Several years ago, I read Sidney Sheldon’s Novel, The Windmills of the Gods. I read it with a good deal of interest, though it was not about windmills and it was not about God. I was struck by a scene where the heroine had lost her young husband, a doctor. She was left with her two children, and was trying to put her life back together. She laid awake one night thinking how easy it would be to die, how happiness and love were so easily snatched away. Then this thought ran through her mind, “The world is Dachau, and we are all Jews.”1
Such is the darkness of suffering so many of us go through. If we have not gone through suffering in the past, we will face some kind of suffering in the future. Perhaps some of us are facing it in the present.
Add to that another story:
It was the Christmas of 1968. Gerald Coffee was spending his third Christmas in prison. His Vietnamese guards gave some candy to him and to his fellow prisoners-of-war. He heard the guards outside talking and laughing with their families, celebrating Christmas. One of the guards had a son who was about three or four. Coffee thought of his own children back home. He ate the candy and looked at the red and silver foil. He began to form that foil into three shapes — a swan, a rosette, and a star. He thought of the star of Bethlehem. He placed those three shapes above his bed. He laid there looking at them. Then, he began thinking about the birth of Christ. He knew it was only faith that was getting him through this experience. He wrote later that in that place there was nothing to distract him from the awesomeness of Christmas, even though he had lost everything that defined who he was. He wrote, “Yet, I continued to find strength within. I realized that although I was hurting and lonely and scared, this might be the most significant Christmas of my life.”2
These are two stories of human suffering. In the darkness of suffering, one person saw nothing but the darkness. The other saw the light.
On these Sundays in Advent, we are thinking about the theme: The light of Bethlehem still shines on. Today, I want to center our thinking around this: In the darkness of suffering, there is the light of life. That is a light which still shines on us.
Our scripture lesson for today is not about the birth of Jesus, or about Mary getting the news, or Joseph getting the news. It is, instead, about the very beginning of the news, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.”
The first eighteen verses of John’s Gospel are called his prologue. It is the long statement about the word becoming flesh. The word is logos, the creative power of God at work in the universe, God himself.
The Bible begins with this same kind of language, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” And the next thing God created was the light, “Let there be light.”
This creative power in the universe, this word, this logos, God himself, has come into the world in human form. For Saint John tells us, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”
Saint John also tells us that at a certain point God himself stepped onto the stage of human history, and when he did that, he stepped right into the middle of human suffering.
The Jews were suffering under the rule of Rome. It is true that the Romans had brought about a time of peace, but it was because no one could oppose them. They had advanced human life in many ways, and yet the thumb of Rome had come down hard upon everyone.
Add to that the lives those people had to face filled with disease and hunger, sickness and death, injustice and persecution. Yet, in the midst of all that suffering, the life of Jesus was, “the light of all people.”
I want to say to you that whatever it is you face, Christmas holds for you the promise of help and hope, the promise of light and love, the promise of joy and peace. In the darkness of your own suffering, there is a light that still shines. It is the light of Christmas, and for you, Jesus Christ is the light of life.
Because the light of Bethlehem still shines on, let us think about what this means for us today. Think first of this:
I
Jesus Christ is the light which will overcome any darkness.
That is the testimony of Saint John in his Gospel, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Saint John is giving us the conclusion of the story he is writing at the beginning. He is telling us ahead of time how it turns out. Jesus had already defeated the worst kind of darkness — the darkness of death. God’s answer to death was resurrection.
Before I read the book, The Horse Whisperer, I saw the movie. I went into a bookstore and read the last few pages to see if the book ended the same way the movie did. It did not. Then, I bought the book and read it.
Saint John is saving us the trouble of flipping over to the end. He is telling us right at the beginning that this is how it turns out: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” That is the only reason this book was written.
Do you know what this means for us? It means that no matter what we face he has already defeated it — already conquered it — already overcome it.
This means the great good news of Christmas is also the great good news of Easter and resurrection and of victory. Jesus Christ has already won the victory, and everything you and I could ever possibly face has already been defeated.
That is why we bow down around a manger. It is not because Jesus is a sweet, cute, bouncing, baby boy. It is because of what he became and what he did. He drove the darkness right out of our lives.
A little boy was telling his parents about being in Sunday school. He said, “My teacher is the grandmother of Jesus.” They said, “Oh, no. You just have it mixed up. She’s not really the grandmother of Jesus.” He replied, “I know she is. She showed us his picture and just bragged on him.”
This is something to brag about —what God has done with his Son.
I hope you will remember this.
United Methodist Bishop Ernest Fitzgerald told about a man who taught Sunday school class at a little church in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. One Sunday, his lesson was about, “What I Have Learned Thus Far.” One of the things he mentioned was this, “Never forget in the dark what God has told you in the light.”3
I hope you remember that Jesus Christ is the light which will overcome any darkness.
Think next of this:
II
Jesus Christ is the light which will enlighten your life.
Saint John also tells us this, “The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world.”
