Carol Service - Light in the darkness

It’s that time of year again. The lights are on in town and cards are beginning to be sent and received. This weekend we received our first Christmas cards of this year and believe you me, most of them have quite idyllic pictures. They warm the cockles of our hearts and believe you me, there are times when that is just what we need.

And yet, we know that neither the first Christmas or that of 2007 are quite as idyllic as we would like to think. The first Christmas takes place against the background of an army of occupation that was being resisted by methods that might be described as terrorist - sounds familiar!. Mary and Joseph were hardly regarded as love’s young dream for the circumstances of Mary’s pregnancy were the stuff of scandal in an age when shame was an even greater form of suffering than the Sun would like it to be today. No wonder the first recorded visitors to Jesus were those absolute outsiders the shepherds. And down the road thanks to a bunch of gullible men whom we somehow think of as being wise, there would be Herod the Great a meglomaniac of a ruler who is prepared to slaughter the young in an effort to get the newly born king of the Jews.

And in 2007 we know all to well that Christmas for many will hardly be “the season to be jolly.” And the reasons for this will be many. For some it will be a time of fear due to conflict. For others it will be a time dominated by financial insecurity whilst for others sickness and sorrow will be all to constant a companions. No wonder that in the USA many churches have “Blue Christmas services” for those who feel to battered to make merry yet still desire to celebrate the good news of Christmas as best they can.

And yet Christmas is a time of good news. As John recognises in his prologue in talking of Christ coming into the world;

“The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.”

Do you get it? Christmas is not God’s gift to an idyllic world. It is God’s gift to a world with much that is dark. And of course the greatest of wonders is that darkness cannot put out light.

So how does Christmas bring a light into our darkness?

Well firstly, it reveals the true nature of God. You see, it is all too easy from a casual reading of the Old Testament to come to a dangerous understanding of God seeing God as remote and vengeful. But that is not the true picture for Jesus is the image of God and reveals God to be as he is - that is all loving, generous and inclusive.

Secondly, Christmas is a time in which a greater love than the world has ever known enters it. As Christina Rossetti puts it;

“Love came down at Christmas,
Love so lovely, love divine
Love was born at Christmas
Star and angel gave the sign.”

Here, the world is invaded by a love that will be ultimately revealed as self giving and courageous as the Babe of Bethlehem shows the fullness of Love Divine by enduring the worst of peoples’ darker side up to death on a cross. And in that and in his living, we see him being “God for us” whatever the state of our lives might be.

And finally, the Christmas story is a story that has within it the power to inspire people to work for a new world. At the moment there is the stirring of a rumpus over BBC 3’s production of a “Liverpool Nativity” which will be a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story live on the streets of Liverpool. It touches the sense of scandal around the birth of Jesus and goes on to encounter issues of asylum given that the Holy family became refugees as a result of paranoia in high places. To me this is the sign of Christmas being a living tradition which challenges the accepted norms of our day. For as we explore the story, is there not good reason to conclude that we are all too often insufficiently political - and if the refugee experience of Jesus doesn’t have something to say about the British Home Office announcing its intentions to deport Uzbeki dissidents back to a state that routinely tortures dissidents and has even employed boiling alive, I don’t know what can speak to such situations.

So there we are - just three ways in which Christmas represents light coming into the darkness;

- revealing the nature of God

- being the ultimate sign of a love that is for all

- challenging how we see injustices.


So you see, whatever the newspapers may tell us, it’s not just about Santas or even school nativities great as those things are. For ultimately Christmas speaks to something much much bigger - how we see ourselves and yet bigger again how God sees us!


Gammaton Methodist Church Carol Service - December 9th 2007