One of the great cultural traditions of modern American Christmas observance is the use of lights. Everything that doesn’t move is decorated with lights. Christmas trees are recognizable by their lights, and indeed as more and more types of trees are used as Christmas trees, the more it is the presence of the lights that identifies them as such. Lights are put around lampposts. We hang lights from the eaves and awnings of our homes, and around windows and doorframes. Lighted fixtures and images are arrayed in front yards, and those that are not self-lighted are bathed in spotlights. Without a moment’s embarrassment at the brazen self-interest, electrical power companies promote contests for the best and most elaborate seasonal displays. Terms like “Sparkle Christmas” are entering the vocabulary of some regions, and al­most everyone would recognize “the Season of Light” as a non-sectarian — indeed secular — term for Christmas time.

The tremendous irony of calling Christmastide “the Season of Light,” at least in the northern hemi­sphere, is that it is of course the darkest time of the year. Shifts and adjustments in the western calendar system have only slightly obscured the fact that Christmas Day originally coincided with the date of the winter solstice, the date with the longest period between sunset and sunrise in the entire year. It seems more than likely that one reason that we so eagerly embrace all this use of artificially generated light for a celebration during this particular season of the year for us is in order to deal with the depression in energy and often in mood that accompanies the shortening of daylight hours.

Yes, the association between light and Christmas is tremendously ironic when considered in the con­text of the calendar in the northern hemisphere. But both the Old Testament and the gospel lessons ap­pointed for Christmas Eve emphasize an important spiritual reason for the association of Christmas, light, and the deepest of darkness. It was precisely because of the tremendous darkness that the light of Christ needed to shine into the world. Even though it is impossible to know the time of year at which Jesus of Nazareth was actually born, from a spiritual perspective, nothing could better capture the significance of the time of Christ’s birth than to call it “the Night of Light.”

Isaiah 9:2-7

This oracle attributed to Isaiah of Jerusalem was not originally a prophecy at all, at least not in the sense that we typically now use the word “prophecy.” That is to say, Isaiah did not compose this poem in order to predict long distant events (the birth of Jesus lay some seven centuries in the future) or even for that matter to predict events in the much shorter term of his own lifetime. Rather, this oracle is properly a celebration of the coronation of a new Judean king. Given Isaiah’s close relationship with the Davidic house during the reign of four such kings (Uzziah [6:1], Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah), it is difficult to know which king is being celebrated. Clearly the Book of Isaiah and the relevant portions of 2 Kings in­dicate Isaiah was most supportive of Hezekiah, and so he would be the most likely candidate. But given the general nature of the references to the Davidic house within the oracle (see especially v. 9) certainty is impossible.

But if Isaiah was most likely writing about Hezekiah in this oracle, why do Matthew (see Matthew 4:12-17) and later Christian tradition associate it with Jesus? The answer to that question lies in a proper understanding of how Matthew and his contemporaries understood the relationship between ancient prophecies and their own time. First, Matthew would have been the first to admit that Isaiah’s words did not refer exclusively to Jesus. Isaiah spoke God’s word to his own contemporaries and did so to help them understand what was happening in their own lives and not what would happen centuries later. But Matthew would also have argued that Isaiah’s oracle was just as helpful to people of the first century in understanding what God was doing in their own time through Jesus. For Matthew, the oracle did not refer either to Hezekiah or to Jesus; it referred to both Hezekiah and to Jesus. What God had done for God’s people in the eighth century BC, God was now doing again (in a deeper and fuller way, Matthew would no doubt have argued) for God’s people in the first century AD. The same pattern of interpreting prophetic oracles can be found in the pesher commentaries from Qumran.

One clear indication that Matthew indeed took the original context of Isaiah’s oracle very seriously (and in some ways more so than later Christian writers who began the association of this oracle with the circumstances of Jesus’ birth) lies in where he places the “fulfillment” of the oracle in Jesus’ life. Although the oracle specifically refers to a birth (“a child has been born for us, a son given to us,” v. 6), Matthew said that the oracle’s relevance to Jesus was fulfilled not at his birth but at the beginning of his ministry (see again Matthew 4:12-17). Thus, just as Isaiah’s oracle was originally associated with a king’s coro­nation and the beginning of his reign, Matthew associates it with the beginning Jesus’ reign through his ministry.

