The light doesn’t come from the bright places: its radiance and brilliance shines through the darkness, through the darkest corners of our world, through the darkest corners of our lives. It envelops the darkness with its truth, its mercy, its love.

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Bringing forth the salvation of the world
Christmas Eve |  Luke 2:1-20

The Promise

Before we get to Mary and Joseph and a baby Jesus in the manger, we have a story of tradition and history that goes back hundreds, thousands of years. A story of liberation and discouragement and abandonment, but in it, persistence and return and thankfulness. A story of a people and GOD who they are told is to be called “I-Will-Be-There-Howsoever-I-Will-Be-There”.

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And it is from this story that an angel of this same GOD who comes to a priest named Zechariah and tells him that his wife will bear a special child, the herald, the prophet. And Zechariah hears this word and he….hesitates. Like any father-to-be, he starts playing it out in his head all the scenarios and he’s probably worried how he’s going to pay for the child’s schooling and he’s wondering how to make this child receive the best–which line will he be in. And it is here that he is silenced. Literally. He can’t talk.

And the angel, Gabriel, the angel of endurance and perseverance, then goes to Mary, an unwed teenager, and asks her to bear the great one, the descendant of David who will “reign over the house of Jacob forever” and she says yes. And she is favored.

Mary travels from Nazareth all the way down to Judea, to live with that priest Zechariah and her cousin, Elizabeth for three months, and she is blessed and favored and called special, and it is here that she sings this great song, Mary’s song, the Magnificat: a response to the blessing. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant…”

And she names that she is blessed, loved by GOD, not because of who she is or what she has done, but because that is who GOD is because that is what GOD has done.

After John is born to Elizabeth, Zechariah’s mouth is unglued and he is full of the Spirit and proclaims as Mary has the power of GOD. For he has gotten out of the way, he finally is getting it. He finally is seeing the radiance, the light in the darkness is not about him, but about GOD. It is all about GOD.

This is the dramatic first chapter of the gospel we call Luke, what sets us up for Mary’s return South, to David’s city, to Bethlehem. To the birth.

We need this backstory because it explains why this matters.

Choosing GOD

One of the parts of the story I never paid much attention to until this week, thanks to the brilliant work of Alexander Shaia, is that the holy family come from the priestly line. This might not mean much to you, but for first century Jewish readers, this is central to the story.

And for Mary and Joseph, it is a double-whammy. Priestly-line and the Davidic-line makes these two royalty. These aren’t a couple of schmoes, but a prince and a princess, and this is what is being weighed for Mary as she decides to accept the call to bear the Christ. Give up her family, her heritage, all that she has to follow GOD and risk persecution and death.

A choice between personal comfort and wealth and power or discomfort and poverty and possibly death.

Choosing GOD, leaving home, for Bethlehem alone, just the two of them, they are not only the lowliest: they are the disowned.

They walk into their hometown and have no place to stay because none of their family will accept them. Cousins and in-laws: their doors are closed. There is no room at the inn, not because it’s a race weekend, but because they have been cast out of the family.

Disowned

In the first century, decades after Jesus was crucified, a rebellion within the Jewish community led to a Roman retaliation so strong, that they obliterated the Temple, the center of worship. They ground the whole thing to dust. For years, people didn’t go back there.

And those early followers of Jesus, who saw themselves not as part of a new religion, but as reformers of their beloved tradition, were being shunned by the Jewish community.

The evangelist we call Luke was speaking to these people as a defender of Judaism, of their tradition, calling the people to embrace their history and carry it forward.

or those hearers of this gospel are hearing it in the midst of their own persecution. They were being cast out of their own families, pulled and separated from their homes for choosing to follow in the way of Jesus. Parents would sit shiva, a week of mourning that would declare their own children as dead to them. And the story of Mary and Joseph coming home to rejection would be their own story.

Bearing Christ

The first hearers of the birth story heard in Mary about faithfulness to GOD, bearing Jesus in a time of persecution and total darkness. And they heard a reflection of their own story of faithfulness to GOD: that they bear Christ in a new time of persecution and total darkness.

This is the Christian imperative in story form: that all the faithful bear the Christ. But Christ doesn’t come in the Temple. Or the rich parts of Jerusalem. But on the streets of Bethlehem. Not in a fancy hospital, but among the animals and the lowliest outcasts: the shepherds.

The light doesn’t come from the bright places: its radiance and brilliance shines through the darkness, through the darkest corners of our world, through the darkest corners of our lives. It envelops the darkness with its truth, its mercy, its love.

This has been a dark, dark year. Death. Destruction. Fear. Anger. Outrage. Division. Hatred. There have been so many things, so many concerns, so many anxieties. We can see, feel so much pain in our lives, the lives of our families and friends, the lives of our neighbors and total strangers. In some ways, it seems like the darkest time.

And if we were like Zechariah, we might start to try to figure out how we are supposed to solve it. And there is no doubt that we would be silenced.

Mary, favored, blessed among women, blessed by a woman full of the Spirit, given the greatest gift of bearing Jesus, the savior of the world, Mary sets aside her privilege, her crown, to become the lowliest. And the light, the radiance, the brilliance comes to her and she bears the light in the midst of total darkness.

Ours is a GOD that doesn’t forget us, who doesn’t leave us, who comes to us even in these dark times to save us. Through us.

Because this light begins in darkness, comes from darkness, from the darkest of places and brings joy and hope and love when we are at our lowest.

This is what GOD does. Because this is what GOD has always done. From the very beginning.

May we go out from here this night, the lightbearers, the Christbearers, as Marys, as saints, as the very means of saving this world from total darkness. And may we bring that light with the joy and hope and love Christ shares with us.

A light that heals the hurt, restores the broken, and shelters the homeless; a light which makes the creatures of the night into phantoms and our own fears fade from memory. A light of a kept promise, restored justice, and the faithfulness of a people bathed in its brilliance. Tonight. Tomorrow. Every day.