“The Light of the World”
Rev. Stephen Milton
9 pm service, Christmas Eve, 2025
Tonight we are gathered to celebrate the birth of Jesus, an event that occurred a little more than 2000 years ago. Most historians agree there was a person called Jesus from Nazareth. He made too big an impression to be entirely made up. People wrote about him, told their friends about him, got arrested for telling people about him. His name shows up in Roman records after he died, the leader of a group of people who refused to make sacrifices to Roman gods. There is even graffiti about him drawn by a child in school, a man on a cross with a donkey’s head. The Romans knew about Jesus and believed he really lived and died.
But what is less certain is whether everything people said about Jesus was real. The Christmas story brings us together each year, and it is full of details that don’t quite add up. Why would the Romans call for a census, and then ask everyone to go to their birthplaces? Wouldn’t it be easier to count people where they lived and where they would be paying taxes? And if Joseph was taking Mary back to his hometown, why were they looking for an inn? Didn’t he have family who could put them up?
And why was Jesus born there at all? If Jesus is the Son of God, wouldn’t it make more sense to be born in a palace, and have trumpets and a royal court announce his birth? Instead, the story tells us that he was born in a stable, to a peasant girl. Angels announce his birth to shepherds, a bunch of nobodies at the edge of town. It sure sounds like God could have planned this better.
We are not the first people to have problems with this story. The early Christians had all sorts of questions, too. How did Mary give birth by herself, without any help? Childbirth is dangerous. And what about Joseph? Didn’t he have a problem with Mary, who was pregnant with someone else’s child?
To solve those problems, the early Christians wrote other versions of the story. These accounts tried to fill in the blanks. One of them gave an account of Jesus’ childhood, how he worked miracles for his playmates, creating sparrows out of clay for fun, and bringing people back to life. Other accounts focused on how he was born. They wrote back stories for Mary and Joseph. She had grown up in the temple, and was given to Joseph when she was 12. Joseph was a widower, with children of his own whom she babysat. He had no intention of having children with her. He was just an older man trying to be kind.
In one account, the family heads to Bethlehem to be counted in the census. Joseph’s boys from his first marriage lead the donkey that carries the very pregnant Mary. Joseph has been told in a dream that she is carrying God’s son. But before they can reach Bethlehem, Mary asks to stop. The birth is imminent. They are still in the desert. Joseph looks around, and sees a cave. He leaves Mary and the boys in the cave. He goes off to find some midwives in Bethlehem who can help her give birth.
So far, the story sounds reasonable. But then, something remarkable happens. As Joseph is walking towards town, he notices that the birds have have stopped moving in the air. They are just suspended, unmoving. People who were eating simply stopped, their hands bringing food to their mouths. Goats at the river bent down to drink but were frozen. It seems that all of time has stopped.
Then suddenly, time begins again. A woman from town suddenly appears walking towards Joseph. It turns out she is a midwife. She walks back to the cave, which is covered by a glowing cloud. Then a bright, blinding light emerged from the cave. When it stopped, Joseph and the midwife saw Mary holding the infant Jesus, and they were both amazed.
These stories may not sound very realistic to us, but they became part of the Christian understanding of the Christmas story.
Midwives
Midwives helped Mary give birth, and they were even given names. Here you can see one fetching water outside, while the other warms a bath inside.
Christ born in a cave
For many centuries, Christ was shown born in a cave, and Joseph is always painted as an old man. These details show up in paintings and stained glass windows. Faced by uncertainty, we human beings like to fill in the blanks.
This is a story that resists attempts to explain it away in rational terms. It is a story we live, and relive. Each year we ask our children to play the parts in Christmas pageants. I suspect that at least some of you have worn a crown or a bathrobe in a Christmas pageant in your childhood. How many of you have been in Christmas pageants, hands up. More than once? Uh, huh. This is a story we carry with us, even though so much of it seems impossible.
That’s not an accident. Jesus came to change the world, not to keep it the same. In the gospel of John, he says that I am the light of the world. He came to dispel the darkness that was so pervasive when he was born. At that time, the Roman Empire controlled most of the Middle East, a lot of Western Europe and North Africa. The empire had vast armies that crushed any rebellion. In what is now Italy, up to one third of the entire population were enslaved. They could be tortured, raped or killed by their masters at any time, and it was all perfectly legal. This was the Pax Romana, the great Roman peace. The emperor, Caesar Augustus, was called the prince of Peace, Saviour of the world. But this peace was bought through the constant threat of violence.
That was the world that existed on Christmas Eve 2000 years ago. That was the world God wanted to change. God decided to become a human being. To be born, just like us. To be born as a child, covered in muck and goo, like we all are. To feel the shock of cold air on a newborn’s skin. To grow up like us, feeling rain on his face, to get tired, to have sore feet. To drink and dance at weddings like us, and to suffer like us, too. To be jeered at and tortured. Not distant, not far away in the clouds, but right here, in a human body. A God who knows what we are going through because God has been there, too.
But it is still often hard to think of Jesus as one of us. Look at all the miracles he performed. We can’t do those things. He’s over there, and we’re over here. We’re not born with angels singing praises. But are we sure about that? Perhaps they do, but in our state of mind, we just don’t notice.
What if, instead of seeing Jesus as different than us, we saw him as what we can be. Jesus seemed to see the good in everyone. He heals anyone who asks, no conditions, no fee, no means test, no deductible. He cares for everyone, even the ones he finds annoying. Now, we don’t love everyone we meet. But we have that same power. Think of when you have fallen in love. You saw a glow within a person that other people did not see. Even their best friends didn’t see it, but you did. You may have decided to turn your world upside down so you could be with that person for the rest of your life. Parents see this inner glow, too. We fall in love with our children, often even before they are even born. Sometimes it is just the first glimpse of that ultrasound picture that does it, or the first kick. We love them even before we know them. God has given us the ability to see the glow of divine light within other people. It’s not eyesight, we could call it “love sight.” We’re born with this ability, but our love sight is dim, it works only with a few people, not everyone.
But that can change. It starts when we stop expecting ourselves to be perfect. When we realize God doesn’t care if we’re perfect. We don’t need to earn God’s love. God loves us just as we are. When you let that really sink in, it is liberating. When you realize you’re never going to be perfect, then you can stop being mad at other people for not being perfect. And when that happens, then it’s easier to see the divine glow within other people. Folks on the bus, on the subway, at work. You don’t fall in love with them, but you see them as fellow humans worthy of respect and dignity. Deserving of help - an open door, helps getting off the bus, shovelling a walk, writing a letter to a politician to ask for more affordable housing. There are lots of ways of helping fellow human beings who contain God’s sacred glow. We just need some guidance to see that glow. To remember that everyone counts, not just our family and friends.
So, on Christmas Eve, we gather together to remember that night the world changed. For us, time stops - the presents can wait, jobs can be forgotten, exams are done, we are just here, now. Here, where we are invited to feel the glow of the light of the world, which chose to become a human child. And we remember that when the angels announced his birth to the shepherds, they announced that to you a saviour has been born. The way it is written in Greek is very direct. It is to you - and you - and you - and you, everyone one of you, that a saviour has been born. A saviour who can guide us through the dark. To give us better lovesight to see more clearly the beauty inside each person. A glow that some say was blinding on the night Jesus was born. A glow that remains inside each of us. Amen.
%20(4).png)