Christmas Eve 2021: the small, quiet dark
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
Christmas Eve 2021
Luke 2:8-20
In the middle of nowhere. In the middle of the night. Small. Quiet. No wonder those of us in the northern climate also locate this story in the middle of winter. Because this is a story of how life rests in the darkness: a spark drawing deep on the Source of Life itself. This is a story of how life—abundant, everlasting life—is not huge in the ways we expect it to be huge; it is actually tiny, found in the tiniest of places.
Which is to say that God—abundant, everlasting God—is not huge in the ways we expect God to be huge. God is infinite. But our God likes to be made known through smallness, found in the tiniest of places.
Like a baby. Any baby, really, but the story underlines the point by making it a baby born in relative poverty, to a family who will soon be refugees. Not the mighty leader of an army or a powerful nation, though we like to imagine such things as a reflection of God’s power or favor. But the exact opposite: the infinity of our God, it turns out, is made incarnate in the still, small voice that speaks against such earthly domination.
So small. So quiet, this night. There, in the dark, honestly, you would hardly notice it.
But it is life itself, sown in our flesh. God’s life. Eternal life! A life that cannot be destroyed by the forces of greed, pride, and selfishness, because it knows the holiness of smallness. Because it knows that the bright burst of God’s glory and the singing of angel choirs do not begin in the loudness and lightness of human power and wealth; for those things always, always tempt us to our own glorification, rather than God’s. So the glory of God has to sneak into our world through the back way. Found in quietness. In smallness. Rooted in the darkness.
We do need light, of course. Not for nothing does John refer to Jesus as the Light of the World. But we humans get into trouble if we only chase after light … and if we come to think of darkness only as metaphor for blindness, ignorance, and all that is fearful, and forget that darkness is also where life begins and returns and begins again.
Ponder this: The blood-making center of the human body is found inside of our bones. This precious machinery, that produces 2 to 3 million red blood cells per second, throughout our lives, is hidden there: safe in the dark, in order to protect our blood cells from the light and radiation that might otherwise kill or mutate them.[i]
Our blood cells need the protection of darkness. And so, it seems, do our souls. Which is why we find ourselves here, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, bearing witness to something as simple and ordinary as the birth of a baby. Here, being asked to recognize that this is how God enters our world. That God too recognizes the protection to be found in darkness.
And so we are here. Invited to enter the story, once again, and let the story enter into us. Feeling our own smallness, in the midst of the immensity of God becoming flesh. But invited to realize, somehow, that it is our very smallness that connects us to this mystery. That our smallness means that we too are a place where heaven can meet earth. Where God can enter in.
We are all of us, every last one of us, a part of this story.
My friend Brooke reminded me of this recently. She was unpacking her nativity set, and discovered that her Mary figurine hadn’t survived. She still had her rough-hewn shepherds; she had the wise men in their long robes; she had Joseph and the Baby Jesus, and probably an animal or two. But Mary was beyond repair.
Looking around her house, she found only one appropriately-sized figurine. Of a bear. Holding a salmon. At that point she remembered that this bear had actually subbed in for Mary before, one year when she’d gone missing. This year, however, Brooke realized that a bear holding a salmon is clearly meant to be a wise man (he already has a gift, after all).
That left her with an extra wise man, and still needing parents for the baby. Then it occurred to her that two of the wise men could fill that role. Why not, after all? Joseph moved over to become the third wise man, quietly asking the bear if he could maybe sign the card that would come with the salmon, since he didn’t have a gift of his own.
Why didn’t she do it that way last time, she wondered. Was she just looking for the simplest substitution, or could it be that her imagination (even just five years ago) couldn’t stretch to a Holy Family with two dads? That she still, unconsciously, found a bear holding a salmon less absurd than that?
It’s incredible, how stuck our imaginations can be. How one image can get lodged in our heads and our hearts, and we start to think it’s the whole truth. And we don’t even realize that it’s blocking our ability to enter into the sacred story. To see ourselves in the story. To let others into the story.
Not that you or I, or those wise men, actually replace Mary and Joseph. Jesus had particular parents, and he was born in a particular time. But nevertheless, the story of the incarnation is about us, and it can take root in all the particularities of all of our lives. We may or may not be unmarried and pregnant; we may or may not be adoptive fathers; we probably aren’t Jewish carpenters living in an occupied country. But we have our own stories, our own longings and our own challenges. And those are the things that connect us to this holy story. And those are the things that create within us the small, quiet place in which God can enter this world.
My friends, in the dark marrow of your bones, millions of blood cells are being created. Right now, and now, and now. Entering your bloodstream. Giving you life. And in the quiet dark of the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, an infinity of God is entering our world. Then, and now, and in every now to come. Entering in the smallest possible way. To give us life.
Let us celebrate the life that is rooted in darkness, and the beauty of the light that comes only from God. The Christ Child is born! May you and yours have a blessed and joyous Christmas! Amen.
[i] Hank Green, “Dear Hank and John” podcast, episode 299 “A Very Dark Place Inside My Bones,” released August 9, 2021