Scripture Readings
Isaiah 9:2-7
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned. You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy. They rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as warriors rejoice when dividing the plunder.
For as in the day of Midian's defeat, you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor. Every warrior's boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire.
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace, there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
John 1:1-18
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light, he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent, nor human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, "This is the one I spoke about when I said, He who comes after me has surpassed me, because he was before me." Out of his fullness we have received grace, in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God, and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
1 John 1:1-5
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the word of life. The life appeared, we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.
We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you may also have fellowship with us, and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you. God is light, in him there is no darkness at all. This is the word of the Lord.
Welcome and Acknowledgement
Good evening everyone, my name is Megan, if I haven't met you before. I'm the Senior Minister here at Deep Creek, and the delightful thing is that I haven't had to do anything in the service so far, because it's such an incredible team.
And I wanted to start by saying thank you to you for coming tonight. It's not an easy thing to carve out time in this busy season. It doesn't matter whether you celebrate Christmas in a big way, whether you're doing the handover of the pork and the broccoli and whatever tonight, or if you're spending tomorrow by yourself or quietly. This time of year does come with a lot of competing feelings and demands, and so I just wanted to honour you and say thank you.
Thank you for making a community of worship tonight, for giving your own self space to behold Jesus in the midst of the Christmas season.
The Art of Beholding
And that's really what this is about, beholding Jesus. In our reading from John's Gospel, we heard, "The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father full of grace and truth.
The word translated "seen" here, it was originally written in Greek, means not just see, but to really take in something impressive. To pause and perceive, sometimes with a view to kind of going toward the thing that you see, to understand it more deeply. The word has a deep intention behind it, and so often we translate it, behold, or beheld, we beheld his glory.
Now, because of our phones, we have all learnt that our attention is one of the greatest commodities that we own. The thing that all companies and marketers and apps want from us, the more of it the better. To behold something or someone is to give our deep and sustained attention, this great treasure that we hold, perhaps even moving toward the thing or the person.
It's a slow to a stop, look and keep on looking, and let what you see change you, let it reorient your reality. And so when we're invited at Christmas to behold the glory of Christ and we sing these incredible carols, we're being invited not to just believe facts about Jesus, but to open ourselves up to his reality, to give him our deep and sustained attention.
Walking in Darkness
Now, of course, the hardest time to give anything your attention, to see anything, let alone behold it, is when you're in the dark.
Earlier this year, my family and I travelled overseas, and at one point we crossed the Arctic Circle. The Arctic Circle is an imaginary latitude line, it shifts a little bit every year, and it defines the boundary where for at least one day per year, the sun does not set, and at least for one day per year, the sun doesn't rise.
So we weren't there early enough, and we weren't there late enough in the year that it kind of made a lot of difference to us. But if you or I were there right now, even with the time difference, obviously it's dark here, but it would be dark all day and all night.
- So I don't know whether the people who did the Santa thing and the elves at the North Pole really took this into account, because it's been pitch black in the North Pole, Svalbard, surrounding areas, since early November.
- And in the North Pole, the sun won't fully rise above the horizon until March.
- So that's a very unpleasant experience for him and the elves.
Now, as you can see here, this is Svalbard, the closest island to the North Pole. Electric lights are the ticket. They make polar night an entirely different experience for human beings living above the Arctic Circle. So everyone values them. Everyone has backup batteries. Everyone has generators to ensure that they're not caught in the dark, because living in the dark is hard, and walking in the dark is even harder.
In our reading from Isaiah chapter 9, we get a picture of a whole people group, a whole nation, walking in darkness, and it's hard. Now, it's sort of poetic, metaphorical darkness, but it's not just a line. It's not just an image. It's trauma. At the time of this ancient prophecy, God's people were living through invasion, displacement, political fear, economic collapse, deep spiritual confusion. And they were walking painfully, slowly, in the human darkness that comes from that uncertainty.
Now, of course, many of us know what it is to walk in darkness. Perhaps this year was a year where you had grief, worry, exhaustion, uncertainty, loss. Australians of all backgrounds are reeling from the tragedy of Bondi, and everyone is looking for something stronger, steadier, brighter than what the world seems to be offering.
A Great Light Has Dawned
And into that moment, God breaks in. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders.
An ancient promise of something to come that would break through human darkness with a light that could not be overcome. And a joy that would fill and enlarge an entire nation, change it, reorient its reality.
They had a taste of it in Isaiah's own time and in the generations following him. The children of the prophet were born as symbols of the generation that would experience restoration, and the people of God eventually did come into their own land, into a time of peace. But the promise of a great light, a child who would rightfully be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, well that was for the future.
And it's John in his Gospel who tells us how and when that promised light turned up in Jesus Christ. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory.
The solution to the darkness of a fearful and confused humanity was light. But not enlightenment through a new philosophy or a new spirituality to help them understand the world. Light in a person. The God who said, let light shine in the darkness at the very beginning of the world. This person, the word through whom it was all made.
And God didn't open his heaven somehow with a trap door that had a light shining through that we could look up and behold it there far away. God moved into the neighborhood. That's what tabernacling among us means. As a glorious light that could never be extinguished. And he lit the earth from within. Living as the most glorious human and then drawing human beings into his joyful family of people from all nations.
