2 The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined. 

Isaiah 9:2

One of the main acts during the celebration of Christmas is the lighting of the Advent Candles. The lighted candle and the light that comes from it symbolise Christ, the Light of the World.

 

For before the coming of Christ into the world, the world was in total darkness. The people walked in darkness, not just darkness, but deep darkness, according to Isaiah. What is deep darkness and constitute such. Have you experienced being in deep darkness in your life?

 

Imagine yourself in windowless room at night and all the lights are out. Or in a cave with no source of light. Everything is pitch black!

 

But I believe there is something more. Deep darkness is not the absence of light. It is the absence of hope in the midst of a catastrophe with no end in sight. For the Israelites who were exiled in Babylon, theirs is a dark period of a protracted captivity and enslavement. What made matters worse was that they felt they were abandoned by God. Of course it was their doing or undoing because they always turn their backs on the God who created and nurtured them, beginning with the banishment from the garden of Eden.

 

But after what seemed to be a cleansing of the earth through the flood and allowing a few to survive, God made a promise never to do another punishment of the same degree as the deluge. God in fact promised to make them a great nation that will bless other nations which will come from their ancestry.

 

God allowed them to be a great kingdom under King David and his son, Solomon. But the kind that followed did what were evil in the sight of the Lord. And so, they did not live up to the reputation of being the people of God.

 

To be chosen as God’s people comes with huge price. It entails total obedience and loyalty. For the other party to this agreement is no other than the God who saved them and protected them repeatedly in so many instances in their journey. But like you and me, we fail. We always come short of the faithfulness of God.

 

And Isaiah, the prophet of God prophesies their freedom and return to their land.

 

“those who wait for the lord shall renew their strength,

they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

they shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

Isaiah 40:31

 

The people waited. They waited especially now that they were under a new colonising power who preached about abundance and peace – the Pax Romana. They waited for the promised king who will liberate them form this new bondage born out of their own rulers’ subservience to Caesar.

 

But there was silence on the part of God. The prophets were silent themselves. Silence, or the people just didn’t know God was cooking something?

 

God was actually planning to come to his chosen people to be their Saviour. This is good news! And the good news was announced to Mary, and what more? The Messiah shall be conceived in her womb and she shall deliver the Son of  God.

 

The long silenced was broken. And there was light at the end of the tunnel.

 

Thirty years later, the Son did not evolve into the king they wanted. For the people wanted a marching king with an army, not one who walks around with a rag-tag band, mostly fishermen and women with questionable reputation.

 

They wanted a miracle worker with extra-ordinary powers who will change remove all their miseries and problems with a snap of his fingers, like Thanos.

 

They didn’t like this one who acts more like a brother and friend to them who do wonders just enough to make them believe and trust. Make them believe in themselves and trust their worth.

 

For some this wasn’t good news. Some people never learned. Some people tended to go their own way. And so new catastrophes happened as a result of human failure to acknowledge the values and virtues of the kingdom the Son of God Jesus preached about.

 

Humankind was lost again. Its rulers are falling short of God’s expectations, if not doing evil in the sight of God.

 

We have seen what darkness is, and experience this deep darkness Isaiah talked about. Darkness is when people are deceived by a Bible-totting President who used the name of God to sanctify his own name and for the benefit of his loyal followers.

 

Darkness is when people in many places experience persecution and violation of their human rights by despotic and tyrannical regimes.

 

Darkness is a pandemic that has not found a cure, exposing the much graver ills of society such as the negligence of public health care by governments and the profiteering of multinational companies in medicine and medical research.

 

Darkness is the hopelessness that people feel due to the loss of their homes, loved ones, source of livelihood, because of natural disasters exacerbated by human negligence, exploitation, and greed.

 

The Advent and Christ birth stories tells us that God comes to us as a human being to be our saviour and redeemer. But God does this by being our teacher, brother, friend and fellow-traveller.

 

And for some of us, this bit is hard to accept and understand. Why? Because, Jesus Christ remains in the realm of the “not of this world.” As if Jesus is there waiting for us on the other side of life when our time is up here on earth.

 

We remain in the waiting period because we do not acknowledge that Christ has already come because this acknowledgement, which we regularly declare in our Statements of Faith, entails us to live out a Christ-like life of service and dedication to Christ mission and ministry that goes beyond the four walls of this building.

 

As a people of light, we are invited to give light, if not reflect this light we have received from God so that the deep darkness where the world finds itself will be banished forever.

 

Christmas is an occasion for us to once again see the light, not be blinded, but see more clearly, the Jesus story.

 

The Jesus story, is that God’s Son has come to us, to be our teacher, brother and friend, freeing us from all burdens and sins of the world, to be Christ light of the world. Amen.