Christmas Eve Homily 2018- Light After Darkness

Christmas Eve Homily 2018

Light After Darkness

         The dark of a clear winter night is an awful and majestic place. It is awful in its darkness, in its frigid temperature, in its length. Will the darkness end? Will the sun rise? Will the warmth return to the earth?

         Some of you have spent time in the night or pre-dawn hours waiting for the sun to rise. It is a long wait. Perhaps you have had an all-night drive in the darkness in the long dreary tired fight against sleep that the night occasions. The morning dawn will arouse you like a double shot of espresso, if only you can get there. But the night drags on and the eyes grow heavy with sleep. You cannot even stay awake one hour!

         Or, maybe you were in your favorite hunting spot or an early morning hike to watch the sunrise and in the waiting the dark and the cold and the silence, were slow in their desire to diminish. The night creeps on and as the day grows closer, the cold grows deeper. The cold sets in and while the night is present, even in the glimmer of hope that is the pre-dawn glow, the cold grows deeper and deeper, even down into the bones.

         But the night is also majestic in its splendor. The stars and the moon in the cold courses sing of the majesty of the Creator. They long for the morning, too, so that they must decrease and He must increase. Their distance and their faint light is both awe inspiring and insufficient. There is no light of day. There is no heat. And so even the creation longs for the revelation of the sunrise.

         The saints of old longed to see the consolation of Israel, the one who would save them from their enemies. They had seen the awful majesty of God and yet longed for His glory to fill the earth. 

         It was on a longing night like this that the angel announced to the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night that the savior is born for you this day in the city of David. 

         Our waiting upon God is often like that, cold, long, dark. But dear flock, on this Christmas Eve, let it be known to each one of you that a Savior is born for you who is Christ the Lord. He is the One who will save you from your sins. Of the increase of His government and of His peace there shall be no end. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.

         The long wait is over. The sun arises. The light of that longed for day is soon upon us. God has shed His glorious light and the warmth of His Holy Spirit into our hearts and into the heart of all the Earth. Our gift has arrived. It is Christmas. Glory to God.