I often think that cultures where and people who celebrate Christmas – the birth, the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ – at night time, on Christmas Eve – are closer to the mark than we are, with our daytime festivities.
I’m thinking of places like Germany, Austria, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, the Czech Republic, Poland, Switzerland, Hungary, Slovakia, and outside Europe: Argentina, Colombia, and Brazil, to name a few.
The Christians of the early centuries, based as they were in the Northern Hemisphere, knew exactly what they were doing when they harnessed, in their then Roman Calendar, the darkest winter-time day and festival of the year with its turning point from darkness to light, for this particular celebration.
Jesus was born at night time – in the darkness, and it was into that darkness that the angels appeared to the shepherds keeping watching over their flock, when ‘By night’ (Luke 2.8) bringing their message of light and peace:
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’ Luke 2.13
The main road to Bethlehem is closed this Christmas.
As the Washington Post reported on Saturday (William Booth and Sufian Taha, December 23rd, 2023) – there’s no tree in Bethlehem this year, no lights, no music, no carols, no feasts, and no pilgrims.
In today’s Gospel – Saint John’s teasing out of the meaning of the birth of Jesus – the incarnation of the Word of God – proclaims the good news of light coming in the darkness, just as the angels had done:
‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.’ John 1.5
I don’t suppose there has ever been a Christmas in history when there was no darkness, or indeed, where the peace on earth, announced by the angels, was ever a reality.
The promised saviour was, as we heard a moment ago, according to Isaiah, to be the messenger who announces peace, good news and salvation.
Instead, in many parts of the world and even in places close to home many sentinels are not singing for joy today.
Isaiah spoke about the ruins of Jerusalem breaking into singing. Ruins there are indeed in many places.
The Reverend Dr Munther Isaac, senior pastor at The Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, consulted his parishioners, and this year, they created a different crib scene.
The baby Jesus is on top of ‘… a pile of busted cement and dirty stone.’
He told The Washington Post ‘This is what Christmas looks like in Palestine, this is the true message.”
It’s shocking.
It’s not the full story, of course, but it leaves a disturbing impression.
Photos of that crib have gone viral in the international news.
‘Christ in the rubble’ is the headline on the France24 news site.
And there are other headlines such as in The Times of Israel ‘Bethlehem plans muted Christmas in the shadow or Israel-Hamas War.’
And not only there, as our young people here in this place reminded us when we met to pray for peace on 19th November last.
In too many places there are many who cannot ‘sing [that] new song that Psalm 98 heralded.
And so, for me, those words which we sang a moment ago, written by a Unitarian Minister, Edward Hamilton Sears, in December 1849,
It came upon the midnight clear, always jar and hit home year after year. They never fail to resonate uncomfortably; to strike a chord – of discord actually – ‘And man, at war with man, hears not the love-song which they bring:..’
And, so often throughout history, it has indeed mostly been men, with children and women suffering most.
With our euro-centric view of things we might be forgiven for assuming that in his mind, when he penned those words in 1849, were the revolutions the year before – 1848 – in Sicily, Germany, France, Hungary.
Maybe he even knew about the Young Irelanders here. He probably had heard of wars in northern Germany and southern Denmark, between Piedmont-Sardinia and Austria, of Croatia attacking Hungary, and Austria invading Hungary, of unrest in Sweden, massacre in Romania, revolt in Prague resulting in the city being bombed by the Austrian Army.
He might have read reports of the Chartist rallies in England and, not forgetting in the midst of all that, here in Ireland it was year three of the Great Famine. In Europe a lot of that spilled over into 1849.
1849 also brought war in Spain. The Russian army was in the mix too back then, in Transylvania. And the world isn’t only Europe: the Anglo-Sikh war in the Punjab and the Matale Rebellion in Sri Lanka.
I suppose Sears may well have been aware of many of these wars and conflicts, but where he was, in Wayland, Massachusetts, isn’t it much more likely that on his mind was the Mexican-American War which had trundled on since 1846, following the American annexation of Texas the year before, in 1845, and only ending in 1848, all resulting in an estimated 25,000 Mexican deaths and 15,000 American deaths, not to mention lots of other political consequences: the creation of a border along the Rio Grande, and the ceding to the United States of many states now part of that nation (California, Nevada, and Utah, most of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming).
There was a new surge of patriotism but many veterans returned home, broken.
Many of those veterans went on to become leaders on both sides of the American Civil War. More conflict and bloodshed. In the light of all that followed, the carol became ever more popular.
Here we are 174 years later still singing it, and tragically the words still resonate: ‘And man, at war with man, hears not the love-song which they bring:..’
Sears’ carol doesn’t mention the birth of Jesus at all, in fact. So in that sense it is not that Christmassy, actually. Its focus is the song of the angels: ‘Peace on earth, goodwill to all…’ It’s a carol about peace. How suited it is, therefore, to this year – every year.
And so we come back this Christmas to the message of that night; to the message of this feast that lifts up and embraces all that worries and concerns us, that rises over the rubble and ruins of places of conflict, that offers hope now and tomorrow, here and everywhere, and holds out peace to us in our condition and situation. And that demands of us, however, we can, wherever we are, in whatever little way we can ourselves to work for and to nurture that peace.
And, to encourage you, it’s this simple point I invite you not to overlook this Christmas: it all happened at night. The angels came and announced the birth in the darkness of night.
Jesus was born in the darkness of night. That’s no accident in the narrative. It’s deliberate. This isn’t an isolated instance in the story of the people of God.
God often makes himself known to people in their nighttime – Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Samuel, just to mention some.
Many of the great events in the biblical tradition happen in the darkness or in the half-light only: the escape from Egypt, and the crossing of the Red Sea. The angel came to Joseph at night. Jesus is born at night.
Or as Saint John explained in our Gospel: ‘The true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world.’ (John 1.9) Indeed, ‘the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.’ (John 1.5).
As another Christmas reading resonated in this place in recent days ‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined. (Isaiah 9.2).
So, in spite of all that worries and dismays us, that challenges the world order, all that weighs on us personally, where there is illness, anxiety and bereavement, we can indeed, draw solace from the Christmas message that we, in spite of all that is dismal – that we do celebrate today.
As we heard from the letter to the Hebrews ‘Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son…’ (Hebrews 1.1-2b)
That’s why the Christmas announcement at the very start of this liturgy ‘unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour who is Christ our Lord’ is indeed ‘good news of great joy’, and hope, peace and light
One of our most treasured Irish traditions of Christmas Eve, as darkness falls, is to place and light the candle in the window, to welcome the holy family, and to announce the coming of the light of Christ.
Christmas holds out to us the promise of Christ’s peace and light.
And we, in turn, are entrusted with that light of Christ to hand it on and to spread it around.