The Light of Christmas (Christmas Eve)

Well, Shadow and Light is what we've been calling our Christmas series here at Twin Lakes Church, and tonight is the very holy night that it all culminates with our candlelight service. My name is René, another one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. Merry Christmas! I am super glad to see you here, glad to see so many familiar faces, some brand new faces. Thank you for joining us at our final candlelight service, and I want to invite you to grab your message notes that look like this so you can follow along.

The message notes very brief are on the third page, and in fact if you want to just flip it over to the back page real quick, I want to give you a sneak preview of our new year's series. We call it "Choosing a Good Year." And here's what this is about. In 2022, kind of news flash, all kinds of stuff that you didn't anticipate is going to happen to you. Stuff that you didn't plan, stuff you don't like, but it's gonna happen. And it's not your choice, but it's gonna happen. But you still have agency. You still have a choice about how you're going to respond to these things that happen. And so that's what this new series is all about. We're going to talk about choosing blessing, and choosing wisdom, and choosing love. And I hope you can join us for the starting the weekend of January 1st and 2nd.

Well, you know one of my favorite things about Christmas is how—and you probably like this too—it just fills me with all this nostalgia for my own childhood, right? It just takes me back to my childhood in the 60s. This is a photograph that we actually—I had never seen this before. My wife, Lori, found it in some shoebox somewhere in our house. You know how this happens. But it's a snapshot of me and my little sister. I think this was 1967, Christmas Eve, and it reminds me of a couple of things.

It reminds me of my gift-giving strategy in those days was to get my sister stuff I wanted for Christmas. Did anybody else do this? Like, "Merry Christmas, can I have the hot wheel I just gave you," right? And it also reminds me of one of my favorite activities on Christmas every year. I loved to just lie flat on my back and look up through the Christmas tree branches at the lights and at the ornaments, right? I could do this for—it seemed like hours. Now I think part of the reason if I can be so bold is because back in my day, I think we had more kind of creative options for Christmas lights.

These days they all look the same, but in my day, here's some of the lights we had—see if you can remember some of these—we had bubble lights. Does anybody remember the bubble light? So what the bubble light was was a light bulb with water inside that boiled when the light got hot. That's all it was, and it fascinated us, right? Kids, this is how people were entertained before the internet. We watched water boil. And then big advance in technology, the aluminum tree developed. Anybody remember the aluminum tree? Now how did you light the aluminum tree? Well, you had the rotating multi-colored floodlight, right? And it would shine onto the aluminum tree and it would spin slowly, so your tree—your whole tree would turn like pink and orange and purple and all kinds of colors not normally found in nature.

And so that was the aluminum tree and the floodlight. But my biggest memory of Christmas tree lights was the giant bulbs that got hotter than the surface of the sun. Raise your hand if it was ever singed by one of these lights, right? Speaking of Christmas in the 60s, you know how I told you we just discovered that little photograph in a shoebox somewhere. Well, this home video was just discovered two weeks ago, and it's been posted all over the internet. It's a video of the family of Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife Coretta, and all of their kids on Christmas Eve, 1967.

And this turned out to be their final Christmas together, sadly, as a family. So you can just imagine the kind of the antagonism and the threats of violence that were surrounding this little family. But here they are in their living room and all the kids are getting their instruments around mom, and they're finding comfort as they sing for Dr. King and a friend of theirs in their living room. Comfort from a very familiar Christmas carol. Watch this. Holy and the so tender and mild. Safe and heavenly good. Safe and heavenly good.

Isn't that charming, heartwarming, right? I love it. What a discovery. And I want to return to the song they sang, Silent Night, in just a few minutes. But first, I want to talk about what that song is about, the light that came into our night. Let's ponder for a few minutes the light of Christmas. And the best place to go in the whole Bible to talk about that is the Gospel of John, chapter 1. And I just want to give you just a little bit of background on this.

