“…and the Light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it”. John 1:5
Someone once said that 90% of life is “just turning up”, and probably 90% of most of our lives is indeed spent in a kind of routine.
The routine may vary depending on our stage in life and our changing circumstances but we are creatures of habit who like settled patterns and are wary of change. Certainly it would be extremely wearying to live at a high pitch of excitement and constant change for 90% of the time.
Yet, occasionally in all our lives (and more frequently for some) life’s circumstances will bring us face to face with some of the great unavoidable facts of existence – evil, sin, suffering and death.
In many parts of the world today, not least in the places where Jesus was born and “went about doing good”, they are a persistent daily reality, often in their most gruesome and demoralising forms.
What we call, sometimes rather lamely, “the Christmas story” brings another of the great unavoidable facts of existence, to set alongside the irrefutable fact of the darkness of evil: the fact of the bright mystery and love of God.
It is one of Bible’s great strengths that it doesn’t pretend that the world is other than how it is experienced by men and women. It doesn’t pretend that the mystery of evil and the mystery of God are easy to understand or come to terms with.
It may have fallen into disuse but one remembers when those who offered simple, trite or baseless reassurance about life’s bitterness were called “Job’s comforters”, after the group of his friends who offered false hope to that long suffering man.
However, the Christmas story as we will encounter it at Midnight worship on Christmas Eve or on Christmas morning will include the words “…and the light shines in darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it”.
Before the invention of either printing or the spread of literacy those words would have been heard by believers rather than read by them.
Perhaps in modern terms they might even be called “a spoiler” because it’s as if the writer or editor of John’s Gospel doesn’t want people to have to wait until the end of the drama to know the outcome of what it means for the world and for the believer when Word became flesh.
And the outcome is that the Father’s love follows Jesus into the darkness of the world and that light has the last word and not darkness. And that for all of life’s obscurity and complications and suffering, that Jesus Christ and his love for the cosmos is the foregone conclusion of all things.
The hope-filled Canticle of Zechariah, which is prayed at Lauds every morning, speaks of the dawn from on high “breaking” upon us, “to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death”.
At Christmas time we should never forget that this same light guides our feet “into the way of peace”. The light of Christ breaks into our daily routine, just as it did for the watchful shepherds and wandering Magi on the first Christmas night.
Our responsibility is to pass it on, as if to say in the words of 1 John 1:5: “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness.”
We are called to ensure that the light of Bethlehem continues to stream out across the world, from Gaza to Ukraine, from Sudan to Syria, and on into our own homes, communities and workplaces across the island of Ireland.
Where hatred, war and violence abound, the world falls deeper and deeper into darkness. Where the light of Christ is shared, love and peace shall be found.
Happy Christmas.
The Most Revd John McDowell is the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland
The Most Revd Eamon Martin is the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland
