Refraction

Merry Christmas!

As I have been talking about with the kids for the last month during the lighting of the Advent wreath and candles, we have been obviously focused on the coming of Jesus and one of the things that keeps coming up is that Jesus is the light of the world. That is one of the reasons why we light the candles each week. It is a reminder that the light is coming into the world and tonight we lit the Christ candle which signifies that the light is alive and active in our world this night, and how that light started on that very first Christmas.

As I was thinking about the idea of Christ as our light, and the light of the world, I tried to think about everything associated with that idea. I obviously thought of the Advent wreath, but I also thought about baptism since we have had 1 baptism this month already and will have 2 more by the end of the month. In baptism we light a candle for the person being baptized and we talk about how that light of Christ now shines in and through that person’s life.

One of the other things I thought of while thinking about Jesus as our light was a t-shirt that I saw and loved back when I was a teenager. As you can see on the screen it said, “be the moon…reflect the son.” I used to always like that phrase and as I thought about it in terms of Jesus and our lives and his birth I began to wonder what it means for us to reflect the light of Christ. And for some reason I couldn’t get the idea out of my head so I began to do some research on the word reflect. Something was bothering me and I had to figure out what it was.

So I had to do something I haven’t done in a while, I had to go back to school to my physics classroom and rediscover what exactly it is that reflection is. What it all boils down to is that when a light hits a surface, such as a mirror, it then bounces off at the same angle and heads off in the corresponding direction. What really struck me about that was the fact that it bounces off the object that it hits and then goes off in another direction.

Is that really what we want to do as Christians? Do we want to reflect the light? Do we want God’s Word and God’s promises to hit us and bounce off? When I had that image in my mind and started picturing what that might mean I began to think that maybe this whole concept of reflecting the light of Christ wasn’t such a good term after all. It seems to me there has to be a better concept or idea behind ‘reflecting Christ’s light” in and through us.

Now I will fully admit, and have in past messages that I have given, that all my brothers received the scientific genes in the family. But when I realized that reflection just wasn’t the right word anymore for what it means to have the light of Christ, something inside of me said, “refraction”. To be honest I couldn’t remember for the life of me what refraction meant so I had to once again go back and look up what refraction meant. And I did that by going to a website very aptly named the physics classroom.

Now I didn’t want to get this wrong when talking about refraction so I copied it from the online classroom. Here is what it has to say about refraction, “Reflection involves a change in direction of waves when they bounce off a barrier; refraction of waves involves a change in the direction of waves as they pass from one medium to another.” As soon as I read that I immediately knew that is a far better description of what it means to be a part of the light of Christ.

When Jesus was born, his light shone into the world and scattered the darkness. When we baptize people, as I mentioned, we talk about how that light is in the person and shines through them. If we simply reflect the light then we just let God’s light bounce off of us and there is not much else that we can do with it. But if we refract God’s light then that means that the light enters into us and then goes out from us into the world. If we refract the light of Christ that means that we are an active part of sharing that light.

There are actually several places in our story today where we can see this very idea of refraction happening around us. We see that angels appeared to the shepherds and after they heard the good news they went to see what had been told them. The angels shared the light and it entered into them and they went to see that savior. Then after they saw the light, it truly went into them and they then made known what had been told them about Jesus. They actively participated in the light entering into the world and shared their experiences with God and how they had met God’s son.

The other story of refraction in our story is about Mary. We hear that Mary took in everything that had happened to her, she treasured them and pondered them in her heart. All the experiences she had she didn’t just let them bounce off of her but she absorbed them and held them deep in her heart. And as we see throughout the gospels we know that Mary continued to be an active role in the life of Jesus, in the life of the light of the world. She refracted the light of her son so that others would know and see what God had done, not for her, but for the whole world.

As we celebrate the birth of our savior and the light of God entering this world may we be like Mary and the shepherds and refract God’s light. What is incredible about refraction is that we can take the light that God has put inside of us and then send it out in amazing and beautiful ways. I brought with me tonight a prism so I can show you, hopefully, what it means to refract. You take the light that has been given to you and you shine it through yourself and when it comes out you can see amazing patterns of God’s light and love in this world. It is absolutely beautiful when you shine God’s light through you using refraction.

With a prism you can make beautiful patterns and if you had real and not artificial light you could also create a beautiful rainbow. Imagine what we, as God’s living prisms could do if we call refracted the light of Christ. There would no longer be darkness in this world. God’s light would be shining all the time in all places. This little baby boy, born to us this evening, is the beginning of the most incredible light ever seen in this world and that light is being shone into us and refracted back out into the world.

Let the light, the hope, the peace, the joy, and the love of this child so fill you with good things that you use that light given to you to make this world shine. May you all have a very Merry Christmas and may you be filled with the light of Christ this night and all the days of your life.

May you all have a very Merry Christmas and may you be filled with the light of Christ this night and all the days of your life.

Amen.