First of all, does anybody want to guess and shout it out if you think you know, who do you think wrote the Gospel of John? Let me hear you. John, you all get an A in Bible class tonight. That's very good. Now the interesting thing about that is that John was a very old man when he wrote it. He was in his 90s, and he had seen a lot of darkness. John was the last of the surviving 12 original followers of Jesus, the 12 apostles. All the others are dead and gone. John's the only one left. He had seen them all go. He'd seen his beloved city Jerusalem surrounded and attacked by Roman armies that pulled it down and completely destroyed it.

He himself was sentenced in exile to a prison island. He's seen a lot of darkness. And now he's in his 90s. He knows he doesn't have much longer to live. And he decides to write his own Gospel, his own account of Jesus, and he's going to start it with Christmas. But when John writes about Christmas, he does not write about the manger and Joseph and Mary. Why? Because the other Gospels had already been written. And so everybody already knew that story. And it's almost like John's an old man and he thinks, "I don't have time to tell you what you all already know. I want to tell you the meaning behind that."

And so it's like he picks up his pen and he unrolls a blank scroll, and he tries to think of how he can summarize the meaning of what happened that holy night as short as he possibly can in one concise sentence. And here's what he comes up with. John 1:9. And let's read this out loud together. Let me hear you. "The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world." You heard Josh and Kayla read much of this passage to you right before Jack's song. But just for a few minutes, I want to focus on three specific verses where John really leans into this metaphor of light.

And John talks about three amazing properties of natural light that are also true of Jesus. And if you just go with me here and let your imagination be captured by this, I think it's going to bump up your wonder level on this night, this Christmas night. First John says, think about this, light gives life. Light gives life. The sun is responsible for all life on earth, right? Ultimately everything lives off sunlight plants needed to grow. People get vitamin D from it. All the energy and all the life on our whole planet ultimately comes from the sun. And in a greater way, that's true of Jesus.

John says, "In him was," what? "Life." And that life was the light of all people. In him was," what again? "Life, not just good ideas. Not just a concept. Not just a philosophy because we don't need a concept. We're dying and we need life." And Jesus brings us new life. And maybe you really resonate with this today because you walked in and frankly, if truth were told, you feel dead inside. You're full of regrets and you're very well aware of your sin or self-destructive behavior and how much it's sapping life and joy from you.

So the really good news is this. The source of all life came at Christmas to offer you new life and fresh starts and forgiveness and second chances because the sun, light gives life. And then the second amazing property of life that's also true of Jesus is this light endures. Light endures. This is truly an amazing property of light that I don't—I feel like we don't really understand. For example, when you look up at the stars tonight, do you understand how long it takes for the light of those stars to get to the back of your eyeball? Let me just give you one example. The closest galaxy to our galaxy is Andromeda, right? That's the closest one. Do you know how long it takes light from Andromeda to reach Earth? Two and a half million years. But it gets here.

So I just want you to think of the trillions of miles that light travels through the deepest utter darkness of space and none of that space and none of that darkness can ever successfully extinguish it. It gets here because light endures through all the darkness. And the same exact thing is true of Jesus. Watch what John says. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not. And I think at this point John thinks, "What's the word? What's the word?" Because again, think of what he's endured. He has lived through seeing crucifixions and imprisonments and house churches burned down. He's seen the darkness try to extinguish the light.

But he's alive and he realizes they haven't done it. It's still here. He saw Jesus crucified and resurrected. And so he thinks, "What's the right word?" and the darkness has not overcome it. And the word he uses in the original Greek language that he wrote this in is the word for a predator attacking prey, like a lion attacking a zebra. He says, "They tried and they couldn't do it. Caesar couldn't do it. And Herod couldn't do it. And Nero couldn't do it. And for 2,000 years they couldn't do it. The light is still here." And maybe you really need to hear that tonight.

Because you watch the news and sometimes it seems like darkness is winning and evil and injustice seem to have the upper hand or closer to home. Forget the news. In your own life it feels like the hits just keep on coming, whether it's sickness or other struggles, money, relationship troubles. Whatever who wrote this, who was it again? John. Think of everything he went through. John could have felt discouraged too. How could he not just give up? Because he was absolutely convinced of that. That light came into our world and the darkness can't overcome it.

