Texts:  Isaiah 9.2-7

            Titus 2.11-14

            Luke 2.1-20

            “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.”  According to the prophet Isaiah, light, a great light and a new light is promised for those who find themselves in darkness.  Of course, there are different kinds of darkness.  There is the welcome darkness which makes a candle-lit Midnight Mass on Christmas eve so evocative and beautiful.  And there is the even more welcome darkness of sleep after and a long, hard day of labour.  Somehow I don’t think the prophet had either of these two forms of darkness in mind when he spoke of those who walked and dwelt in darkness.  There is also, however, the stomach knotting darkness of fear, when serious illness threatens you or someone you love.  There is the gnawing darkness of guilt, which wakes you in the wee hours of the morning and will not let you sleep because you “have left undone those things we ought to have done” or you “have done those things we which we ought not to have done”--as the Prayer Book puts it.  There is the dull, aching darkness of mourning, when you have lost the one who was to you brightness, light and life.  There is the exasperating darkness of dementia, as you watch your father or mother slowly cease to be the person they have always been, fading into a shade of their former self.  (And I know what I am talking about.)  There is the soul-destroying darkness of betrayal, when promises are broken and trust violated.  There is the heavy, burdensome darkness of failure, when hopes and expectations prove to have been nothing more than a mirage and an illusion.  There is the grasping, suffocating darkness of despair, which will not permit you a moment’s peace.  There is the darkness of ignorance, which blinkers a person or a people onto a trajectory ending in their humiliation or even destruction.  There is the darkness of sin and rebellion against God, which is mightier than every one of us and holds each of us its grip.  (Again, I know what I am talking about.)  And there are other darknesses I have never experienced and cannot imagine, like hunger (real hunger) or crushing, third world-like poverty or prejudice.

            The prophet Isaiah declared that for those who find themselves in darkness a light has dawned and hope is at hand.  And the focus of Isaiah’s light and hope was to be found in the birth of a child, a son, who would rule on the throne of his ancestor David.  Regardless of what particular child the historical Isaiah had in mind, this passage was understood by at least some ancient Jews as a prophecy of the birth of the Messiah, the descendant of David.  And it has always been so understood among Christians.  As he tells the story of the birth of Jesus, Luke leaves us in no doubt that he was of the same mind:  That baby boy, born to a Galilean peasant girl named Mary, in or near the hamlet of Bethlehem and cradled in a cattle trough in the days of Caesar Augustus is none other than the focus of the light and hope promised by Isaiah.  As the nineteenth century carol puts it addressing “the little town of Bethlehem”:  “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”

            Now, let me be clear.  Although many people find this story as told by Luke and as captured in the carol, full of light and hope in a vague, sentimental kind of way, that has more to do with happy childhood memories of carol singing, the exalted prose of the Authorised King James Version of the Bible and candle-lit Midnight Masses.  For there is nothing sentimental about this child or his birth.  And any hope or light derived from sentimental feelings will last only until that final candle has been snuffed out and the last strains of the choir fade away.  If you find hope and light in the innocence of the birth of a child, any child, I have to tell you that every child who has ever been born, bar one, has all too soon betrayed and squandered their innocence. 

            This story contains the hope and light which can rescue us from our own individual and collective darknesses not because it tells the heart warming story of the birth of an innocent child.  Rather, this story contains the hope and light for which we long because it tells the story of the one child who never lost his innocence--even and particularly when fearful and guilty, despairing and betrayed, burdened and sinful men and women, like you and I, nailed him to a cross.  This story tells of the birth of the one man who remained true to the Love and goodness God intended for the human race precisely because he was the human embodiment of Divine Love and Goodness.  As the prophet Isaiah put it, he is the Mighty God, as well as a Wonderful Counsellor and the Prince of Peace.  If you wish to know what the Everlasting Father is like, then you must look to this child and the man he became.  If you want to be liberated forever from your particular darkness, you must come to know, love and follow this child and the man he grew to be.  For in him, God became a man; in him God became an infant, and then a child and then a man, to show us what the love of God is like. 

            Regardless of the particular darkness you happen to find yourself in this night, or the particular darkness in which you may yourself in years to come, the point of Christmas, the reason we are here tonight, is that a light has shined and the darkness has been pierced.  There is a way out of the darkness.  For unto us a child has been born and to us a son is given; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of peace. 

            I close with the final verse of the carol I alluded to earlier.  It’s not bad poetry, it’s even better as a prayer:  “O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray, cast out our sin (and our darkness too), and enter in, be born in us today.  Amen.”

 Revd Dr Darrell Hannah