The Darkness Did Not Overcome It

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 52: 7-10 and John 1: 1-14 Sermon title: The Darkness Did Not Overcome It Preached on December 25th, 2022 What I just read as our second Scripture lesson is the Gospel of John’s version of the Christmas Story. It’s different from Luke’s version, which I read last night. Luke’s version of the Christmas story has shepherds. Matthew’s gospel has the magi or wise men. John’s account is different. In John’s account of the Christmas story, there is no manger, no shepherds, no wise men, no angel, no pregnant Mary, no worried Joseph, no baby Jesus, and certainly no Santa Clause. What there is instead is the light and the darkness. This light has been shining since the beginning: before the earth was called forth from the void, before the mountains called up from the deep, since that time before life dawned and long before we humans were granted dominion. In those passing eons, despite the heat of summer and the cold of winter, despite death and war, extinction and holocaust, this light never went out, but shown through all that darkness. That’s what’s there in John’s Christmas story. Unlike Matthew or Luke, John’s gospel focuses on light and darkness. Inspired by this version of the Christmas story, I invite you to think with me about how the light shines in the darkness, and how the darkness did not, nor will it ever, overcome the light. It was there on the first Christmas of World War I, though it was a hellish time for Alfred Dougan Chater and every soldier who found himself on the battlefront that Christmas morning. Chater was a second lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion of the Gordon Highlanders, and he woke that morning in a freezing, muddy trench less than 100 yards from the German lines in West Flanders, Belgium. The bloodiest fighting had briefly ended in a stalemate. Corpses littered the deadly no man’s land, which separated the two sides along the Western Front. Yet that Christmas morning, Chater saw, all along that 20-mile stretch of the Western Front, unarmed German troops climbing over the parapets and walking toward the British side, simply to shake hands and exchange Christmas greetings. This miracle, this light shining in the darkness, is called the Christmas truce, and is likely the largest spontaneous truce in modern history. It resulted in a day of shared cigars, good cheer, chocolate, and, in more than one place, a game of soccer in the middle of a battlefield. According to historians, no one pre-arranged anything. It just happened. How? I’ll tell you. The light shines in the darkness. Now of course, there was one German who refused to play soccer on that battlefield. He thought the truce was disgraceful. His name was Adolf Hitler, and his dedication to the darkness is so legendary that most people consider him to be one of the vilest humans ever to have walked the earth. Yet, even in his concentration camps, the light was shining, though there was tremendous, suffocating darkness. The first Christmas Eve behind the barbed wire of Auschwitz, the SS set up a Christmas tree with electric lights and called all the prisoners to gather around it, for they had placed corpses under the tree as a warning to the living. The next year, Pope Pius XII gave a Christmas Eve proclamation in German, and despite freezing temperatures, all prisoners were required to listen. Forty-two succumbed to the cold, dying of exposure. Others suffered nervous breakdowns. How many spirits were broken? Yet in cell block ten, which housed Polish prisoners, the singing of carols began not long after. Like the waves of the sea came the illuminating words, “God is born, the powers tremble.” The powers will always tremble. No matter how merciless. No matter how compassionless. No matter how strong. For the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it. It’s true. On Christmas Eve 1944, when the days of the Third Reich were numbered, the prisoner priest Father Grohs de Rosenburg celebrated midnight mass. Women in Birkenau prepared 200 gifts for children fashioned from rags. One dressed up as St. Nicholas and passed them out. In one month, those who survived would gain their freedom, for on January 27th, 1945, the light broke through the darkness, which it always does. It's true. You have heard about all the darkness that surrounds us today: war, disease, poverty, and discord. However, in Kansas City, there is a man who makes it his Christmas tradition to slip $100 bills into strangers’ pockets, handing out between $100,000 and $200,000 every year. In Michigan, there’s a man named Chad Rose who gives away Christmas trees. Inspired by his example, a woman in Grand Rapids named Ann offered to donate ornaments for all of Chad’s trees. Likewise, Grammy-award-winning singer, Beyoncé, surprised Walmart shoppers in Boston by buying their merchandise for them. In Colorado, a homeless man bought a Barbie and a Hot Wheels set for two kids in need, then went back later to buy another kid a bike, saying, “This is probably going to be my last Christmas. I’m no one, so I might as well make some little kid happy. It took my losing everything to realize that I’m happier now in my life than when I had big money.” Stories like that are everywhere. They’re here. For the last two nights, members of our church drove homeless families in our church’s vans to an emergency shelter because the MUST shelter was already full. Our Kroger has been giving away Christmas trees since Thursday. Yesterday, Elizabeth Lisle took her farm torch to melt ice in our parking lot so those who came to Christmas Eve services wouldn’t slip and fall. I tell you, therefore, that the light shines every day, and the darkness will not, cannot, overcome it. How do I know? I’ve seen it myself. I was a prison chaplain one summer years ago. It was the Metro State Women’s prison, and there I was sent to the floor where all the inmates who suffered mental illness lived. They were the lowest of the low, constantly taken advantage of. They were pushed around and had little to brighten their days, yet when I walked into their common room, one of the women stood and asked to sing. From that hopeless place, she sang out: Why should I feel discouraged? Why should the shadows come? Why should my heart be lonely and long for heaven and home, when Jesus is my portion? My constant friend is he. His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me. I sing because I’m happy. I sing because I’m free. For his eye is on the sparrow, And I know he watches me. My friends, the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not, will not, cannot overcome it. That’s the Christmas message that every one of us needs to hear. Some days are so bright and full and hopeful, but one little shadow cast along my path strikes fear in my heart and takes the wind from my sails. Some days that’s all it takes. One little disappointment. One little inconvenience. One little word of whining and complaining, but imagine with me what it took for those soldiers, so aware of the darkness of war, to walk out into no man’s land that Christmas morning during World War I. Imagine with me the faith it took to go from being shot at to playing soccer. Imagine the faith it took to stare down the barrel of a rifle and to see the soldiers on the other side as enemies one day, then to realize that they are brothers, made of the same flesh and blood, the next. That’s the miracle of Christmas, not only to hear that the light shines in the darkness, but to live knowing that it’s true. For if they could play soccer on a battlefield and sing Christmas carols in a concentration camp; if some man is slipping $100 bills into peoples’ pockets, and if a woman can sing “His Eye Is On The Sparrow” while locked up behind bars, then you and I can hardly walk out the doors of this church afraid of the darkness any longer, so I charge you to live trusting in the light, my friends. The light is shining, so pay no more homage to the shadow. Pray for the sick, knowing that death is not the end. Offer kindness to strangers without doubting their intensions. Walk boldly into this new day, not as the cynics do, fearful, cautious, expecting things to fall apart, but as the saints in light would have us do: full of expectation, trusting that the light will soon enough break through the storm clouds overhead. The darkness in this world isn’t going to overcome anything, but it sure will consume our minds if we let it. It sure will consume our thoughts, and suck hope right out of our souls if we give it that kind of power over us. Christ has conquered sin and death, so pay attention, not to the shadow, but to his light which casts out the shadow from our midst. That’s what Christmas is all about. The light that shines in the darkness, which has come into our world. Watch for the light and remember that the darkness, its days are numbered. Halleluiah. Amen.