Rev. Mark Lukens: Finding the light in difficult times this Christmas

It seems to me that every year, I am tempted to start this Christmas message with the same opening sentence: “these are difficult times we live in.” Maybe I’m a “glass-half-full-kind-of-person,” or maybe it’s just true. At any given time, a lot of God’s children are struggling here and all over the world. The fact of the matter is that life itself is a struggle, all of us feel like Job sometimes, victimized by circumstances or by choices we or someone else has made, Whether we live in a comfortable home or on the street, pretty much all of us know what it means to struggle, what it means to fail, what it means — as the apostle Paul so famously said — “to do the things that we do not want to do.” It is part of the human condition.

Of course, that is not the half of it, because along with our personal struggles and trials are those that affect all of us. We found that out five years ago when Hurricane Sandy hit this area. Our individual problems suddenly became subsumed in the wake of a great disaster that affected our whole community. With the struggle to survive and ultimately get past this terrible event, many of us found not only a sense of perspective, but also a renewed sense of community as we sought each other out, shared our stories and our pain and worked together to try to make something better come out of the wreckage that the storm had wrought. Most importantly perhaps, we found out that even in times of trial, God offers us a way to build something new, something better, and that if we are willing and able to see it, God will help us to make that happen.

I think that is a lot of what Christmas is about. God came among us as a helpless infant, utterly dependent on human beings for his survival, but also, (as babies do) requiring a total commitment from his struggling parents even as they wrestled with a myriad of problems of their own. That’s the way love is, it demands all even as it suffers all, because only when we are utterly committed to it, can it grow into a full flower and offer the abundant life that is God’s will for us. God as a helpless infant, his love compelling him to offer himself to his children so that they could learn what genuine grace is, salvation inextricably tied to our willingness to offer ourselves to each other in his holy name, as sheep and as shepherds. Every year I see the “Keep Christ in Christmas” signs and decorations. We do that, I think, by imitating the love of God, by being willing to give not just our stuff, but ourselves to one another as the gifts we were made to be. Each of us to all of us. Merry Christmas from Bethany Church!