Christmas Eve 2014

Christmas Eve 2014 – celebrating the newborn King!

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Grace Fellowship Church

Jon Stallsmith

December 24, 2014

Christmas Light

John 1:1-5, 14

Merry Christmas, everybody. Good afternoon. It’s good to see you. I love this time of year when we all get to be together. We have all of the kids and the students in the gatherings. It makes for a really lively time as we study the Bible together and sing. It’s so good to be together and celebrate Christmas.

This afternoon we’re just going to read a few verses from John, chapter 1. If you have your Bibles, you can open up there. We’ll also put these verses on the screen. Or if you would like to have a Bible and you don’t have one in your hands, slip up your hand, and some of our great ushers will make sure you get a Bible. You can read along with us.

As Michael was saying at the beginning of the gathering, we’re just so glad you’re here. My name is Jon Stallsmith, and I’m the campus pastor here at Grace. How about that weather? Nothing says Christmas cheer like 45 and rainy. Yikes. But there’s good news. There’s light that shines into the darkness.

If you’re familiar with John’s gospel, you probably know that in the first chapter, the Christmas story is a little bit different than the details and the account you find in the book of Matthew and the book of Luke. So before we get into that, we need to remember a few of the facts, some of the details of that night of Christ’s birth.

I’m going to look to the kids now. I’m going to put on my special star glasses also. How many of you kids are wearing these? Not all of you? It does a pretty cool thing to the lights, if you’re not sure what these do. Maybe borrow one from a nearby child. Ask first, because it would be very impolite to just rip them from his face.

During this time, I want to ask the kids a few questions about the Christmas story. Of course, it’s the story of a very famous birth. Kids, we’ll start off with a very easy one. Whose birth do we celebrate on Christmas? Jesus. Very good. All right, next question. Who was the mother? Mary. I heard a very proud “Mary” over there. Excellent.

How did Mary get pregnant? God. Yep, good answer. Let’s get that question right out of the way. Who was Mary’s fiancé? Joseph. Excellent. Where did this birth happen? Bethlehem. Yeah, you’re picking up steam now. What kind of room or space was Jesus born in? I heard a hotel. Actually, he was not born at the Holiday Inn. There was no room. Manger or stable, depending on your translation.

All right, here’s a tricky one. Who was the governor of Syria at the time? Quirinius. I know. He doesn’t make it into a lot of the Christmas stories, but it was the time of Quirinius’ rule. Where did the wise men come from? The East. Very good. At the time of Jesus’ birth, where was Santa Claus? Yes, at the North Pole. I know there are a lot of different approaches to Santa Claus among the families of Grace, so we’ll leave you guys to work that out in your own families.

Many of us know the details. We’re familiar with at least one or two, probably the majority, of the twists and turns of that Christmas story of the very first Christmas. God sends an angel to Mary to announce that she will be the one who will carry the Savior. She says, “So be it unto me according to your will,” and by the power of the Holy Spirit she becomes pregnant with Jesus.

Joseph is her fiancé. Joseph, of course, is a little bit troubled to find out that his fiancée was pregnant without his knowledge, but an angel came to tell Joseph, “Don’t divorce her. What’s happening is because of God.” So Mary’s pregnancy progresses. Somewhere along the line during her pregnancy they decree from Rome that everyone has to return to his or her hometown to participate in the census. So Joseph, as a man from Bethlehem, takes himself and his future bride to Bethlehem, and there it becomes time for Mary to give birth.

We know the details. It was not a Holiday Inn. There wasn’t a hotel available. So this birth happened in a very humble manger among the animals, just trying to carve out a little bit of privacy. That same night, there were shepherds out in the fields watching their flocks, and an angel appeared to them and said, “Hey, I have good news of great joy for you, because on this day in this town has been born to you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

Then, of course, the sky is filled with the heavenly host of angels, and the shepherds looked up in awe as they heard the angels cry out, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” (Luke 2:14) These shepherds went immediately to find the new baby, and they did. You can imagine the scene. It’s busy. There are animals here. A woman has just given birth. All of a sudden, a bunch of shepherds show up. It’s one thing to have your friends and family visit you at the hospital, but a bunch of strangers who smell like wet wool… I mean, that’s not as exciting.

