Sermons Preached at Church of the Redeemer

A New Light 

December 24, 2003

Church of the Redeemer

Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 

Christmas is said to be a time of magic, a season when the mundane rules of the world are suspended and wonders can happen.  They may be very human wonders – wonders of kindness and mercy and delight in the eyes of children; they may be natural wonders – wonders of the winter sky at dusk, or of moonlight on freshly fallen snow, or of stars at midnight.  At the heart of Christmas, of course, is a wonder beyond the merely human or natural, a wonder beyond the power of magic, a divine wonder beyond telling:  the wonder of the Emmanuel born to a virgin mother and laid in a manger.  So wondrous is the story of Christ’s nativity – so beyond all bounds of containment – that it overflows the borders of its own narrative and sheds abroad a radiance of wondrous stories that are told at this time of year – and many of them are stories of magic. 

We rarely speak of magic in the church.  I suppose that we can be very narrow-minded as Christians and so see magic in a disreputable light as conjuring or deception or even as a dangerous form of superstition.  A parlor magician creates illusions by tricks of light or sleight of hand.  But some great modern Christian writers – C. S. Lewis and J.R. R. Tolkein, for example – have used magic in their fiction as a means of portraying truth.  Their writings appeal to us, I think, because they touch in us – young and old alike – a way of perceiving truth that is deeper than science, deeper even than common sense.  Deep within us we carry a childlike sense of the world as a place pregnant with wonders and with powers of transformation beyond the ken of our empirical minds.  This powerful and wondrous quality lies hidden from our daylight eyes, but stories of magic free our imaginations to see the world in a new light – a midnight light, as it were. 

One of the most popular stories told at Christmas is Dickens’s “Christmas Carol.”  At the heart of the story is a nightmarish moment of midnight magic.  Ebenezer Scrooge, in the thrall of a deep sleep, sees ghostly visions of past and future that reveal to him important truths:  truths of the kind of person he really is and of the consequences of his miserly life.  In the light of these revelations Scrooge is transformed; his hard heart is broken and he wakes with an urgent need to buy the prize turkey for Tiny Tim.  It’s a story of magic and redemption, of revelation and repentance, of midnight sight and new life.  The classic movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” always shown at this time of year, tells a similar story of midnight revelation and transformation.  I would like to take you this evening on a journey like this. 

Imagine waking at midnight alone in your own bed.  You wake to total silence and darkness.  No light leaks into your room; there are no dials or digital displays showing around you; there is no sound either within or outside the room.  The darkness is so complete that you cannot tell whether your eyes are open or shut.  You climb out of your bed, but there is no way to get your bearings.  You move about the room cautiously, well aware that some familiar object in your room – the corner of your dresser, perhaps – could become a peril for you as you go.  You feel about with your hands outstretched, but nothing seems to be in its accustomed place.  Where you expect to find something solid you find blank space; where you expect to move in the open you encounter something solid that you cannot immediately identify.  As you continue to grope blindly about your disorientation grows acute:  Where are you?  What’s happening?  What time is it?  Who are you? 

We all rely upon a predictable universe around to give us our bearings on the world and even ourselves.  We need people, places and things to be recognizable, to be where we expect them, and to behave in predictable ways.  Besides the world of objects, there is a world of precepts and principles that gives us our sense of reality, reliable truths that structure the decisions we make and the lives we build.  These are notions and values so fundamental to our knowing and being that we rarely bring them into consciousness, much less question them.  These may include higher ideals such as the importance of family; health; education; work; faith.  Think of the principles that govern our personal lives; our financial lives; our political lives; our religious lives.  These principles work together to give us a sense of order, meaning, security, self-reliance, even freedom.  They give us a sense that life is not a random crap-shoot; the game of life has rules that can be known and followed, skills that can be mastered and outcomes that can be reasonably predicted.  Certainly there is luck involved, but to an important degree life is a game that can be won – or lost – as a consequence of our character. 

If life is a game that can be won or lost, then there are winners in this life -- and there are also losers.  There are folks who encounter bad luck, or who never manage to learn the rules, or who fail to follow them.  We who are more fortunate may be tempted at times to reject such people – to treat them as nonentities – to consider that their misfortune is regrettable but can’t be helped – or even that their misfortune may be deserved.  I say that we may be tempted to think in this way, but we do not give in to the temptation.  After all, one of the higher rules of the game is that we remember the less fortunate; we do that here in church all the time.  We engage our generosity on their behalf; we support charities that care for them and educational endeavors that may give them the tools they need to become winners themselves.  Charity is one of the rules of the game; our support of charity is part of what makes us winners. 

Now imagine again that you wake alone at midnight in darkness and silence – silence, that is, except for a voice, a nightmarish midnight voice that tells you that everything you know is wrong; that the rules of life that you rely on are mere errors, and that the very notion of life as a game that can be won – with rules that can be known and followed, skills that can be mastered – is an illusion.  Imagine being told that the belief that you were – or even could be – a winner makes you a loser; and that the losers of this world – those whom you had ignored or discounted or patronized with your charity –they are the winners, the rulers, the favored ones who may or may not, on any given day, deign to throw the likes of you a bone. 

[This is not yet the uplifting Christmas sermon you came for, but bear with me.] 

Imagine that you, like Ebenezer Scrooge – though far less deserving of such treatment – are shown your life in a midnight light.  Imagine that the honors and treasures of your life are paraded before you – your education, marriage, family, career, home, money, position, influence, your good works – all are shown to you in a new light, and to the extent that you regard them as your accomplishment or privilege, as your deserving – to the extent that you see them as your prizes in the game of life – to that extent you see them decay before your eyes and crumble into dust and ashes.  All that you have worked for, striven for, and depended upon – all have come to nothing, and you are left impoverished, bereft, lost and alone. 

Now watch as that same magical, midnight light shines again and shows you your life differently.  Look and see as now, to the extent that you see your life, your health, your security as gifts given to you freely, regardless of your deserving; to the extent that you receive them as a child – eyes wide with delight, mouth open in astonishment – to that extent, all that you cherish in life is returned to you, bright and new and wondrous.  See now as the simplest objects in the room about you – a chair, a table, a scarf, Zuzu’s petals – are magically transformed into treasures of incomparable value; you realize that you are seeing these things now as they truly are, for the first time.  As if for the first time you taste now the winter air; as if for the first time you see now the glint of moonlight on snow and the indigo of a clear sky at evening; you experience the beauty of the world as if for the first time.  Look now and see the love that surrounds you – the love of family, friends and neighbors – and recognize it as a blessing so incalculably beyond your deserving that your heart simply breaks.  And now see even the simplest opportunity to perform an act of kindness – even sharing a smile with a stranger on the street – transformed; no longer is it an act of virtue on your part, but instead it is a tender mercy granted to you. 

To see all of life with the eyes of a child is to see the world in a new light – a light that reveals our everyday sunlight sight as sheer midnight blindness.  Jesus Christ is that light – the new light that has dawned in our darkness.  He is the light that our darkness has tried to quench; his is the life that death only made to shine more brightly.  He is the light that shows us the world and our lives as they truly are, and so transforms us.  He is the light that comes into our life on this magic night. 

Steven Bonsey

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