Light Breaks In

Luke 2:1-14

Every few years, something old suddenly becomes new again.

You’ve probably seen it this Christmas. Those big, old-fashioned Christmas bulbs—the kind your grandparents used. Thick glass. Bright colors. Red, green, blue, amber. Not tiny and twinkly, but bold. Almost clunky. For a long time, they disappeared. Replaced by sleek, efficient LED lights. Cleaner. Smaller. More practical.

And then—almost out of nowhere—they came back.

Now you see them everywhere. Wrapped around porch railings. Hanging from rooflines. Inside windows. People are intentionally choosing them again. Not because they’re better. They’re not. They burn hotter. They use more energy. Some of them burn out faster.

But they have something the others don’t.

They feel like Christmas.

They don’t just decorate the darkness. They push against it. Each bulb is visible on its own. Each one makes a statement: light is here.

And that’s what tonight is about.

Tonight, we gather on Christmas Eve because deep down—beneath the gifts and the meals and the songs—we are longing for something ancient and true: a world where light overcomes the darkness.

Not a pretend world. Not a sentimental world. But this world. The real one.

And that longing is exactly where the Christmas story begins.

Luke tells us that on the night Jesus was born, the world was not calm or cozy. It was tense. Heavy. Dark.

The Roman Empire ruled by force. Violence and fear were the tools of peace. Caesar Augustus was called “lord” and “savior,” not because he brought justice, but because he crushed resistance. Mary and Joseph were not on a holiday trip. They were displaced by an empire’s census, counted like property, pushed along by powers they couldn’t control.

Luke is careful to set the scene this way. Because Christmas doesn’t begin in light. It begins in darkness.

And then Luke writes these words:

“In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.”

By night.

Shepherds didn’t work the day shift. They worked the night shift. They lived on the margins. Forgotten. Overlooked. And it’s there—there—that the light breaks in.

Not gradually. Not politely. Suddenly.

The glory of the Lord shone around them.

The Bible doesn’t describe the light softly flickering into the darkness. It breaks in. It interrupts. It overwhelms. And the shepherds are terrified—because when you’ve lived in the dark long enough, even good light can be frightening.

And the angel says the words we always hear at Christmas:

“Do not be afraid.”

Which is another way of saying: This light is not here to harm you. It’s here to save you.

“I bring you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

Notice what God does here.

God does not wait for the darkness to clear. God does not demand that the world get its act together. God does not send a solution from a safe distance.

God enters the darkness.

This is not the story of humanity finding God. This is the story of God finding humanity.

In a feeding trough. In a backwater town. To working-class shepherds on the night shift.

Light breaks in.

And here’s why that matters so much for us—right now.

Because we don’t live in a world that feels fully lit.

We live in a world where the darkness feels loud. Where violence makes headlines. Where divisions run deep. Where grief sits quietly in the room, even on Christmas Eve.

Some of you come tonight carrying loss. This is your first Christmas without someone you love. Or maybe it’s the tenth, but it still hurts just as much.

Some of you come exhausted. Tired of pretending everything is fine. Tired of holding it together.

Some of you come hopeful—but cautious. You want to believe things can change, but you’ve been disappointed before.

And Christmas doesn’t deny any of that.

It doesn’t say, “Cheer up. Everything’s fine.” It says, “God sees the darkness—and God enters it.”

That’s the reboot.

God doesn’t scrap the story and start over. God re-enters the story, again and again, bringing light right where it’s most needed.

And that’s why those old Christmas bulbs matter as an image.

Each one is simple. Ordinary. Fragile, even. One filament. One source of light. And yet, when you string them together, something happens. They don’t erase the night—but they change it.

That’s what God does in Jesus.

Not a spotlight from the sky. Not a flash that blinds the world into submission. But a human life. A vulnerable child. Light, wrapped in flesh.

John’s Gospel will later say it this way: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Not might not. Did not.

That’s the promise we cling to tonight.

Light breaks in.

And it keeps breaking in.

It breaks in every time someone chooses compassion over cruelty. Every time forgiveness interrupts a cycle of resentment. Every time hope refuses to give up.

Because the same God who entered the world in Bethlehem is still at work—quietly, faithfully—rebooting faith and hope in ordinary lives.

That includes yours.

You don’t have to have everything figured out tonight. You don’t have to feel overwhelmingly joyful. You don’t even have to be certain.

You just have to be open to this truth:

God’s light is not fragile the way ours is.

Those old bulbs burn out. They crack. They fail. But the light of Christ does not.

It doesn’t depend on your mood. It doesn’t depend on the state of the world. It doesn’t depend on perfect circumstances.

It shines in the dark.

And tonight, we gather to say—together—that the darkness does not get the final word.

Not in our lives. Not in our families. Not in this world.

Because on a quiet night long ago, light broke in. And it has never stopped.

So may you carry that light with you this Christmas. Into your homes. Into your relationships. Into a world still aching for hope.

The old story is still true. And God is still using it to reboot faith, to renew hope, and to remind us that even now—

Light breaks in.

Amen.