Jan 4 ~ 2nd Sunday of Christmas/ A Story About Light

Jeremiah 31:7-14

Psalm 147:12-20

Ephesians 1:3-14

John 1:[1-9] 10-18 

Sermon by Bishop Cindy

Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ! And thank you to Pastor Joel for inviting me to share the gospel with you today.

Let me begin by wishing you all a Happy New Year! Even while the church remains in the season of Christmas, the world has moved on to New Year’s greetings and turning the page on 2025. If your house is like mine, the decorations have faded into the background. The lights and candles are extinguished. Maybe the Christmas tree is already out on the curb. The manger scene is dusty or packed away. And our attention turns to going back to school tomorrow, back to work after a few days off, back to our regularly scheduled programming. But here in the church we’re still in the Christmas season.

On Christmas eve and Christmas day we rightly focused our attention on the manger scene. At the center of our Christmas is the baby in the manger, heralded by angels, worshipped by shepherds, illuminated by a star, the promise that God is with us, born among us.

But on this second Sunday of Christmas, the evangelist John invites us to lift our eyes, to turn our gaze away from the manger, to look back to the foundation of the earth and into the fullness of time where God is and has always been with us in grace and truth.

“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 came into being through him,

and without him not one thing came into being.

What has come into being in him was life,

and the life was the light of all people.

The light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness did not overcome it.”

These words from John send shivers down my spine. They evoke images of space from the Hubble Telescope, vast galaxies in the heavens, nebula shining against the backdrop of darkest space. And the picture of earth as seen from space, a blue and green ball spinning in the light of the sun.

Looked at another way, John paints a picture that could just as well be seen through an electron microscope, the cells of organisms from earthworms to elephants, cells of every living thing dividing and forming up into tissue, and bone, and organs, growing together to form a living being, like you and me.

In the beginning was God’s Word, making light and life, and behold it was very good.

From this cosmic perspective our own lives may seem small and insignificant. Our day-to-day existence is a tiny blip in time, a blink of the eye in the grand scheme of time and space. The struggles we face to make our way in the world, to make a living, to make a family, to make a difference in our world… do they really matter to the God who made heaven and earth? And will they matter in the fullness of time?

John the Baptist thought it mattered. John the Baptist thought it mattered so much that he devoted his life to testifying to the light coming into the world. He forsook family and the comforts of home to go out to the desert to meet people who were seeking meaning, people who wanted their own lives to mean something. And so, John, in his wild ways, pointed them to one coming after him, who would bear the light of God. Light that would shine meaning on their existence.

During his teaching ministry, Jesus taught his followers about how much their life means. Jesus told his followers that God numbers each and every hair on each and every head. Science teaches that every one of us is made unique. Consider our fingerprints, so personal that they can identify who we are when we leave our mark behind. Look at the eyes of the person beside you. Everyone with a different color – blue, brown, grey, green – but more so, that colored part, the iris, has its own pattern, enough to make a biometric signature that can unlock a door.

But that’s only biology. Think of the patterns of experience that make up each life. Parentage, the place were born, schooling, the people who love us, the nurture we receive, the opportunities for travel, work and leisure. Who we are and who we become is a story unique to every individual. It’s like a spark of light within us. When it’s nurtured, fed, tended, that spark of light grows into the person we become.

And in the mind of God, by the Word of God, from the foundation of the world, there was light and life. And in time, the light of God, the Word became flesh and lived among us. God came down from the heavens, and up from the smallest building block of life, to take on human life, with every messy nuance that life includes. God’s own Son came into the world bearing God’s own glory and conferring God’s own grace to all who will receive it.

In Jesus, God experiences all of human life, from birth through the growing pains of childhood. Through the ministry of Jesus, God knows the joy and frailty of human relationships. Through the life of Jesus, God knows the uncertainty we feel when we aren’t sure which way to go. And in Jesus, God experiences the agony of suffering and the finality of death.

And when God takes on human form, God blesses all humankind with the power to become God’s own children, sisters and brothers of Jesus, siblings of one another. We are able to know God in grace and truth because we are God’s children. And the spark of light within us is nurtured as we grow in faith and love.

Through our relationship to Jesus, we receive grace upon grace that fuels that spark of light until we are like beacons in the world, shining the light of God’s love into the dark places we encounter. We don’t have to go out into the desert like John the Baptist. We don’t have to paint amazing word pictures like the evangelist John to let our light shine. We have only to be the people God made us to be, children of God, children of the light, shining hope and justice and kindness and love through our daily lives.

What else can it be but the light of God shining when our congregations gather food and mittens and furniture and funds to help people in need? What else can it be but God’s light that shines through the music of our liturgy, the preaching of our pastor and the hospitality of all who welcome others and feed us in this place? It’s clearly God’s light that shines in advocacy for creation, for peace in our world, for shelter for the unhoused, for care for those who cannot care for themselves. And in our own homes and communities and workplaces and schools, we continue to be beacons of light when we practice kindness in our everyday encounters.

As we begin a new year in God’s grace, we pray for light in our world and light in our lives. We pray that the darkness we may have experienced in 2025 will be lightened and that the new year will be one of good health, joy and peace for each of us, for those we love, and for our world.

May God make it so. Amen