Christmas Day
Isaiah 52:7-10
Hebrews 1:1-6
John 1:1-18
Light and darkness. These two terms may be used to describe the entire course of the world. Light stands for life, health and growth. Darkness stands for death, illness and everything destructive. Light and darkness are hostile to each other and fight an eternal battle.
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus described the world as a constant struggle between opposites. ‘War is father of all things’, he said. The clash of opposites is the reason why something new can emerge. From the beginning, there has been both light and darkness, and the world has emerged from their struggle against each other. And they are still fighting, in an eternal war.
This world view is attractive, because it can explain many things. And it relieves us of the moral burden: We are no longer responsible for evil. Evil is simply one of the two basic forces of the universe. Everything that is good and beautiful, will sooner or later be defeated by death and destruction before something new can grow again. A constant cycle. All that is required of us is to join in with this cycle. We should give up everything that is sick and weak, because it cannot be saved anyway. Everything that stands in the way of the strong and living can simply be eliminated, be it an old person in need of care or an unwanted unborn child. And when it is time for us to die, there is no reason to complain. We should make room for the young, the strong. That’s just the way of the world. Life and death, light and darkness, alternate eternally.
There are many who embrace such a worldview today. It sounds so reasonable. And experience seems to confirm it. Deep inside, however, every thinking and feeling person wishes that it would not be true.
The message of Christmas is a powerful counterproposal.
‘In the beginning was the Word,’ writes St. John. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him. All that came to be had life in him and that life was the light of men, a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower.’
The world did not emerge from the struggle of opposites. War is not the father of all things, but God created the world through his Word. And his Word is life and light. The created world is fundamentally good. For its creator is good.
‘God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.’ This is how John describes the central Christian message in his first letter. God is eternal light, and he wants to lead us all into this light.
But how can we believe in the good Creator and in his unshakeable ‘yes’ to us in a world in which there is so much darkness, in which everything good always seems to be mixed with evil?
God himself helps us to believe in him and in our eternal salvation. He has spoken through the prophets, ‘at various times in the past and in various different ways’, as it says in the Letter to the Hebrews. The word of the prophets is like a bright lamp that lights our way. John the Baptist was the last and the greatest of the prophets. The evangelist John writes about him: ‘He came as a witness, as a witness to speak for the light, so that everyone might believe through him.’
But the word of the prophets alone was not enough for us to believe. It was necessary to see our salvation in order to believe it. Just as Isaiah foresaw: ‘All the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.’
God decided to show us our salvation even more clearly. We hear about that in the letter to the Hebrews: ‘in our own time, the last days, God has spoken to us through his Son, the Son that he has appointed to inherit everything and through whom he made everything there is.’ In order for us to truly believe that the almighty Creator loves us infinitely and wants to give us eternal communion with him, ‘the true light that enlightens all men was coming into the world.’ He did not come with brute force. He came as a little child. This child does not simply continue the eternal battle between light and darkness in a new round. No, this child ends the battle. It defeats the darkness. For this child is ‘the radiant light of God’s glory and the perfect copy of his nature, sustaining the universe by his powerful command.’
He, through whom everything was created, wants to live among us as a human being, as one of us. So that we can see, hear and understand him. That we may know the truth through him.
‘In the beginning was the Word’ says John. ‘And the Word was made flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glory, the glory that is his as the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.’ Whoever sees this child sees the true, eternal light. Seeing this child, we see God. And we are filled with grace and truth. Seeing this child cures us of the lie of the eternal struggle of light and darkness and of the allegedly inevitable cycle of life and death. Seeing this child imprints deep into our souls the truth that God is light and that there is no darkness at all in him.
‘To all who did accept him he gave power to become children of God’ writes John. Let us accept the newborn Saviour and welcome him into our wounded hearts! That through him we may become children of God, children of light, who receive from his fullness, grace upon grace, and whom no darkness can harm forever. Amen.
