Light has Dawned (Christmas)

There are many little sermonettes you are subjected to in the media. For example, not long ago I heard John Denver give us his one-word capsule of what the true meaning of Christmas was. He says, “The meaning of Christmas is people.” There was an ad in The New York Times recently that said, “The meaning of Christmas is that love will triumph and that we will be able to put together a world of unity and peace.” It occurs to me when I look at what all these little sermonettes seem to have in common they tend to run along the lines of that well-known song that was the theme of a Live Aid concert five years ago:

We are the world,
We are the children.
We are the ones who make a brighter day,
So let’s start giving.

Now that message is not just a bit different than the real message of Christmas, but it’s diametrically opposed. In the 1985 Live Aid concert, when you had all those famous musical personalities up there singing…

Bob Dylan looked very uncomfortable. He was up there, and afterwards, there was a press conference, and he explained why he felt so uncomfortable. He said, flatly, he felt uncomfortable singing that song because, “Humankind cannot save itself.” At that point, Bob Dylan, though he wasn’t talking about Christmas at this spot, was giving us the message of Christmas, and it’s the message of this text. The message of this text is… The world can’t save itself. That’s the message of Christmas, and that’s the purpose of this particular passage.

I tried to point out chapter 9 starts with the word nevertheless (or, however), and therefore, you have to look and see what happened in chapter 8. Otherwise, you can’t understand chapter 9, and at the end of chapter 8, we read, “Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God. Then they will look toward the earth…”

See? They’re looking toward the earth. “…and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness. Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light…”

You see what’s happening is, at the end of chapter 8, we see the Israelites, and they’re crushed under famine, and they’re crushed under all sorts of crushing social and psychological problems, and they’re running everywhere. They’re looking to the great intellectuals. They’re looking to mediums and spiritualists and channelers, and they’re trying to find an answer to their problems. What is the answer to their problems? The more they look at the earth, they see more and more darkness.

Then 9 starts. Nevertheless, there is a light to dawn, but it’s not a light that can be developed. It’s not a light that comes that we develop when we realize, “We are the world, we are the children,” and we begin to give. It’s a light that’s not developed. It’s discovered. That’s the message of Christmas. It’s from beyond us. It’s God intervening. It’s God erupting into our situation to bring light from the outside. Yes, things are very dark. There’s utter darkness. We keep looking, and we keep looking to the earth. We keep looking, and it gets darker in darkness. Nevertheless…