Christmas Day – John 1:1-14
On Wednesday night this past week, our Confirmation Class gathered to talk about the story of the Exodus, when the Israelites left Egypt, crossed the Red Sea, and traveled out into the desert toward the land God had promised them. We heard how God gave them the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, and how the Israelites began to put their worship life into place in the desert, building a movable temple and consecrating priests to serve God in this special place where he would come to visit them. That notion of the temple as a thin place on earth, where God’s presence and glory comes to dwell among humankind, is a bit of an odd concept for Christians—at least at first glance. For our students, it became even more strange when we noted that only consecrated priests were allowed to enter into the temple’s inner sanctum, the tabernacle. Anyone else going there would die.
Our teenagers wondered at that. Why can’t people go into the central room of the temple? It would be like saying that only pastors can come up here into the chancel. And the penalty for transgressing that boundary is death? That doesn’t sound much like the God of love we know and proclaim. The Biblical reasoning is, of course, a little more complicated than it appears at first glance. The Israelites had the notion that if you stood in God’s presence, the power and glory and majesty of God would overwhelm you, and you would die—not as punishment, but perhaps die of spiritual ecstasy. A pretty good way to go, if you have to. Somehow, the ordination of priests allowed them to get away with it, but even then, in the very, innermost place in the temple, the Holy of Holies, only the High Priest could enter, and then only on one specific day of the year.
(This isn’t sounding much like a Christmas sermon, is it? I’ll get there, I promise.) This idea of God’s presence being concentrated in a specific place is not exactly unfamiliar to us. We, too, build temples and worship places, and while at first they may only be a place for God’s faithful people to gather, we tend to think that God is present here in a different way than he is “out there.” I buy into that idea myself sometimes. I find that I do my best praying, deepest soul-searching, and richest contemplation in the church sanctuary. It’s one of the benefits of being a pastor: I get a key to the church, and can come sit at the foot of the cross any time I want.
And it stands to reason that if God is particularly present in certain places, there are other place where God is not. People have secrets. We hide things in the dark, parts of ourselves that we are ashamed of, practices and activities we don’t want others to know about. Even the best of us have things we don’t want people to see. And those of us who know that we aren’t among the best…
When I lived in Omaha, the congregation I served had some real, intense conflict in the months I was there. When things would get too heated, the church secretary and I would cross the river together in the evening, over to Council Bluffs, Iowa, and go to the Horseshoe Casino for their fabulous buffet. It should be fairly obvious, by the shape of me, that food is not only a means of sustenance but also an emotional escape, a vice as bad as anything more colorful we might come up with. We’d eat ‘till we were stuffed, and then head out to the floor to play penny slots for an hour or two. (Lutherans generally don’t have a moral quandary around gambling. Though, tell that to the Nebraska Lutherans I was serving at the time.) I never developed a gambling problem, always taking a certain amount of money with me and stopping when it was gone. But at just that time, I was making $12,000 a year as a pastoral intern, and probably should have been spending my money on other things instead.
I remember, in that context, getting the notion once of going to the casino while wearing my clerical collar, just as a sociological sort of experiment. I never did, of course—that would have been inappropriate—but I always wondered how people would react to seeing what appeared to be a priest, wandering around the casino floor, dropping money into machines and hoping for a jackpot. There would have been shock, certainly, and probably plenty of embarrassment and shame. And why? Because it WOULD have been inappropriate. Because somehow, we have the notion that God does not belong in a place like that. That such human behavior as gambling is base, morally corrupt, something far, far away from the hallowed space of the sanctuary. God is light, of course, and all that belongs in the dark.
Take a moment and consider the things that are part of you that lie in the darkness. The things you might be embarrassed about if the people in the pew behind you knew. The things that you dare not tell anyone else about. The things you do, or have done, that you are ashamed of. I’m not even really talking about things that, say, would “ruin” you if others found out. Some people carry those sorts of things with them, actually probably more people than most of us would guess, and so if that’s you, you can keep that in mind, yes. But I’m even talking about the little things: The foolish thing once said to a friend that drove a wedge into your friendship; the childhood failing that has stuck with you all these years, that makes you feel somehow inadequate; the mistake you made in raising your own children, that you think helped prevent them from reaching the potential you know they have. I’d like to ask you to take out that little piece of darkness now, to examine it with your imagination, to look at its contours and see why you hide it away, to see what it does to you, to allow yourself to really see it even if no one else can. Look into that darkness.
And light shines in the darkness, and darkness cannot overpower it. This is the bold claim that the Gospel of John makes today: That there is no place so encumbered by darkness that the light does not penetrate down to it. We think that these parts of ourselves are unworthy, monstrous, objectionable. But if we hold them up to the light, we discover that the light is already there. God is already present there. God is present not just in the beauty, but in the hidden parts of ourselves as well. God is there to redeem them, to reshape them, to bring life out of death and light out of darkness and love to what is broken. God’s presence takes what is dark, and shines a light on it, and reveals life in even the worst situation.
Was God in the casino? Yes. Of course God was there. Where is God not? Is God in the desperate hunger of an impoverished mother who goes hungry in order to provide food for her children? Yes. Is God in the drunkenness of a man passed out in the only home he can find: A doorway in the street? Yes. Is God in the suffering of a woman beaten by an abusive boyfriend, trying to hide the bruises from the world? Yes. Is God with a kid, barely a teenager, escaping a destructive home by getting high in the darkest corners of an inner-city crack house? Yes, of course God is there. Not because God helps to bring these terrible darknesses about, but because God is always working against them, to bring them to the light, to bring light to them, to redeem and resurrect and work out new life. If God can shine light in these places, then certainly God can shine light in the darkest recesses of our selves.
And this also means that if we, in the relatively comfortable lives most of us lead, do not go looking for God in those darker places, we will miss something. We will miss the redemption that God is up to in our world. We will miss out on catching a glimpse of what this Christmas incarnation is all about.
Because after all, that’s the story we have, isn’t it? The Lord of Hosts, the Ancient of Days, the Ruler of the Cosmos, the Good Shepherd, the Spirit of Holiness, came to earth not in the brilliant, glorious perfection of the Holiest of Men. He came as an infant, born to an unwed teenage mother, to a father who was in a little over his head. He did not stand in a consecrated tabernacle where only the ordained could bear to stand, but was laid in the feeding trough in the stable-cave behind an inn. He was not announced to ranks of priests and mighty rulers and choirs of worshipers, but was seen by poor shepherds, and sung to sleep by the lowing of cattle. The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, the glory of the Father, as only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth, shining light in the darkness wherever it may be found.
May the joy of Christmas Day bring every darkness within you to light, and may you know that incarnation and redemption and resurrection belongs even in the darkest recesses of your heart. Amen.