Sometime later, the wise men arrive because they followed the star that appeared in the sky to mark this momentous birth. The wise men come to Herod, the king of the region, on their journey, and they say, “Hey, where’s the king born?” Herod says, “Well, maybe that way in Bethlehem.” So they carry on their way, and Herod, not wanting to deal with a competitive king, sends out a command that all of the baby boys under the age of 2 in Bethlehem needed to be killed.

When we start unpacking that Christmas story, we realize it was pretty busy. There was a lot of activity, a lot of commotion. If you’ve tried to travel with family before… Many of you are traveling with family even right now. Part of the reason you’re here is you’ve traveled to be with family. You know making a trip from maybe as far away as Nazareth to Bethlehem by foot and working out all of the details and childbirth and all the rest… This is a lot. This is a busy time.

Yet on our mantels, we often have these little nativity sets. I got this nativity set in Bethlehem (Israel, not Georgia. I’m sure they have very nice antique shops in Bethlehem, Georgia). It’s interesting, because you have all of the characters and the animals and Mary and Joseph and the baby and everything else, and then, if you crank the little music box… Do you guys recognize that song? “Silent Night.”

You can look at this and think, “Oh, it’s all very peaceful. Such a silent night.” But it wasn’t silent at all. In fact, just once I would love to get a nativity scene that when you crank the music box and it begins to play, instead of “Silent Night,” you might hear the sound of a baby crying, some goats making their noises, somebody saying, “Who smells like wet wool?” Wouldn’t that be funny if you cranked that? It would be a surprise to people.

Yet this humble birth with all sorts of commotion around it has become one of the highlights of our calendar. It has impacted so much of our daily rhythms, our yearly rhythms. Our roads are full of traffic because of what happened in that manger. Our airplanes are packed full with travelers because of what happened in that manger.

Our retail schedules are completely redesigned because of what happened in that manger. Amy called over to Kohl’s this week, and they were open all night. I don’t know. That blew my mind. Who needs to go buy a pair of Crocs at 3:00 a.m.? Maybe if you’re desperate. It impacts and changes so much.

We get off of work on Christmas Day. Most parts of the world are off work on Christmas Day. Kids get out of school for the holidays. We decorate our homes. We buy Christmas trees. We decorate our churches. This light canopy is amazing. In fact, our production team here that does so much work just went above and beyond, so let’s give them a big… Michael and Brandon and Rebecca in the high school room, working with the hosting team and everything else.

The Christmas season inspires romantic comedies. I was trying to think on the negative side what Christmas has done for some folks, and I think actually the Christmas season is probably a nightmare for young Fraser fir trees. They probably do not anticipate and look forward to the coming of Christmas.

This humble birth of Jesus in a manger still sends resounding shockwaves through our schedules, through our rhythms, through our lives. What is it about this birth that is so different from all the rest? The UN estimates that every single day, about 365,000 babies are born. All through history, children born. Babies, babies, babies. What is it about this one, this birth, that even until now echoes and resonates so deeply in our lives and transforms not just our hearts but even our schedules?

This is the question, and this is the question John is beginning to unpack in his gospel. We’re just going to read the first five verses and talk about them a little bit. We’re going to unpack this in more depth in the coming weeks. In fact, on January 4 we’ll begin our spring series going through the gospel of John verse by verse. It’s going to be a really rich time. Our kids and our students and here in the main room will all be working on the same text. But for now, we’re just going to chew on these first few verses.

John writes, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:1-5)

Then skip down to verse 14, where John summarizes the whole Christmas story in one verse. He says, “The Word became flesh [became a man, became human] and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) I love that line: full of grace and truth.

Why is this birth, this Christmas event, the one that shapes our history and so much of our lives? John wants us to understand it is so significant because it is a birth unlike any other. It’s a birth in which the Word of God, who was with God from the beginning and was God, took on flesh, fully human and yet at the same time fully divine, to shine light into a dark world.

As I’ve been reading this week, that line, that the light shines into the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it, is the one that has been such an anchoring point of strength and hope for me. For me this year at Christmas, I’m thinking a lot about the light shining into the darkness and the darkness not overcoming it. When we think about our lives and look around at our culture, it’s not too difficult to recognize that we need light. We need something that is beyond ourselves.

