’s Supper together every time we gather in worship

Even in our Christmas service

Two reasons for that to highlight quickly

First, even in a Christmas service, it points us forward to the cross

The peace about which the angels sang at his birth came through the death of Jesus

So this meal connects the power and hope of the Incarnation with that which makes that power and hope so powerful and hopeful for us: that Jesus conquered death and that the new creation is most definitely coming

Second, it is a declaration of our dependence upon Christ himself to strengthen and sustain us

In John 6, right after the feeding of the 5000, Jesus preaches his “I am the bread” sermon

John 6:48–51 “I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

After hearing this, a lot of people turned and walked away from Jesus

They were with him when he was doing the thing they wanted - in this case, feeding them

But now they turned and walked away

Jesus turns to his disciples and asks if they want to leave as well

Listen to Peter’s answer

John 6:68–69 “Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.””

This meal is an invitation into the presence of Jesus

When life’s hardest moments come

Those moments when you are saddest

Those moments when you don’t know how to take the next step forward

Those moments where even Christmas and the joy it is “supposed” to bring feels overshadows by heartache and broken

Those moments where you feel the weight of words like

Shadows

Scars

Wars

Addiction

Sorrow

Grief

And right there, into those moments, we are invited to Jesus

And why go to Jesus?

Because he alone has the words of life

So we come to this meal declaring that “where else could we go? For Jesus alone has the words of life”