And that means no matter what happens in this life, no matter what you face in life, no matter how stark the danger, how sharp the heartache, how deep the discouragement, there is a light that shines in the darkness and no amount of darkness and no type of darkness and no length of darkness can ever put it out. That means there is always hope because Christ's light has shined in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Not then, not now, and not ever. Amen? Not ever. Not ever.

And finally, light reveals. Light reveals, right? Like ever get up in the morning and think, hey, I look pretty good. Three hours later you get a good look in the bright sunlight in a mirror and you're horrified. Does anybody ever have that happen? Because I've had that. Light reveals. So what does the light of Christ reveal? Well, watch this. John says, this is so good. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father has made him known. What's this mean?

Listen, the guy who writes this, who is it again? John, he knew Jesus. And he's saying, you want to know what God is like? You take a long look at Jesus and you see him healing and you see him welcoming and you see him feeding and you see him standing up against religious abusers and you see him spending his quality time with society's outcasts and you see him giving his life to save us. John's saying, that's what God's like. That's what God's like.

And here's why this is so important to know. It's kind of like this. I grew up without a dad because my dad died when I was very, very little and I don't know what it's like to have a dad, right? And then my mom remarries when I'm about 12 and in fact, speaking of old pictures, here we are all dressed for church. When I was 12 years old, there's my mom, there's my stepdad, Jet, when he'd just come into our family and there's my little sister. Now the problem is I imagined the worst kind of dad because I didn't know what dads were like and so I imagined a dad who'd be strict and mean and angry and then I found out that my stepdad was ex-military.

He'd been 20 years in the military, retired, so I'm like, "Great, I got a drill instructor for a stepdad." And I was completely intimidated. Now our first summer together, he had heard that I'd never been to camp in my life. So he works it out so I could go to a two-week summer camp up at Lake Tahoe and I hated it. I wrote letters literally every single day home. I am not kidding you. They amounted to this, "I'm homesick. I'm going to go home. Why do I have to stay? I hate this." Totally throwing this expensive gift in his face.

Then Friday afternoon, five days into this two-week camp, I see my stepdad pulling into the camp parking lot in his little Datsun, getting out, slamming the door, looking around and spotting me and striding straight toward me. I feared the worst, I have to tell you. My stomach was churning, thinking, "Oh no, we had to drive five hours to get here, five hours to get mad at this new wimpy stepson. He's going to tell me to get over it and be a man." And I was almost crying out of fear and he walks up and looks at me and hugs me. And with tears coming down his face, he says, "Son, son, if you want to go home, we can go home right now." And I was astonished.

He read all my letters and he came all that way because I really mattered to him. And now I'm the one who's crying and I'm crying out of newfound love for him. It changed our relationship even after I looked at him and I said, "Well, I like camp. Now I want to stay. Bye." He still didn't get mad at me. True story. You know, a lot of people stay away from faith because they get the impression somehow that the God of the Bible is horrible. But what John's saying is, and that was happening in John's day too, but he's saying, "No, no, Jesus came to say, 'God's like this.' And he came all that distance because you really matter to him."

You know, as a pastor, one of my greatest joys is seeing people who expected God to be drill instructor mean God and then experience God as a loving father. So how do you get to experience that? Well, here's the really great news. John says, "To all who receive him, to all who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." You don't have to earn it. Just receive it. We all have a choice. We can choose to retreat further into the shadows, you know? Doomscroll all the bad headlines, hear the negative voices, and listen to all your regrets, or you can come out of the darkness, receive the light of Christ, and then reflect that light by loving other people in real, practical, and deep ways.

You know, this is why candle lighting is such a great symbol. Take your candle out and look at it for a second. You know what? Something about these candles? These candles can't light themselves, and you can't save yourself. The candles need to let light come into them, and then they shine, and they can pass that light onto others that is just like you and me and the light of Christ. When you get that, it can light up all your dark days, and that brings me back to silent night.