In fact, you can catch this theme in a lot of the movies that are out, especially Westerns. I don’t know if you guys are Western movie or cowboy movie fans, but you would be amazed at how many Westerns have a storyline that sort of goes like this. There’s a town or a house or somebody who’s in trouble, under threat by some bad guys, and somebody comes from outside the village. Sometimes you don’t even know where the hero comes from, but it’s a person from outside who comes in and saves the day.

A great example of this is the all-time classic Western, Three Amigos. It’s interesting, because Three Amigos as a movie is actually a spoof on all of these Westerns. The things they make fun of are the things that show up in so many Western movies. So in Three Amigos, the little town of Santo Poco, which means Saint Tiny in Spanish, is under threat from this evil henchman, El Guapo, which means the handsome one, but he is not handsome.

The daughter of Santo Poco’s leader sees this movie and writes away to the three amigos, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short. She says, “We need your help.” So it’s the three amigos who come from outside to save the day in Santo Poco. This theme is repeated over and over and over. It’s because deep down, as human beings, we recognize that when we’re in a pinch, when we’re caught in darkness, we need light to come from somewhere else beyond ourselves.

Transformers is another example of this. In order to save the world, we need help from alien robots coming from outside of the earth to the earth. Strange and fictional echoes of Christmas there. The stories of Narnia, the great C.S. Lewis books, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Here’s this world of Narnia, and Lewis describes it as under a spell that keeps it in winter but never Christmas.

I remember as a kid I thought, “Winter without Christmas? That would be horrible. No presents.” That was my thinking. Actually, that idea of winter without Christmas is the idea of a world without Jesus, isn’t it? A world in which Jesus has never come, a world where he has not shone his light. So what is it in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? It’s these little kids coming through the wardrobe, along with Aslan the great lion, help from outside, that is needed.

Even Toy Story. We begin the movie of Toy Story (and probably a lot of you guys have seen that). You have all of these toys living at the house. There’s Woody. You pull the string. “Reach for the sky. Who poisoned the water hole?” But it takes Buzz Lightyear coming in from outside, from a foreign toy store, to help be the one who brings the change.

If we think about this, in our culture over and over we know we need help from something beyond ourselves, and in our own lives we recognize this need. We run into problems we don’t understand, so we have to read a book or we Google something. We feel like we want to lose weight, but it’s going to be hard to do it on our own, so we need a pill or a diet or a plan or some community or something like that.

There are all sorts of issues in our lives that challenge us, and deep down we understand that if we only have ourselves to rely upon, we’re surely lost. Deep down we know we need a hero to come from somewhere else to save us. That’s what John is saying about the Christmas story. He’s saying that the hero, the Word, God very God, has come in the flesh to save us, to save a world that is caught in darkness.

The beautiful thing is that not only does Jesus come born humbly into a manger, but when he comes, he shines a light that cannot be overcome by darkness. In verse 5, where it says, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it,” it contains a hint of that story of the crucifixion and resurrection.

The idea is that Jesus came, and he grew up, and as he confronted evil, dealing with sin and all the darkness and shadows of the world, it seemed like he was going to lose, that all of the authorities and the schemes of men and the evil demonic powers and everything else just piled up on him at the cross and snuffed out the light. That’s what it seemed like.

In fact, the disciples, when Jesus was laid in the grave, those next couple of days they were convinced this light they thought they had seen, this hero who had come from the outside… They thought, “It’s over. There has been a stone rolled across the mouth of the tomb, and no more shall light come forth.” But we know how that story ends. On the third day, Jesus steps out and says, “This light was not overcome. This light actually shines into the darkness and cannot be overcome.”

Here is Jesus bringing grace and truth and power and light into all of those places of shadows in the world. But that verse about the light shining in the darkness and the darkness not overcoming it is not just about the crucifixion and the resurrection. There’s something very interesting, because there in verse 5 it says the light shines. It doesn’t say the light shone back then or the light used to shine or the light has shone. It says the light shines.

John wants to be very clear. The hero has come. The hero is shining light, not just back then, but even right now, even in our lives. Jesus continues to be the source of light and life and grace and truth, and he is actively shining at this very moment. I love the bridge of the song we sang right before we started looking at this passage. “You are here. You are holy. We are standing in your glory.” This acknowledgement or understanding that Jesus came, yet he still is shining light into our lives.

