Madonna and Child, Laura James

Holy One of Old, open our eyes that we may see. Amen.

In the beginning… Those words mark the beginning of the story of our faith.

In the beginning God… At the birth of all things when nothing yet was birthed, there was God pregnant with all creation.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. God spoke and the cosmos was born in light.

It was to this story that John turned to explain the magnitude of Jesus’ birth, the only story that could partner it, the birth of the earth and all of the undiscovered worlds.

John looked back at the world’s birth story and saw a different trinity, the Word, Light and Life that had been present at the dawn of creation and were present in the man he knew as Jesus, the man he’d grown up with played with and perhaps fought with, his cousin.

John is telling us who Jesus is and for him, the manger story doesn’t cut it. It’s not big enough; it’s not grand enough. Jesus is nothing less than the Word of God in human flesh – the word that spoke creation into being, the promise and promises of God, the teachings, judgments, warnings and revelation of God – all in a mortal human body. Jesus is the eternal Light from the dawn of creation that shines in the darkness and no matter how long or deep the shadows can never be extinguished. And, Jesus is Life itself, life that transcends death.

John’s Jesus is the place where earth and heaven meet.

John’s Jesus transcends time and space; which is a good thing because we are a time-traveling church.

Today, the Baby Jesus is just a couple of days old, on his way to Jerusalem where his Holy Mother will make her childbirth offering and he will be circumcised on the eighth day. Think of the weariness of our Blessed Mother particularly in this chapel we’ve dedicated to her: She has traveled from her home in Nazareth south to her family home in Bethlehem while nine months pregnant, 70 miles as the crow flies and then days after giving birth, 7 miles north to Jerusalem. Jesus will be circumcised on what we now call the Feast of the Holy Name, 1 January. That’s in one time stream.

In another time stream Jesus is a year old and living with his mother in a little house somewhere and it’s not clear what has happened to Joseph. There are sages and scholars traveling to see the king whose star pierces the heavens no matter how long it takes. They will arrive on 6 January, the Feast of the Epiphany also called the Feast of the Three Kings (even though scripture doesn’t say they were kings or that there were three). In Epiphany we will leap through time and space again for the baptism of Jesus as an adult. In John Jesus is more adult than child. John’s trinity, the Living Word, Unending Light and One who is Eternal Life is good news for us in a world in which shadows stretch across the globe brushing us all with the icy fingers of death. It’s good news in a world in which death is not always welcome nor a gentle embrace.

This good news is framed in the stark language of light and dark, shadow and glory. And it is far too easy for us as Americans to hear those words through our history of race and racism. We are taught from a young age that everything light and white is good and everything dark and black is bad. Even when we are not thinking about it, it is in the back of our minds. Race is always in the room for us. But it wasn’t for John, Jesus and their world. Identity mattered, whether you were Greek or Jew, slave or free, woman or man, but not the brown of your skin – and most skin was brown in Israel then, even Roman legions were largely black and brown having been filled with conscripts from Africa and Asia.

The mystic Howard Thurman taught us that somewhere between the light and the darkness, between the shadow and glory, there is a space that he called the luminous darkness, others have called it radiant blackness. Think of the night sky spangled with stars or the sheen on black silk or satin, or the glow of beautiful ebony skin. In the age of Black Lives Matter I invite you to take another look at the light and the darkness and see them on their own terms.

In the beginning before God created light there was darkness.

We are afraid of the dark but God is not. Darkness is a creative space to God. Out of darkness God created everything that is, including light. I like to think that light and dark are not in conflict, but in balance. Perhaps it’s because I’ve recently seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens. We like to think in polar opposites, good/bad, light/dark, God/the devil – whoa when was the last time you heard about the devil in an Episcopal Church? Let’s start there; the devil isn’t God’s equal. God doesn’t have any competition. Even life and death are not opposites. We are born to die and die to live. We pass through death to live again.

We are called to a mature faith in a complex world. There is light and dark, shadow and more than fifty shades of gray. The darkness and light co-exist. There is always shadow. We can’t see in the dark. We trip over the smallest thing. But it is not the dark that hurts us. It is our own limitations. Because of our blindness Christ lights our way. Christ is the light that allows us to see the light in all people and all situations.

The world is filled with shadow. We have seen those shadows recently. Tomorrow will be the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the children and babies murdered on Herod’s orders as he sought kill the Virgin’s miraculous child during the time warp in which the scholars and sages are following the star. And we remember the innocents of all generations who have been slaughtered for every reason and no reason including in the name of God and religion: in the Crusades, during ocean-crossing of the Atlantic slave trade, the native peoples of North, South and Central America, in the Holocaust, those who have been murdered at the hands of parents, neighbors and strangers including those in Newtown CT and every day since then in Philadelphia, Palestine, Chicago, Congo, Dallas and Detroit, around this nation and around this world. And since I last preached this Christmas Sunday, those slaughtered in a Charleston church, on live television in Parisian cafes and concert halls, in health clinics and at Christmas parties. Even Jerusalem the city of peace is not peaceful.