The historical setting and background to this celebration of the coronation of a southern, Judean king is the fall of the northern Israelite kingdom to the Assyrian empire. The imagery of “deep darkness” (v. 2) is then used to express their desperation and hopelessness. That they have “seen a great light” that has shined upon them is that they have witnessed the survival and continuation of the Davidic dynasty despite the subjugation of their own homeland. Isaiah’s hope and expectation was that these members of the northern tribes would see in this God’s faithfulness to the covenant with David and all the Israelites more generally. He also apparently hoped that Judah would be able to roll back the Assyrian hegemony over the region and bring it back under Davidic rule (see especially vv. 4-5), but alas, despite Judah’s continued existence for another century (until its own subjugation to Babylon), it was never able to reincorporate the northern tribal areas into a reunited kingdom. That harsh reality became itself a reason why latter Jews would look for a fuller and more complete “fulfillment” in a future messianic figure.

As already noted, the reference to the child’s birth in verse 6 does not indicate the actual occasion for the writing of the oracle. Following a standard practice of Hebrew poetry, there is a synonymous parallel­ism between “a child has been born for us” and “a son given to us,” and here it is the second line that has the primary emphasis. The sense is essentially that at the moment of the king’s coronation the people look back upon his birth as a time of special blessing.

The more modern translations have properly recognized the pairing of qualifiers with each title and so corrected the translation of the old and still quite familiar King James Version. Thus, the king is “won­derful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” If it should be objected that some of these titles are not appropriate to a purely human regent, then the objection is to be answered by noting their original context. The king is “mighty God” not because he is himself divine, but because he was thought of as God’s earthly co-regent over the people. He is “everlasting Father” because he is the latest heir to the everlasting covenant with David regarding the right to rule over God’s people. The imposition of later trinitarian concepts to these terms is not so much wrong as applied to fulfillment in Christ (as ex­plained above) as it is anachronistic as applied to the Judean king about whom the oracle was originally composed.

To summarize, the point is not that this oracle is only improperly applied to Jesus as opposed to say Hezekiah. Rather it is to stress that properly understanding its relation to Hezekiah is key to understanding its application to Jesus. The evangelists and others are telling us that what God had said in the past is an important lens for understanding what God has done in Christ. But if that lens is to provide clarity rather than distortion, then we must understand its original context rather than imposing on it our yet later ideas about Jesus Christ.

Titus 2:11-14

One of the great values of the epistle lesson assigned by the lectionary for Christmas Eve is that it reminds us that this night stands as the threshold between Advent and Christmastide. As more and more congregations adopt the practice of only Christmas Eve services rather than both Eve and Christmas Day services (Christmas morning being considered first and foremost “family time”), the Christmas Eve ser­vice is having all the liturgical functions of Christmas Day foisted upon it. Whatever one’s feelings about that development, it is good to be reminded that Christmas Eve is also about the final preparations to make ourselves ready for Christ’s advent.

Those preparations are in this passage understood primarily in terms of repentance. Even as we recog­nize that “the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all” (v. 11), the lesson we are to draw from that grace is that we need to “renounce impiety and worldly passions, and ... to live lives that are self-con-trolled, upright and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (vv. 12-13). The stance taken in this text is one that simultaneously looks back to Christ’s first advent (“grace ... has appeared”) and forward to his second advent (“while we wait”). It is thus the perfect stance for the threshold that is Christmas Eve in the life of the church.

But the end purpose of our repentance and redemption is not merely personal piety or even salvation understood as escape from God’s eternal judgment. Christ has redeemed and purified us so that we might become “a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds” (v. 14). Christmas is not supposed to be just a time to recognize and celebrate God’s gift to us. That gift is always to be a challenge to act in such ways as to extend God’s grace to others. Even as we are busy driving back the physical darkness with all our decorations, we need to be busy driving back the spiritual, emotional, and social darkness from the lives of others. Doing so requires eager actions to accomplish good things and not simply season’s greetings for best wishes.

Luke 2:1-20

The difficulties with correlating the various historical allusions in this gospel lesson with the records of Greco-Roman history and the account in Matthew are by now well-known. Quirinius became “gov­ernor” (legate) of the Roman province of Syria about a decade after Herod the Great’s death, and there is no evidence that the Romans ever required people to return to their ancestral homes to be registered in a census (then as now, the point of a census was to determine current population patterns for taxation and other purposes). Matthew 2 has Mary and Joseph living in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’ birth with special circumstances leading to his being raised in Nazareth, whereas in Luke 2 Mary and Joseph’s rela­tions to Bethlehem and Nazareth are reversed. Here in Luke, shepherds visit Jesus on the night of his birth in response to an angelic visitation; Matthew recounts a visit by Magi approximately two years later (see Matthew 2:16) in response to an astral event.

