Co-missioners,
This week, just in time for the season celebrating our Lord’s nativity, we have for you the manuscript of a sermon preached by our friend and fellow-Crossings traveler Fred Niedner at Valparaiso University’s Chapel of the Resurrection on Christmas Eve, 2014.
Reading this, I am struck by two things. First, Fred’s acknowledgement of a feeling of darkness and gloom at the time of this writing related to troubling events, including the then-recent shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. Much has happened in the intervening 11 years, but this much is the same: our time, too, has its own “shadow of death” hanging over it. Amazing, how much and yet how little changes in our world.
The second thing I noticed is the stunning connection Fred makes between Good Friday and Christmas towards the end of the sermon. I have always felt that the Nativity is an echo of the Cross. Or a foreshadowing? Even though the seasonal paraments (white/gold) and the festiveness of our music would make it seem as if Christmas is a counterpart to Easter, half a year removed, I find that it has more in common with Good Friday: God entering into our predicament, our lowliness, our suffering. What do you think?
I hope you are lifted by this brief Christmastide sermon as I was. A very merry Christmas to all of you!
Peace & joy,
Co-editor Robin Lütjohann
for the Crossings Community
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The glory of the Lord, in our darkness, too
A Sermon at Valparaiso University on Christmas Eve 2014
by Fred Niedner
Fred Niedner
Isaiah 9:2-7
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. 3 You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder. 4 For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. 5 For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. 6 For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.
Titus 2:11-14
11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, 12 training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. 14 He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.
Luke 2:1-14
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 All went to their own towns to be registered. 4 Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. 5 He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. 8 In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see– I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: 11 to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light,” wrote Isaiah long ago. And a few centuries later, Luke described something similar—those humble, unnamed shepherds, abiding in their fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night, when suddenly, an angel of the Lord and then the glory of the Lord, lit up the night and scared the . . . scared them half to death.
Everything in our lessons tonight, metaphorical or otherwise, happens in the darkness, in the dead of night. And my, do we know the darkness this time around. Maybe not like December 1941, or even 2001, but it’s pretty deep, and truly treacherous. One dimension of the darkness, and of this season in particular, struck me on the first day this year that I encountered a Salvation Army bell-ringer. There she was, Santa hat and all, in front of Town & Country Market here in Valparaiso, on November 14th—nearly six weeks ago, two weeks before Thanksgiving. “Goodness,” thought I. “These folks must need a longer season each year to meet the budget they’ve set for their charitable efforts.” My next thought was the one that startled me. For just a moment it crossed my mind that this wasn’t really a Salvation Army person at all, but a fake, a scammer, collecting money from unsuspecting, well-meaning shoppers before the real bell-ringers showed up. It wouldn’t be that hard to pull off, you know.
It’s a dark age indeed when you can’t trust anyone, but that’s pretty much where we are these days. Be careful what you click on, it might be trouble, we’re reminded over and over.
But scammers, numerous as they are, will not serve as the iconic image of the darkness of our age or of this season, not this year anyway. That dubious honor will surely go to the ubiquitous photograph of the line of policemen in riot gear, standing across a Ferguson, Missouri, street, with a sign made of holiday lights above them. “Seasons Greetings,” it says. And they have become the greeters. There are plenty of lights in the picture, but they don’t begin to conquer the darkness of that scene.
Regardless of where your own thoughts fall on the spectrum of public opinion concerning all that’s gone on among us in recent weeks, that picture of lights shining in the darkness surely symbolizes how poorly we know and understand each other. And now the ugly, frightening specter of revenge has deepened the darkness, filled it with new rage and ever more purposeful, intentional blindness. An angel singing a peace song over St Louis or New York tonight would be scoffed out of town. I’d be tempted to join the scoffers.
And then there is your home, your family, where, despite all the Christmas food, drink, music, and cheer all about you, there is also uncertainty, fear, alienation, misunderstanding, loneliness, illness and all its inevitabilities, chronic anger and waves of self-doubt. Even if none of that darkness has descended upon you this year or in this season, you probably remember all too well the last time it came to visit, and you also know it won’t stay away forever.
Even when light shines, we don’t know whether to trust it. Indeed, if you listened closely, the light over which the prophet Isaiah rejoiced was the kind you know when your side wins and for once you get the spoils of victory. You get to divide the plunder, like that time when we wiped out the Midianites. That kind of light always requires that someone else must be thrust into darkness and shame, and sooner or later, the tables get turned. They always do.
From Canva
The light that shined in Luke’s story, the one that initially stunned and frightened those unsuspecting shepherds out in the middle of nowhere, despite all the political hullabaloo of the Roman census and the hated taxation campaign that required Joseph and Mary to go to Bethlehem despite her pregnancy, was a different kind. It wasn’t the kind that picked winners and created losers and left the vanquished in shallow graves and deep gloom.
No, this light was the glory of the Lord, says Luke. It didn’t radiate from the angel, or even the heavenly host. Instead, it emanated from the stable where the shepherds would visit that night, and specifically, from the tiny infant, vulnerable as anyone can be, with a freshly cut umbilical cord and still learning how to breathe and suck and make sense of smells and sounds. And wrapped in bands of cloth, “swaddling clothes,” we used to say, lying in a curious, borrowed crib.
That child did not glow in the dark. The glory that dawned on the world that night of his birth wasn’t that kind of glory, but the glory of the Lord, the glory that appeared ultimately in the dark afternoon of a day much later, when this same child, now a young man, was stripped of his clothes and hung up to die as though he were one of the beasts in the stable. And then he was wrapped again in bands of cloth, and laid once more in a borrowed place, this time a tomb.
That is the glory of God, the gravity of the Lord, and it is the gospel. It is also the meaning of this night and the light that shines in the darkness, our darkness. In that naked, vulnerable child, the glory of the Lord who made heaven and earth is fully revealed, and in the strange light of this night we can see and know that the full gravity of God’s glory rests in God’s knowing and sharing our every moment of darkness—our anxieties and dreads, our pains and uncertainties, our suffering and our death.
And like our Lord, we are raised, each day, and in each nighttime, to embody Christ’s knowing love and compassion, to shine the light of kindness and comfort among those who fear, and to sing like the angels who disturbed forever the darkness and gloom of those who live and die in the valley of the shadow. Here, at the manger, the feeding place where we find our Lord this evening, wrapped in simple bread, we sing. And then we’re off again to our fields, and to the sheep over whom we keep watch, to the streets where people fight and die in the darkness. Sing to them. They may or may not see the light, but make sure also to love them. When you love them, give yourselves to them, they’ll see and know the glory of the Lord.
Thursday Theology: that the benefits of Christ be put to use
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