Shining the Light of Christ in a Dark World at Advent
I don’t like the dark.
I am blessed to live in a part of the world where the sun shines more days than it doesn’t, but as Christmas comes closer, the days become shorter, Darker, colder. This season, the four Sundays preceding the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25, was named by our Christian forbears Advent. In the Northern Hemisphere, Advent begins as we move through the shortest days of the year. It is a season that arrives inside darkness, not after it, and in moving through the rhythms of Advent, we are asked to sit in the darkness, not to rush past it. Yet, we are not asked to “get comfortable” in the darkness, to accept it as normal, or to pretend that we do not yearn for light. Instead, the darkness teaches our souls to echo the cry of the Psalmist:
I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
(Psalm 130 NIV).
The worship traditions of Advent train us to turn toward the Light of Christ when the world feels dim.
Advent derives its name from the Latin term adventus. Literally: “coming.” Advent worship is the church’s intentional practice of moving toward the Light of Christ in a dark world: remembering His first coming, longing for His return, and experiencing His presence through the Spirit now. Advent is not sentimental nostalgia, it is holy anticipation shaped by trust in God’s promises.
In his gospel, the apostle John writes:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (…)
The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
(John 1: 1-5, 9 -14)
The Light of the World, the one who sung the stars into existence, humbled himself to view them within the body of a man. The Light we worship is not abstract. He has a face, a voice, a body: flesh. Light and flesh that dwelt among us.
And so, in this darkest time of the year, the physical darkness helps us to openly lament our spiritual darkness. We live in the already but not yet of Christ’s triumph over the grave and yet wait for his final victory. Our suffering has not yet been removed, but the light redefines it. Through our worship, in reading the promises contained in God’s word, in singing the carols, the church is trained to wait, to hope. The lighting of candles is not decoration; it is a declaration: Christ has come, Christ is coming, Christ is with us now.
In worship we practice and proclaim this. We sing hope before we feel it; we trust in the promises before we see the fulfillment. Advent is the celebration of the promise that Christ will bring an end to all that is contrary to the ways of God, that one day there will be an end to the darkness. We proclaim our longing for the second adventus of the Light of the World.
John wrote again in his Revelation that one day:
No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light (Revelation 22: 3-5a).
As John wrote in his gospel, that light shines in the darkness even now, and the darkness has not overcome it. Advent hope is not escapism, it is confident expectation grounded in Christ’s victory.
Let our worship this Advent instill in us a fresh hope as we look back to the birth of the eternal light in a stable in Bethlehem and know that that light shines even now in the darkness. Let us look forward to the day when there will be no more despair, no more death, no more night. May this Advent teach us to wait faithfully, hope stubbornly, and to worship the Light in the midst of the darkness.
For Christ has come, Christ will come again, and Christ, through the Holy Spirit, comes to us now. In the light of that hope, even as we long for the light of the sun, may this season of Advent help us to long for the reign of the Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.