‘Twas The Night Before Christmas

Luke 2:1-14

            In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

            “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

            . . And God said, “Let there be light:” and there was light.   And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first Day.” (Genesis 1:2-3).

            And that is why Christmas Day begins at night.  It was ordained by God from the first Day of creation.

            It is no accident that the Christ was born at night.  Yes, babies come into the world at all hours of the day and night, as mothers and fathers are all too keenly aware.  But it seems that this Babe, the Son of the Virgin Mary, had to come at night.

            This Son of The Virgin is Immanuel, God with us, God in our very flesh.  He is the very Son of God who has always been the Son of God even before He took on that flesh in the womb of His mother Mary.  Saint John spoke of Him as “The Word” as John describes this eternal reality in the opening words of the first Chapter of his Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made” (John 1:1-3).

            It is the Son of God Who spoke and shattered the darkness of the formless world with His Words, “Let there be light;” and by the power of His Word there was light.  First there was darkness, but then there was light.  The Son of God brought light into the darkness.  God’s Son entered the darkened world to bring the light of dawn.  First there was evening, and then there was morning, and then Day One ended.  God began His day with the evening, not with the morning.

            It is even more fitting that God should begin His day with the evening, the time of darkness, when we recognize the symbolism of darkness in the Holy Scriptures.  Darkness was the next-to-last plague that God allowed to come upon Egypt while the children of Israel were held in bondage by Pharaoh.  That plague of darkness was the foreshadowing of the final plague – the death of every firstborn creature in every unbelieving household.  Darkness is therefore the shadow of death, a grim reminder that death is lurking in this world.  Death came into God’s perfect creation soon after the beginning while Adam and Eve dwelt in God’s glorious garden.  Death came when our first parents fell victim to Satan’s temptation and broke God’s commandment and plunged themselves – and all of mankind with them – into sin and into darkness.

            And then, in that darkness, God began His day of salvation.  He came into the garden on the very day that man plunged the world into sin’s darkness, to bring the dawn of morning.  God came to comfort man in the midst of his mourning over his impending death on account of his sin.  God came to announce the coming into the world of the Seed of the woman (Gen 3:15), a Son born of a woman, Who would come to bring an end to the reign of Satan, the Prince of Darkness, over the world. 

            In the midst of the darkness that had come upon the world on that sad and fateful day, God was announcing the coming of a Great Light to those “who sit in darkness and the shadow of death” (Lk 1:79), “a lamp for their feet and a light to their path” (Ps 119:105) to guide them on the path to the glorious eternal dwelling place of God, where God, radiant with His glory, is Himself the Light.

            And so “it came to pass in those days of Caesar Augustus” (Lk 2:1) though fittingly, while shepherds were keeping watch over their flock by night, that the Seed of the Woman was planted upon the Earth.  The Son of God had come upon the world.  The “Dayspring” (Lk 1:78) from on High was casting His light upon the earth.  First there had been evening and its darkness, but now there was morning and the birth of a new day: the day of salvation.

            This is why the Angel of the Lord speaks as he does.  Listen carefully as the angel proclaims to the poor shepherds in the midst of the darkness of their night: “[U]nto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11).  It was no accident that this Son was born in the night; His birth marks the coming the dawn.

            The glory of the Lord that shone round about the shepherds was symbolic of the glorious light of the morning that God was bringing upon the earth with the birth of His Son.  First there was evening, but now there is morning.

            And soon another day would come.  It was the great and awesome day that the whole world would be plunged into darkness, in the middle of the day, as this holy body of Christ that first appeared at Christmas, was hung on a cross, pierced with nails and spear.  The sun in heaven did not its light for three holy hours as the Son of God gave up His life upon the tree of the cross.  He was hanging in the shadow of death, for He had taken into His holy flesh all of our sins.  God the Father was turning His glorious face away from His Son, causing Christ to cry out, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Mt 27:46), for His Son was now detestable in His sight, with the ugliness of all of our sins upon Him.  Thus, darkness was upon the face of the whole Earth, as it was in the beginning.

            But, as it was in the beginning, there was evening and its darkness, and there was morning and a new day.  On the day following Christ’s Sabbath rest in the tomb, the Son of God rose upon the earth anew.  On the first day of the week, a truly new day had begun.  Christ Jesus shattered the darkness of death and the gloom of the tomb by His triumphant, death-defying and death-killing resurrection from the dead.  The King of Light had overcome the Prince of Darkness.

            And, with Him, so have we.

            On this Christmas day, we hear of the angel proclaim to us the dawning of a new day for us: “Unto you is born this day a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.”  We do not go back 2,000 or so years and over to Bethlehem to meet that Christ; He’s not there in the manger anymore.  He comes to us today, for He is found and comes to us in the Word that is proclaimed in the Scriptures, and the liturgy, and the hymns that we sing this glorious Christmas Day.   He comes to us in His very Body and Blood at the Great Christmas Feast around His Table.  And through the remembrance of our Baptism into Christ, and “do[ing] this in remembrance of Me” (I Cor 11:24), we are brought into His light – the light of His salvation – and into the dawn of a new day, the day without end: eternity.

            Thanks be to God and glory be to God on high that we now live in the light of that endless day.  We now live as people who will live forever – forever in the light of the Son of God.  He is the light by which we walk in newness of life, from this day onward.

            He is the light that we share with our neighbors – the unbelievers among our family members and friends who still dwell in the “darkness and the shadow of death” (Mt 4:16) so that upon them the same saving light will also dawn.

            “The people who walked in darkness Have seen a great light; Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined” (Isaiah 9:2).

            Even so it is for us. Thanks be to God for that on this glorious Christmas Day.

            In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.