Literally, Christmas comes on the ninth darkest day of the year. Winter Solstice in Fort Wayne will be Wednesday, December 21st at 5:44am – the shortest day of the year, with the least sunlight and the most darkness.
We make much of the Christmas season, barely waiting until Thanksgiving is over to break out the decorations and holiday music. We wish people merriment and and happiness during the Christmas, which is great – but… the original Christmas story is also full of sorrow, grief, and darkness. Which is one of the reasons we celebrate it during the first week of the winter solstice. It’s also why we shouldn’t skip the season of Advent.
What is the season of Advent? The early church marked out the four Sundays leading up to Christmas for remembering the second coming of Christ to the world, as a way to prepare us to properly remember the first coming of Christ to Bethlehem. Advent is Latin for “to come” or “to arrive” – it reminds us that Christ came at Christmas, Christ comes to each of us now by his Spirit, and someday he will come again to establish peace on earth.
And Advent helps us keep the enduring and fascinating story of Christ in perspective – not everything is rosy and cheery in it. When Christ came to Israel in the first century, it was a messy and painful season for their generation. Like us, they are yearning for someone to establish peace on earth and in our hearts.
We read in the gospel according to Mark that early one dark morning Jesus retreated up the rocky slopes of the mountains that ring the Sea of Galilee. On the beaches the previous day he had been nearly crushed by the crowds seeking healing. The day before that he had provoked murderous threats from the power-brokers of the region because of his healings. The coming of Christ, the coming of light into darkness, isn’t always the easiest season to endure.
On that mountainside Jesus called twelve disciples to him that he wanted to send out into the nation to preach the gospel of God’s kingdom and to drive out demons by the power of God’s spirit. This was why Christ came to Israel, this is what the first Christmas was for: light coming into the darkness, establishing peace in the world.
This is a glimpse of what Jesus does now, in every generation: calling men and women to be with him, that he might then send them out to proclaim good news and deliver people from evil. This is how the Spirit of Christmas lives on in the darkness: not just wishing merriment, but working for peace every day of the year by the power of Christ.
Like the church today, those twelve disciples called by Jesus to serve as apostles (sent ones) were men of questionable character or of no account. Simon Peter was impulsive and braggadicio, James and John were brothers with a fiery, vengeful temperment, Andrew and Philip were excitable, Bartholomew was a good guy, Matthew had been a traitorous tax-collector, Thomas was a doubter, Simon was a violent political activist (terrorist), James and Thaddeus stayed in the background, and Judas Iscariot would betray Jesus with good intentions and noble ambitions.
The church still has disciples like this, men and women who in the name of Christ unveil their best and worst sides. But through Christ, in being sent by him to our communities with the power of the gospel to heal and establish peace, we are transformed too. Christmas becomes a reminder that Christ became like us, that we might become a peacemaker like him.
As we prepare to celebrate the Advent of Christ at Christmas (which coincides with the lengthening of daylight and shortening of nighttime), may you be called and sent by God to family and friends with the presence of Christ. It is Christ who delivers from darkness and who fills us with light – may we, through being present with Christ, be sent to bring peace to those that are ready for the light to dawn in their soul earlier and earlier each morning.
Be the light, be a peacemaker, be Christmas.
What do you need to do to withdraw, like Jesus? Be home alone? Get outdoors for a brisk walk? Go out to eat with a trusted friend? Journal? Sing? Cry? Play? Sleep? Pray? Count your blessings? Go to church? Volunteer in your community? Get counseling? Read a good book?
There was immense social pressure on Jesus to not heal this man on the Sabbath in the synagogue. Jesus challenged them anyway: “‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’ But they remained silent.” It made Jesus “angry and deeply distressed” to watch people stubbornly sit on the sidelines and not care enough.
“People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.