In early religious Rites set at the winter solstice the ancients would gather at night and encircle a fire; they would sing and dance raising their fiery torches towards starry heaven and invite their God to come among them; to empower them to brace against the darkness that closes upon them….invoking God’s presence…bidding God to descend again into the fray of life at the darkest time of the year. Indeed we need not look long or far to name the darkness that besets us in our time, as in every time.
This Christmas, set at the winter solstice appropriately, we will continue the practice of the ancients. We will gather around a fiery altar and proclaim God’s presence with us in the person of Jesus, a fragile and vulnerable presence…but a presence to be sure. The scribes of the Gospel of John call this presence light…and that the light of Christ is in truth the light of humankind…that is a startling claim….that the light of Christ and the light of the human community are but one light…one light from the same source.
We, as people of faith, people of imaginative conscience, are therefore profoundly implicated in the Incarnation, the enfleshment of God in Christ. Through imaginative and compassionate practice of the faith, the way of Christ, the way of goodness, we are light bearers….bearers of the very fire of God to a darkening world. At Christ’s birth the fiery ways of God are born yet again…and we too…we are yet born again into a vocation of light bearing…a vocation of enlightening our world…an unquenchable light vital for the world’s salvation…a light by which all flesh will apprehend God’s goodness and presence among God’s beloved people….and this beautiful radiant light…this light from the source…. this light will cause even the darkness to sing and dance.
Amen. Just amen.
Thank you!