Christmas Eve candle lighting meditation

Candle lighting
Christmas Eve 2023

 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. In the darkness… We gather this night in the darkness. For some of us, this is an annual tradition, gathering to light our candles in midst of a dark winter night. But the darkness seems more smothering to me this year. The bloody war in Ukraine continues to drag on, and the situation in Gaza is heartbreaking. The horrific terror and hostage taking perpetrated by Hamas has been followed by the wholesale slaughter of civilians by Israel.

Meanwhile, the signs that earth is reaching a tipping point on climate change are growing more and more ominous.

Throw in conflicts in Sudan, Myanmar, Cameroon, and other places too many to mention, a continuing epidemic of gun violence in this country, and the demonization that is so rampant in American politics, and it feels like a particularly dark time.

I once attended a Longest Night worship service where the leader reminded us that the Christmas story is a dark one. That easily gets lost in all the sentimentality, nostalgia, and celebration, but it is still there. A couple forced by an occupying, imperial power to travel, even though a birth is imminent. Images often depict Mary on a donkey, but she may well have had to walk. And then there was no proper place to give birth.

And if we follow the story on to Epiphany, which may have been a couple years later rather than 12 days, Herod tries to kill young Jesus, causes his family to flee and become refugees. The story starts out dark and the second chapter is even darker.

 In such a setting, to say that the light shines in the darkness is no exercise in sentimentality. Rather, it is a bold assertion that the light which comes as a vulnerable baby, the love of God that comes in weakness, is somehow stronger than all that darkness.

And so as we light our candles and bask in their warm glow, it is much more than an ooh-ahh moment. It is an act of defiance in the face of the world’s darkness, an act that says we trust and hope in the power of God’s weakness and vulnerability over all the terrors of the darkness.

(Tell congregation to shield candles.) In a land of deep darkness, light has shined. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not, cannot overcome it. (Lift candles high.)

The light, the vulnerable light of a newborn baby, shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it. Let us embrace that light and carry it with us as we leave this place tonight. And let us live as emissaries of the light, bringing the hope and promise of light wherever we can, sharing it with a broken world that desperately needs it.