Maughan Uniting Church

SERMON

John 1:1-14

Today the waiting is over and we celebrate the coming of the Christ child.  John explains that the Christ has been with us since time began because Christ is the Word of God, or the Organising Principle of the Universe.  But when Jesus was born, the Word of God actually became flesh, i.e. the Word became a human being and lived among us

 The gospel writer uses a lovely metaphor to describe Jesus Christ.  He says that “In him was life and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness….”

I want us to think for a few moments about the nature of light.

Recently, 10 days ago actually, my daughter and I moved house.  We used to live in a 1940’s house that was very dim.  The windows were small and shaded except those at the very front of the house and even the front room was not particularly bright.  I loved that particular room and I enjoyed the look of the furniture in that room.  I particularly enjoyed looking at my china cabinet and its contents.   Then we moved to a new bright modern house with lots of windows.  The walls are beige and the floor tiles are cream.  There is light everywhere.  It has a very different feel to the old house.

When we arranged our furniture in the lounge area, it clashed.  The different woods, now seen in the bright light, did not go well together at all.  There has been some hurried rearranging.  The china cabinet suddenly needed a lot of windex.  It had looked fine in the gloom of our old place.   

As we continued unpacking things looked OK at first.  We didn’t have electricity for four difficult days so this was going on in candlelight.  On the second evening, I unpacked a rather lovely tall turquoise vase that I had inherited from my mother.  My daughter suggested that it would look nice if paired with a turquoise satin pillbox hat that I had kept from the seventies.  They were the same colour and indeed they looked nice together.  That is until the next day dawned.  In the bright light of day, the two items were very different colours.  They don’t match at all.  Light changes things. 

Jesus Christ, who came into our human lives, brings the light into our darkness.  But whether we embrace the light or not is up to us.  We can turn away from the light, put up heavy curtains as it were, shade the windows and continue to live in the dark.  Or we can join Jesus as he invites us to walk with him in the light. 

The light of Jesus Christ brings love and wisdom into all our relationships and changes our perceptions so that we see them in a different way or a different light.  William Loyd Allen writes about this capacity for the light to bring about changes of perception.  He says “We do not see the light; we see by the light.  Sometimes we see things in the wrong light.  Shortly after my wife’s bout with breast cancer, the death of her mother and my parents’ forced withdrawal from their ancestral home, our rebellious teenage daughter Clare brought a kitten into our house while I was out of town.  By my light, Clare, whom I correctly guessed would require help with pet care, had selfishly made a stressful time worse.  Several weeks later I was telling my spiritual guide about the frequent laughter the kitten incited among us, especially my wife. He said maybe my daughter saw in the kitten something she couldn’t name but knew we needed.  That put a new light on the situation for me.”

Maybe there are situations in your life, or situations in the world that concern you, that if you let the light of Christ in, would look different and so evoke a different response from you. 

As we leave this church today, we are going our separate ways into many different situations.  Some of those situations will be carefree and easy to cope with.  Other situations will be difficult.  For our family and for others in our church as well, it is the first Christmas without a significant family member.  It is a stressful time.  Yet even when pain is present, the light and love of the incarnate Christ transforms our perceptions of Christmas as something we may want to get away from, into a time of deep joy and love. 

“John called it the Word made flesh, the true light that gives light to every person.  Mary and Joseph named him Jesus.”  AMEN

References

Wm Loyd Allen, “The Light of Christmas” p 373 in The Upper Room Disciplines 2008, published by Upper Room Books Nashville 2008 .