This Christmas season, it’s good to think about the light. It’s good to think about parts of our lives where we’ve felt the shadow pass through or maybe even parts of our lives that are shrouded in darkness, shrouded in evil. I know that this time of year it’s really common for a lot of people to get sick. In fact, I know pretty much all of our friends with little kids have kids with fevers. I don’t know if you guys have that going on right now.

Here’s the word from John. He says, “No, no, no. The light is shining. Yeah, there may be a shadow of sickness hanging over, a shadow of physical brokenness hanging over some of our lives, but Jesus is here, and Jesus is shining.” Some of us with relationships… It’s this time of year when we’re having conversations with people we don’t see as often or sometimes we have to open our homes and host in new ways, change up plans, be flexible.

It’s a great time for relationships to break down. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this. It’s just like, “Merry Christmas. Let’s get in a fight.” That shadow just wants to pass over, the shadow of evil, selfishness, and sin. All that begins passing over our lives. Here’s John saying, “The light shines into the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.” Once that light begins to shine, the shadow of broken relationships must be dealt with, must be dispelled, must be healed.

Some of us are carrying grief into this season. We’ve lost people we love, and it feels like there’s a dark shadow hanging over our lives in the absence of that person. Here’s John saying, “The light shines into the darkness.” Sometimes grief can feel so overwhelming. You think, “I’ll never get out of this darkness.” Here John is saying, “Jesus shines the light, and the darkness shall not overcome it.”

Some of us are dealing with shame or guilt, mistakes we’ve made, places where we have disappointed ourselves. That shadow hangs over our hearts. Here’s John reminding us that the meaning of Christmas is not just that Jesus came and was born in a manger, not just that Jesus died on a cross and rose again victorious over evil, but that Jesus continues to shine light and forgiveness and grace.

This is God’s heart. This is what he wants to tell us. Every Christmas season it is wise for us to remember that what God wants to tell us is Jesus. When it says, “In the beginning was the Word,” Jesus the eternal Word of God… How do we understand that? One way is to understand that what God wants to tell us is Jesus, that what God wants us to know is that Jesus shines light into our lives. Sometimes the shining of light looks a little bit different than we expect.

Sometimes those areas of shadow… We just want to flip the lights on and everything is just fine. But there’s another element of this Christmas story we have to remember, because the shining of Jesus’ light began in a situation that really doesn’t look very light-filled at all. A manger, a vulnerable child, the smell of wet animals. This is the shining light? This is who we’re supposed to trust? Or even the crucifixion. Wait a second. A guy dying on a cross, betrayed and friendless, hanging there naked as he breathes his last? This is what light looks like?

This is one of the great mysteries of the gospel, one of the great mysteries of God’s heart, that quite often the way he brings light into those dark places is in unexpected ways and even ways that are a little offensive to us. “No, I want you to do it differently. I want you to be born in a great big awesome hospital with fireworks going off. No, no, I want you to overcome evil by swinging a sword, being triumphant and victorious.”

Here in this Christmas story we remember that the light shines, but often the shining of the light, as we open our hearts to trust Jesus, looks a little bit different and far more humble than we expect it to. So tonight, some of us just need to bask in the light of Jesus. We’re in one of those seasons where it’s the holidays. It’s Christmastime. It’s time to celebrate. You’re going to be with family. You’re going to be with friends sharing meals, giving gifts. It’s going to be great.

Maybe reading this passage is a reminder to bask, to soak in the light of the goodness and grace of Jesus, simply to acknowledge that every good and perfect gift comes from above. Some of us might be in a place where we know where the shadows are in our lives and in our families. We too need to say, “Jesus, shine. Show me what light looks like shining into this place so that this shadow cannot overcome your goodness.”

Some of us who are trusting Jesus are being called to shine light into the places around us. Maybe in the next few days you’ll be called into some places where there are conflict, tension, and shadow. Now as those who trust Jesus, we’re empowered by his Spirit to go with the same humility and the same power to announce and display and become conduits of light into the world around us. No matter where we are, let’s pray now together that the Lord would shine his light more actively in our lives.