It’s hard not to identify with the people about whom Isaiah was writing when he spoke of those who walked in darkness. As today more and more people are losing their homes and their jobs; and as so many places in the world are being torn apart by cruel, savage and senseless wars; and as sickness and death seem to go on the rampage this time of year, and as the daylight hours shrink to a point where the days are about as short as they can get, it is not too much of a stretch to see our world and ourselves as people who live in a land of deep darkness.

Just a few weeks ago I was in Bethlehem. There, among other things, we visited Christmas Lutheran Church, the Church of the Nativity, and at the Shepherds’ Field. On this night especially we tend to romanticize about Bethlehem, but in reality today it’s a pretty grim and sad place, marked by poverty, political instability, corruption and tension. In the not too distant past it was a battleground, and easily could be one again, for as a suburb of Jerusalem it sits on the front lines of the never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

While we were living in England, one of our friends back here wrote a note on her Christmas card. She envied us and romanticized about the Victorian-style Christmas we must be celebrating there. She was envisioning the kind of thing you see depicted on Christmas cards. We had to write back and tell her that, in reality, the IRA had been planting bombs in the London underground, and that Christmas shoppers were being terrorized.

The darkness even invades our personal lives. Too many of us live in a state of personal darkness. Oh, we don’t think so, of course, far from it; but the truth is that we do live in deep darkness. In this regard, perhaps the economic downturn we are experiencing will have a salutary effect. It may challenge some our deeply-held assumptions that keep us in the dark, namely, that we are the masters of our own destinies and free agents in a world subject to our control, that we need neither the government nor God in our lives--how naïve.

It is into just such a world and for just such a people, however, that light has shined. It is a light that can function as a kind of spotlight that reveals the dirt that always seems to hide in the corners and crevices of our world and of our lives. The light of the gospel does indeed serve that purpose. However, that is not the function of the light that we are emphasizing tonight. Yes, the light that shines on us tonight is so glaring as to reveal things as they really are and not as we would like them to be. Still, what the angels announce to us tonight is nothing but news of great joy. And it is news of great joy that is delivered precisely to those who live in a land of deep darkness. On that land light has shined. What the angels announce tonight banishes all darkness. It is news of great joy because we are brought finally from the darkness into the light, from isolation into communion, from doubt into faith, from the darkness of death and all that is death-dealing into the joy and peace of abundant new life. Thus with the light comes warmth, a particular kind of warmth. The darkness is cold and barren. In the light of the gospel there is nothing but the warmth of God’s love, and the rule of life over death. In the light of the gospel we can finally see the real content, meaning, purpose and goal of human existence. In the angels’ announcement of a great joy we find the true content of our hope, the reason for our existence, and our destiny as children of God.

Dorothy Sayers, the well-known English author and translator, who it must be recalled lived in Britain through world-wide economic depression and two world wars, had these rather gritty and very down-to-earth words to say about the event we are celebrating tonight: “Jesus…was in fact and in truth, and in the most exact and literal sense of the words, ‘the God by whom all things were made.’…He was not merely a man so good as to be ‘like God’—he was God…for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace, and thought it well worthwhile.”

In the same vein, Luther in a sermon he preached on Christmas Day in 1531 focused on the words of the angels to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid.” Luther said: “The angel’s words shows that this king is born to those who live in fear and trembling, and such alone belong to his kingdom. To them it shall be proclaimed, as the angels announced to the poor, frightened shepherd, ‘I am bringing you good news of great joy.’ Such joy is indeed offered to everyone, but only those can receive it who are frightened in their consciences and troubled in their hearts. These are they who belong to me and to my preaching, and unto them I will bring good tidings. Is it not a wonderful thing that this joy is nearest to those whose consciences are the most restless?”

So if you are restless, poor, frightened, or troubled, then it is to you especially that the angels direct their announcement: “Do not be afraid…I am bringing you good news of great joy.”

The angels tonight announce peace on earth. I guarantee that you will never find peace in your stock portfolios, in your going it alone, in your estrangement from God, in your accomplishments that take precedence over all things, nor in your overly busy lives. All you will find there is trouble and all it will breed is a fear that it can all be taken away in an instant. Indeed it can. Rather, heed what Jesus says to his disciples, “Peace I leave with you; by peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid” (John 14:27).

The peace the angels sang about, a peace that is aimed precisely at the poor, the frightened and the troubled who live in darkness, is a peace that can be found nowhere else but in a baby born in a stable and destined to die on a shameful cross. His resurrection from the dead is the light that illumines not only his birth but also our lives with its message and promise of hope fulfilled. So, rejoice this night, for in his life your light has come.

-Amen-