Readings: Colossians 1:9-14; John 1:1-9
Against the growing darkness
we kindle our Advent lights.
As the days grow shorter,
as night encroaches more and more,
we kindle lights in the darkness
as signs of our hope,
signs of our faith in the victory of light.
Yet these signs can seem so small
in the face of the darkness.
We look for some pale glimmer
of light on the horizon,
but our eyes see nothing
but the vast encroaching darkness
that sweeps over us like a tidal wave—
a torrent of wars and human suffering,
of dysfunctional politics,
of injustice and prejudice,
of exploitation of the earth and her people.
All around us, the news seems very bad.
But the news is even worse than we thought.
For our inability to see the light
is not simply a result
of darkness around us.
No, our blindness is a darkness
lodged within our very hearts.
Without denying the reality
of the darkness that surrounds us
we must own the reality
of our own complicity
in the sin of the world.
The violence of the wars around me
finds an echo
in the hatreds and resentments of my heart;
the dysfunction of our politics
is simply my own self-seeking writ large;
the exploitation of the earth that threatens all life
is inseparable from my own inability
to distinguish my wants from my needs.
When I own up to the fact
that the darkness around me
flows not only into me but also out of me,
the signs of hope that I can kindle
seem vanishingly small,
and the news seems bad indeed.
But we celebrate Advent amidst the encroaching night
because we believe that the bad news of darkness
does not get the last word.
We celebrate Advent because even in the darkness
we have heard, above the roar of the world’s pain,
the good news that we do not stand alone.
Even in the darkness we have heard news of a light,
the light that shines in the darkness,
a light that the darkness cannot overcome.
Even in the darkness we hear tales of light
that could not be defeated
by Herod or the Sanhedrin or Pilate,
the light could not be defeated
even by the power of death itself.
In Jesus Christ, the light
has already triumphed over the darkness,
if we can but see with the eyes of faith.
“[God] delivered us from the power of darkness
and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,
in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
The good news is that it is not our task
to defeat the darkness;
Jesus has already done that.
Our task is to live in the light that has come into the world,
to live as free citizens of the kingdom of God’s beloved Son,
to make manifest the victory that he has won.
We manifest the victory of Christ our light
when we confess our own sins
and let God’s grace fill out hearts with light,
when we let the gracious light of Jesus
flow into us and out of us.
We manifest the victory of Christ our light
when we reflect that light in the dark places of our world,
places shrouded by violence and greed and injustice.
Against the growing darkness
we kindle our Advent lights;
but the good news today
is not the lights that we kindle,
but the truth that,
through the coming of Christ into the world,
through the sanctifying fire of the Spirit,
we have been kindled as lights,
lights that herald the day that shall know no night,
when death and sorrow shall be no more
and God will be all in all.