Our sweet little Jesus boy, holy infant so tender and mild, was born under the shadow of death. And, every year at Christmas families grieve the loss of loved ones who were there the Christmas before but are not here this Christmas. In many places the church keeps saying, “Merry Christmas!” and ignoring the shadows. We light our candles, wreathe our homes with light, wrap our trees in light and bask in glow of our fireplaces, but there remain shadows in the corners of our rooms, in the corners of our eyes and in the corners of our hearts. Christmas has always been touched by, attended by, the shadow of death. But we proclaim that the light and life of Christ transform the shadow of death.

Death is everywhere, in the darkness and in the light. This is the scandal of the Incarnation, God descended into shadow, even into Shadow-Valley Death and walked its lonely yet crowded pathways passing through a woman’s body and all of its ins and outs. For it is through human bodies that shadows are deepened in and lengthened on the world. And while there are evil forces at work in the world, the old claim “the devil made me do it,” does not account for the evil in the world. We humans have done more than our fair share.

So God became human, woman-born. To be human is to be carnal, fleshly, to dwell in shadow. The Gospels remind us continually that Jesus was fully human: he was born and he died, and in between, his body experienced hunger and thirst and exhaustion and pain.

God became flesh and dwelled among us. Jesus was like us and we are like him. We are mortal, frail, embodied, humans. We ache for human companionship. We worry about our parents as we come to grips with our own mortality. In our desperate pain we search for a familiar comforting face. And we pray that when it comes our time to die, we won’t have to face it alone.

We do not walk alone among the shadows of earth because God is Immanu El, God with us. In our brokenness, in our fullness, God is with us. God is with us when the bullets are flying, when the ground is shaking, when the planes are crashing, when the waters are rising, when the ship is sinking, when the winds are howling, when death is knocking, when the shadow of death stretches out and touches even Christmas – God is with us! God is with us when we are falsely accused and unjustly imprisoned. God is with us when we are raped and tortured and murdered. God is with us when our children, our precious children, are stolen from us. God is with them in their fear and horror! God is with us in our rage and sorrow and grief! God is with us! God is with the suffering and the dying, comforting and accompanying through that valley of death that we cannot yet enter. This is the Gospel, not that we’re untouchable, not that we’re inviolable, for even the Son of God was violated. But that we are never alone, never forsaken, never absent from the Divine presence is the Gospel of light and life.

This is the season of hope and peace and joy and light. The days are getting longer; light is literally filling the world (our side of it anyway). The Twelve Days of Christmas are days of light. The Feast of Epiphany is a feast of light.

For What has come into being in the Word was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness [cannot] not overcome it.

When beginning in Genesis, the first thing God created was light. When Mary’s boy child was born, even more light flooded the world. Each of us has become a light-bearer through our professions and confessions of faith and in the water of our baptisms. How bright is your light? How do you kindle, nurture and stoke its flame? How often do you join your flame with the flames of your sisters and brothers in prayer and worship and at the table?

The light of God lives with and in us; we are the light of God. And there is no darkness, no shadow that cannot be overcome by the holy light of God. This light will shine through the ages. One day the whole of creation will be transformed by that holy light. Let the light of Christ shine in and through you to the ends of the earth. Amen.

Postscript: The sermon worked well with the Eucharistic Prayer (2), Enriching Our Worship. 

We praise you and we bless you, holy and gracious God, source of life abundant. From before time you made ready the creation. Your Spirit moved over the deep and brought all things into being: sun, moon, and stars; earth, winds, and waters; and every living thing. You made us in your image, and taught us to walk in your ways. But we rebelled against you, and wandered far away; and yet, as a mother cares for her children, you would not forget us. Time and again you called us to live in the fullness of your love. And so this day we join with Saints and Angels in the chorus of praise that rings through eternity, lifting our voices to magnify you…

Glory and honor and praise to you, holy and living God. To deliver us from the power of sin and death and to reveal the riches of your grace, you looked with favor upon Mary, your willing servant, that she might conceive and bear a son, Jesus the holy child of God. Living among us, Jesus loved us. He broke bread with outcasts and sinners, healed the sick, and proclaimed good news to the poor. He yearned to draw all the world to himself yet we were heedless of his call to walk in love. Then, the time came for him to complete upon the cross the sacrifice of his life, and to be glorified by you…