For those interested in delving into the details and some of the suggestions for sorting out this tangle, almost any recent critical commentary will suffice. The Christmas Eve service, however, is probably not the occasion for exploring these matters. It is best to do that in Christian education settings, or if you must treat them homiletically, to do so when the Matthean texts are appointed for the First Sunday after Christmas in Year A or at Epiphany. Without suggesting that these problems do not exist (remember, they are well-known even to people without seminary training), simply stay with the details of the Lukan text. Don’t homiletically re-create the crèche in your sermon. The preacher’s task is to preach the gospel lesson, not some hybrid story that exists only in our minds.

Most of the historical problems in this lesson arise in verses 1-7. What is most important homileti­cally in this passage, however, is really not affected by any of those difficulties. Luke has set up a marked contrast between where the focus of attention lies in the world and where it should properly lie. Caesar Augustus decides he wants some information, and “all the world” is set in motion to respond to his whim. The Savior of the world is born to two Galilean peasants, and “there was no place for them in the inn.” In the juxtaposition of that use of imperial power and the inability to recognize God’s presence with and for the powerless (see Luke 1:46-55), there is a vivid description of the darkness that has blinded the world.

But God pierces the darkness with the blinding light of the glory of the Lord (v. 9). The angel announc­es to shepherds that a new shepherd-king like David has been born. This child will be the “Savior” (one of a number of titles that Gaius Octavius had appropriated for himself along with Augustus [“revered”] and Pontifex Maximus [the bridge between the material and spiritual worlds]) whose coming is “good news of great joy for all people,” not a threat. They have to be told precisely where they will find the child because he is in fact in the last place that anyone would look for newborn royalty (“lying in a manger”). The angel is then joined by a multitude of angels who proclaim to the physical world what only the spiritual realm can yet recognize: God is to be praised because the Lord has favored the world with peace.

While it is still night (“Let us go now,” v. 15b), the shepherds go to seek out the child and his parents and discover them in precisely the circumstances that the angel announced. That fact is not coincidental. If the angel’s message has been demonstrated true in the details that could easily be confirmed, then all of the message is to be accepted — even those parts that still seem to verge on the outlandish. The message was trustworthy beyond all reasonable expectation in announcing where the child would be found, and so the message is trustworthy in announcing what the child will ultimately accomplish. And so those of the physical world who have seen the light shining in the darkness join in the praises with the spiritual realm (v. 20).

Application

For many who gather for worship on Christmas Eve, Christmas is a time of joyous light both literally and figuratively. They have the material resources to join in our cultural “Season of Light” by decorating their homes if they wish, sharing in the parties, traveling to be with family members, exchanging gifts — all the things we do to brighten our lives in the midst of the onset of winter. The fact that they make the commitment to attend church in this prime “family time” shows that they understand as well that a spiritual light has shined into their lives. They have seen the light of the glory of the Lord and have felt the warmth of God’s grace and peace.

All of that is as it should be. Those who have been blessed by God should recognize and rejoice in that blessing and share its benefits with others. To paraphrase the first question and response of the Westmin­ster Catechism, the highest purpose of human life is to glorify God and to enjoy God forever. But truly understanding and appreciating the light that God has shined on our lives requires that we never forget as we bask in its warmth that “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:2a), that “the light shines in the darkness” (John 1:5).

We remember and celebrate Christ’s birth in the midst of one of the longest nights of the year. We drive back the darkness with candlelight services and every manner of lighting we can devise. But it is still in the night that we cause all this light to shine. Like the Christmas house lights that are hard to see in the full sun of day but illuminate our yards in the blackness of night, we only can see the light because we see it shining in the night.

In the same way, we need to see the figurative and spiritual night that still shrouds the world. There are still oppressive political and social structures that oppress people. There are still people shrouded in the darkness of depression rather than bathed in the light of joy. There are still people whose lives are more char­acterized by what they genuinely need — not just what they lack — than by what they have. As the letter to Titus challenges us, we have received the blessings of God to make us “zealous for good deeds.” Just as we use our resources to drive back the darkness of the longest nights, so we need to use our spiritual and material resources drive back the darkness of these nights as well. Then Christmas Eve will truly be a night of light.

An Alternative Application

Luke 2:14. The praise of the angelic multitude is only one of several poems in the Lukan infancy narrative that have been construed liturgically as songs. There are as well Mary’s Magnificat (1:46-55), Zechariah’s Benedictus (1:68-79), and Simeon’s Nunc Dimittis (2:29-32). Taking the Gloria, then, as a point of depar­ture, one might construct a sermon on the “songs of the season” comparing and contrasting these songs from the gospels not only with the themes of secular Christmas carols but even with the carols of the church. What are the different Christmases that are reflected in the lyrics of these songs?