Merry Christmas

A couple of weeks ago, on the first Saturday in December, I had the opportunity to do something rather strange. I, along with about 50 others, drove up to Scandia, about 40 minutes north, and spent the day in the first church built in Minnesota. It is a little one-room log building, built in 1852, about 15 ft x 20, and it seated the 50 or so of us just about perfectly. Though it was one of those days where the temperatures start out at a high of 15 and drop throughout the day, the building was surprisingly warm – it’s amazing how logs block out cold and hold in warmth.
So, what were we doing there in that little one-room Swedish Lutheran church on the first Saturday in Advent? Why, celebrating Easter, of course! As part of the seminary course on worship that I was taking, my class spent that Saturday afternoon and evening worshipping together, praying together, feasting together, and huddling together to stay warm, as we went through the entire Triduum, that is, the Three days of Easter: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil.
When I first heard about doing this, I thought it seemed weird and contrived. For one thing, I didn’t want to give up a Saturday in Advent, when I could have been spending the day playing with my kids in the snow or baking Christmas cookies. But I also felt like we would all be play-acting – pretending to celebrate Easter when we really were in an Advent and Christmas frame of mind. Even the weather was conspiring against us – it is hard to imagine singing “Now the Green Blade rises,” when there isn’t a scrap of green to be seen in the landscape and the snow is blowing across a solid frozen lake. It is hard to get your head around the symbols of new life that we associate with Easter when the world around us is going ever deeper into a winter slumber.
So I went to this day not exactly in the spirit of the thing, but determined to make the best of it, if I could. But as the day unfolded, as I heard the readings and lamentations and sang the songs and prayers, I began to feel that it was just as fitting to do this in the midst of Advent and winter as at the end of Lent at the coming of spring. After all, when it comes right down to it, the point of Advent and Christmas, is the same as the point of Lent and Easter. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it…The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
I have always been drawn to that line from the introduction to the book of John. The image is one that is so deep, so primal, an image that touches the very depths of what it is to be human. Light in darkness, light that cannot be overcome by darkness, gets to the heart of our longings. It takes us back to our beginnings, our ancestors gathered around a fire, with the darkness and wild animals threatening. Though most of us don’t live that way anymore, it is still easy to find darkness. We are confronted daily with darkness. The power went out at our apartment this past Sunday afternoon. We pulled out candles and blankets, covered the windows and doors to keep the heat in, and hunkered down. As the sun went down, it started to get dark, and we lit all our candles, so that it was bright enough to read a book in our living room. We were okay for the evening, and eventually we went out to a friend’s house for dinner. The power still wasn’t on when we came home and piled into one big bed covered in blankets to sleep. And it still wasn’t on when we woke up the next morning. I started to worry: what if it was still out that night, or the next? I don’t have enough blankets and candles to overcome the darkness and cold that was threatening at that moment.
Fortunately, the power came back on by mid-afternoon Monday, while Grace and I were taking refuge at Pastor Carlson’s house. We had a warm place to sleep that night, and the lights on our Christmas tree are twinkling today. But it left me thinking about light in dark places again. We were confronted with literal darkness on Sunday night, and with other kinds of darkness as well: cold, fear, worry. There are other darknesses that threaten to close in on us: money worries, unemployment, loneliness, illness, death. And we have lights, candles that we light to ward off those darknesses: savings accounts, 401ks, insurance, television, books, knowledge, technology of all sorts. But eventually, no matter how we shore up the defenses, those things fail. Sometimes they even become the darkness, as has happened this year with so many people’s 401ks. The stock market, which was the security blanket of so many, has become the source of worry and worse. Eventually, the power goes out, and we are left confronted by darkness.
In those moments, when we are confronted by darkness, we have one light left. At the darkest moments, when the darkness threatens to overcome us, a light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. On the darkest night of the year, a baby is born, the Son of God, in the darkest place, a manger in a stable. At the worst moment, when there is no room in the inn, when we are alone in the world, and all the lights that we have placed as defenses against the darknesses have failed us, one light remains, Jesus the Christ, God incarnate. God incarnate! God, who has been born into the world in the same messy and difficult way that each of us has. God, who has been born into the world to experience the darknesses: worry, loneliness, illness, death. God, who has been born into the world to bring new life through death and resurrection!
Perhaps it’s not so hard after all to imagine singing Easter songs as Christmas carols. In the manger we have new life, God who surprises us by choosing to be here with us. And in the cross we have new life, God who surprises us by choosing to die here for us. And in the resurrection, we have new life, God who surprises us by overcoming death and the grave, by being the light shining even in that, the ultimate darkness, the light that even the darkness of death cannot overcome. I guess the words of “Now the Green Blade Rises” do fit as a Christmas carol. Open your hymnbook to song #379. Can we sing the last verse together? “When our hearts are wintry, grieving or in pain, Your touch can call us back to life again. Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been: love is come again like wheat arising green.”
Love is come again, born in the manger, to die on the cross, to overcome the darkness and bring good news of salvation to all people. Amen.