And I'll close with this. Two hundred and three years ago, the people of Europe were in deep darkness. The Napoleonic Wars had just ended millions of lives lost. On Christmas Eve, 1818, a flood hit the little village of Oberndorf, Austria. It left the church organ damaged. It couldn't play for the candlelight service that night. And with only hours to go before it started, the pastor sent a desperate message to his friend Joe Moore. Bring your guitar. Need help. Joe shows up, and as the clock ticks down the minutes to the service, they write a song using Joe's guitar, this very guitar.

And on Christmas Eve, 1818, for the first time, the villagers sang "Silent Night," which was just composed as an emergency song because the organ didn't work. Well, that might have been the end of the song, except the organ repairman next week found the sheet music, shared it with some folk singers that he knew who traveled around Europe. It starts to catch on. Then it really gains fame when Christmas Eve, 1914, World War I, troops on both sides begin singing the song in their own languages and slowly climb out of their trenches and enjoy the famous Christmas Eve truce when war actually ended for one silent night.

Oh, and that guitar, great part of the story, it went missing for almost a century because when Joe Moore died, they auctioned off his estate and somebody bought it, and it wound up in a little tavern, a pub, in a village in Austria where it hung on the wall and was wielded at least once as a weapon in a bar brawl. You could say it became a percussion instrument for just a moment. Well, finally people realized what it was, and it went into safekeeping, and then it emerged in its first major public appearance in 100 years when a few days before Christmas on 1965 in a Bing Crosby Christmas special, Bing played the guitar Silent Night was played on as his choir sang Silent Night.

40 million people watched, including German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who sent a request to Bing Crosby's producer, "Can I use that guitar in 10 days on Christmas Eve?" And they used it as a choir sang Silent Night at the Berlin Wall to try to bring hope to that divided nation. I mean, think of all the dark days that this one song has seen people through the Cold War, the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, the final Christmas that the King family spent together, and now tonight our own strange days of darkness.

What is it about this song that inspires such hope? Well, it's because it's about the truth that on that Silent Night, Holy Night, something happened. The Son of God loves pure light, came into our world, radiant beams from His holy face began the dawn of redeeming grace, "Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth, Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth." Let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me? Would our heads bow? I just want to lead you in a simple Christmas prayer, and you can pray it silently in your heart as I pray out loud.

Jesus, I'm drawn to your light. I don't understand it all, but I'm drawn to you, and I want to open my life to you now. I want to be a follower of you. Maybe for the first time you're praying this maybe as a recommitment. I want to turn from darkness and into your light, and then I want to shine your light into the darkness. In your name I pray on this Christmas Eve, amen.

Well, tonight we're going to start the candle lighting, which is a beautiful physical metaphor of what we talked about tonight spiritually because of this. So, Adrian standing up here, he's got one candle lit. From that one candle, all the candles in this whole room are going to be lit in a very short time. He's going to light the ushers as they come forward, and then you'll receive the light into your candle. And here's a tip. Remember, once your candle is lit, leave it straight up and let the person next to you move their wick onto your candle.

But I encourage you to make this candle lighting moment very personal because this represents the light of Jesus coming into your life and then spreading that light to others as it began on that one silent night. Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. Round yon virgin mother and child, holy infant so tender and mild. Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace.

Oh, silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. Round yon virgin mother and child, holy infant so tender and mild. Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace. Silent night, holy night, silent night, holy night, silent night, holy night.

For just a moment, let's have all of the electrical lights turned off in the room so that the only light that's left as much as possible is candlelight. And now I invite you to lift your candles up and look around the room. Never forget this sight because this is what happens when faced with darkness we initially then daily receive the light of Christ and then pass it on. It makes a difference. Keep those candles lifted. Would you sing it with me? Let's sing. Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. Round yon virgin mother and child, holy infant so tender and mild. Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace. Lord may all of us here shine your light all through the new year. Amen.