When the World Was Dark

Last year, she couldn’t wait to decorate their new home. After two years of apartment living between their antebellum home in the old south and their new dream home in Tennessee, she was eager to revisit the memories of ornaments accumulated over almost twenty-five years of marriage and two sons, now almost grown. Spring came and with it an energetic puppy and then life took an unexpected turn.

This year, the picture window in the living room remains begging for its tall evergreen. She isn’t up to memories this Christmas, so not a single box of decorations was opened. Instead, she and the now 80 pound puppy searched the forest near their home for moss and branches, weeds and mushrooms to decorate the mantle. She bought new burlap stockings to hang, and a 3 foot table top LED birch tree stands on a side table.

Tonight, she will bake something with cinnamon to waft through the air, turn on the BBC, and hold that 80 pound puppy and wait for Christ to come. And he will.

In the beginning, and even now, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth – not full of forced smiles and faked holly jollys. When the world was dark and the bustling city had settled in the quiet of the night, he came. He crept in beside us. And no one knew. Only the few who dared to believe that God might do something different.

He will do the same this year. He will come into the darkness of tonight’s world; not the friendly darkness as when sleep settles in to rescue us from tiredness, but the fearful darkness, in which people have stopped believing that war will end or that food will come or that a government will change or that the Church cares. He will come into the quietness of this town, not the friendly quietness as when the young in love hold hands, but the fearful silence when the phone has not rung, the letter has not come, the friendly voice no longer speaks, the doctor’s face says it all.

He will come into the dark corners and the quiet places of our lives. He will creep in beside us. And save us from death and despair. He will come into our lives, if we open them to him.

Over the past week or so, her little LED birch tree has garnered two unexpected ornaments that found perfect homes on its branches. The first arrived with a friend, a ring cut from another tree and bearing the words that have sustained her all of these hard months, “Be still.” The other came as the gift of life-long friends, with whom she has travelled many dim and frightening roads. It’s a woodland owl – the bird who flies in the night – who sees so clearly in the dark.

when all has gone quiet and the world begins to sleep
when the universe holds its breath and angels begin to stretch their wings
and stars begin to slide into constellations of hope
when music seems to hang in the air and creation hums its own carol
about the longing for light and birth again from the cold of winter
then he will slip into her midst, God with us.
In the midst of the earthy smell of straw and hay and the simple glow of candles and starlight. That’s all it took for the birth of Jesus the first time. And that’s all it takes now.
So let us wait with expectant hearts, longing, awaiting the promise to break through the night.

This sermon is dependent upon the soul-searching and soul-revealing writing of Rev. Nikki Collins in her blog post “No Filter Christmas” (www.nicholecollinsmacmillan.com), the poetry of Roddy Hamilton (www.nkchurch.org/uk/original-liturgy), and the prayers of the Iona Community in “Cloth for the Cradle.”