"Walk toward the Light" - Sermon for Christmas Eve

Walk toward the Light
Christmas Eve – Narrative Lectionary 4
December 24, 2017
Grace, Mankato, MN
Luke 2.1-20

When I was in college at Gustavus Adolphus College decades ago, I pledged a fraternity, Epsilon Pi Alpha, or “Eppies” as we were called. Back then, fraternities got away with a lot more. Some of the hazing was tame, but some was brutal. On the milder end of the hazing spectrum were the kidnappings. We’d be captured by our fraternity brothers in the dead of night, blindfolded and dumped unceremoniously miles away and have to find our way back. Remember, this was before cell phones. On one such night, I and others were dropped off and pointed toward some radio towers with beacons on the top and told that was the edge of St. Peter and if we walked toward the light we’d be home. So, we walked toward the light.

It was a dark night when God in human flesh entered this world, in more ways than one. The Roman Empire had beaten and subjugated the Jewish people for years while occupying Israel and the surrounding area. Their own leaders, religious or secular, were either powerless to do anything about it or in collaboration with Rome. Yet, in the midst of that coercive power, God came to earth as a vulnerable baby, born to middle class family in a small out of the way town and announcing the fact to working class shepherds. When the sky lit up with the heavenly chorus they needed no convincing to walk toward the light.

If our world isn’t as dark or bleak it is certainly quite dusky. I’m guessing many of us suffer the dusk of disillusionment, despairing of all hope that our leaders are capable of bringing light to our lives or the world. I know that some of you are experiencing darkness in other ways, many of which I can only imagine. Pastor David Lose reminds us that this is precisely what this story was made for: “God comes at Christmas for us, that we might have hope and courage amid the dark and dangerous times and places of our lives.” Though the world is dark it is not forsaken. God loves the world and will not give up on it.

We are not here tonight to curse the darkness, rather to be reminded to walk toward the light. The joy we experience in the midst of darkness comes in seeing the light of Christ that burns deeply inside each of us. It comes by finding the path God lays before us even when the ways seems unclear. And it comes from bearing witness to that light. We sing with the angels this night and every night to remember that the light that shined in the darkness 2,000 years ago continues to burn brightly, bringing a peace and joy only God can give. Merry Christmas, my sisters and brothers. Continue walking toward the light, now and always. Amen.