Encountering the Risen One Today
And we get a tiny taste of that here. But like Isaiah's promise, John's words in chapter one about Jesus could feel to you and to me like distant history. Or maybe spiritual truths, but no real evidence. Nothing really grounding it in human life. Beautiful, incredibly expressed, A++ John. But hard to know how we can behold him in a way that changes our hearts in the present. Like now in a world where we're still facing and fighting the darkness.
Well, we need to remind ourselves that we are exactly the people to whom John was writing. People who hadn't seen Jesus in the flesh. But still wanted to behold him and receive his light and life.
That's not a surprise to John. In chapter 20, he records words of Jesus when he's speaking to Thomas. You might remember doubting Thomas. And Jesus says to him, because you have seen me, Thomas, you have believed. But blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.
Jesus knew that he would be the living one, the risen one. And would not only be accessible to those who lived at the time that he was there with them in the flesh. That only they could look and keep on looking. No, he knew that he would be encountering, beheld, experienced, available by word and spirit to us today.
Now the Apostle John felt this truth in his bones. He wrote letters to the churches after he wrote his gospel or around the same time. I don't know. They'll tell me if I read a book. Early Christians who had not seen Jesus in the flesh were reading his letters. And they were in a world like ours. They faced confusion and opposition and questions and grief.
And John wanted them to know that the way to experience the light of Jesus in the midst of that was the same as it was for the Apostles. To behold him. To find those who had seen him and who had told the story. And also to be open to meet him by his spirit. To look and keep on looking. To be confident of who Jesus was and who Jesus is as the living and true one. The risen one who walks amongst his people.
So John begins his letter like this. "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched. This we proclaim concerning the word of life." We heard him. We saw him. We looked at him. We touched him. And the encounter we had with him makes us rock solid, sold out, convinced that this is the light that God promised to ancient people. And that he brings life to us and to you. You can encounter him too.
Confidence in the Truth
On the same trip that we took earlier this year we went to Berlin in Germany. I'd never been there before, but it's hard not to know something of the history. Of course, the two world wars, the terrors of the Holocaust, the Berlin Wall in the Cold War marking East and West. But standing in the place where it happened was so different. It was unpleasant actually, overwhelming, overpowering.
- To see bullet holes in the masonry that people just live with and walk past every day.
- To imagine what it would have been like to have armed guards keeping you in one half of a city.
And it moved this understanding of the history from my head and definitely not my heart, my guts. I wasn't there when the bullets were flying, but I just have no doubt of the impact and the truth of those conflicts. In a nicer way, that's the kind of thing John is trying to communicate to us in the start of his letter.
It is possible to have confidence in your guts that the promise of God to Isaiah has come true in the person of Jesus Christ. The light in the darkness does not have to be at a distance. It is someone you can meet and when you do, you will be adopted into the same fellowship as the apostles were, as those that were in the flesh with him. The most loving, joyful family there could be. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One God, but a trinity of love and joy from the beginning of all time.
The Neuroscience of Christmas Joy
And I think that's why he says we write this to make our joy complete. This is the joy of Jesus being born. This is the joy of Christmas that light and life has come into the world in Jesus. And as we behold him, as we look and keep on looking, that light and life can become ours as we trust him and we want to receive all that he is and join a joyful, loving family.
True Christmas joy. Neuroscience tells us that there is a joy center in the human brain. There are some medical people here and I'm going to say it's in the right orbital prefrontal cortex and they're not disagreeing. It's reasonably undeveloped when we're born and it can keep developing over our whole lives. And what develops it? Positive, generous, loving relationships. Connection. Primarily it lights up when someone who wants to be with you spends time with you.
- When a parent responds to a baby's needs or delights in a teenager's company.
- When a friend or a colleague listens with compassion and support and is happy to spend that time with you.
- When someone special shows you that you are the reason that they're smiling today.
But the fascinating thing is that the joy center is not just about us feeling joy. The more developed the joy center is, the more resilient we are in dark times. It enables us to resist addiction. It helps us to weather the storms. Because something has happened in there that makes us confident that we've been supported through challenges in the past. We're not alone. We will get through it again. We know we're valued and seen.
And I think this is the kind of joy that John is pointing to but on an incredible scale. Offered to each one of us. The God who made the universe, who said let there be light, wanted to be with his people so much. Delighted to be with his people so much. Wanted for you to know that he's happy when he's with you. So much that he would become a vulnerable baby and a vulnerable man who would be put to death on the Roman cross.
This is the love he has for us. This is the value he places on us. This is how much he delights in you and me. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. We have beheld his glory and our joy is made complete.
Joy Made Complete
Not temporary pleasure, not even Christmas cheer. But joy that is complete because it rests on the God who is faithful, loving, near and who delights to be with us. So behold him. Look and keep on looking. Read his word, read John's gospel. Be confident in its truth. Open yourself up in prayer even if you've not done that for a while.
So let's do that now.
Heavenly Father, thank you for this evening, for this gathering, for each person here. For the courage and intention it takes to carve out space at this time. Thank you for coming to us not as a distant idea but as a child, as the word made flesh, bringing light into darkness and joy into weary hearts. Thank you for coming to us not as a distant idea but as a child.
Help us to behold you tonight. To look, to pause, to take in your glory, to let it change us from the inside out. Thank you for coming to us as a child. Shine your light into the places we carry in shadow and fill us with the joy that only you can give. A joy that rests in knowing we are loved, held and never alone. Amen.