During his ministry, Jesus brought people from the darkness out into the light. He called Legion out of a cemetery. He called Lazarus out of a tomb. He called Zacchaeus out of the shade. He called Bartimaeus out of blindness. At one point, Jesus announced boldly, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”
I love the story of the little boy in the Christmas play at church. He played the part of Jesus as a grown man in a glimpse into the future. The boy had one line he was to speak, “I am the light of the world.” But when his great moment came, he forgot the words. He could not think of them. His mother was seated right in the front row. She could stand it no longer, so she fed him the line, “I am the light of the world.” The boy saw her, smiled, took a deep breath, and said, “My mother is the light of the world.”
Jesus is the light of life — the light of the world — the true light that enlightens everyone. Since he enlightens everyone that means he will enlighten your life.
The light which he is, will reach into the dark corners of your existence, and shed light upon all of life’s perplexities. The light which he is, will warm your heart and, in this season, fill your living with love and good will. The light which he is, will shine across the road you travel and enable you to find your way.
A family visited Carlsbad Caverns while on vacation. They were down in the caves with a large group of tourists. The guide wanted to show them how dark it really was. He had the lights turned off. The daughter of this family grabbed her big brother’s hand. The brother said to her, “Don’t worry. There is someone here who knows how to turn on the lights.”4
Remember that Jesus Christ will enlighten your life. He knows how to turn on the lights. He is the light.
Finally, think about this:
III
Jesus Christ is the light which will empower your living.
That is the final thing I want us to hear from Saint John. He wrote, “To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”
It is interesting to me that at our home we receive our electricity not from the Georgia Electric Company, or Georgia Light Company, but from Georgia Power Company. The light comes from the power.
For Christians, it is the other way around; the power comes from the light.
Jesus Christ is the light which will empower you. He will empower your living. This is a special kind of living. It is not just power to get through the day. Look again at what Saint John has written. It is power “to become children of God.”
That is who we are. That is who God has called us to be. That is what Jesus Christ empowers us to become: the children of God.
I saw a little part of a Christmas television special where a young female singer on the show was all dressed up for Christmas. She wore a red dress. Her hair was blond and green and pink. After her song, she was interviewed briefly. She said Christmas was her favorite holiday. I thought maybe there was more there than I imagined. Then she said, “Christmas is for children.” I knew then she did not understand it. Like so many people, she had missed the significance of Christmas. It is not a holiday for children. It is the celebration of a great cosmic event in which God came boldly into the midst of human history to take back his creation and make his creatures become the children of God.
That is what Saint Paul was getting at when he wrote to the Christians in Rome, that all who are led by the spirit of God are children of God, and if they are the children of God, then they are the heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. That is, if we are willing to suffer with him and thereby be glorified with him.
That sheds a new light on the darkness of human suffering.
Do you really want your living to be empowered? Do you really want Jesus Christ, who is the light, to bring you to the light that shines, in the midst of your suffering? It just might cause you to do something you never would have thought of before. You just might find yourself being a light person, working for the power company, spreading the light, sharing the light, giving away the light in the darkness of suffering.
That is part of what it means to become a child of God.
A wealthy man enjoyed taking his son on business trips. Often on these trips, the man would purchase priceless works of art. He filled his home with these paintings. The boy grew to manhood and when war broke out, he went to serve his country. In just a few months, the man received word his son had died in battle, trying to save the lives of some of his friends. When the next Christmas came, the man found it difficult to get through the season. The suffering he had experienced was too much. But on Christmas morning, a young soldier came to his door and presented him with a portrait of his son. The young soldier was among those whose lives had been saved. The father placed the portrait over his fireplace. He would often sit in front of it and think of his son. Several years later, the man died. His lawyer carried out his will. The instructions were that the home and everything in it was to be sold at auction. The first thing to be sold was the portrait of the man’s son. When the auctioneer called out, “What am I bid?” no one seemed to want the portrait. To move things along, a man in the back said, “Ten dollars.” The auctioneer said, “Going, going, gone. Sold for ten dollars. The auction is over.” There was an outcry as people exclaimed, “What! What do you mean?” The auctioneer explained, “The terms of the will are very clear: Whoever chooses the son, receives everything.”5
Saint Paul also told the Roman Christians, “He who did not spare his son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not also give us all things with him?”
If you will choose the Son, you will have it all, for you will have the light of life, the one who said, “I have come that you might have life and that more abundantly.”
1.Sidney Sheldon, The Windmills Of The Gods (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1987), p. 120.
2.John Killinger, “Entertaining The Mystery,” Pulpit Digest, November-December, 1992 (San Francisco: Harper, 1992), p. 16.
3.Ernest A. Fitzgerald, Keeping Pace (Greensboro, North Carolina: Pace Communications, Inc., 1988), p. 99.
4.Brian Kelley Bauknight, Gracious Imperatives (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992), p. 39.
5.Source unknown, a story off the Internet.