“More Than a Day; More Than a Season”

John 1:1-5

All the snow has turned to water;

Christmas day has come and gone;

Broken toys and faded colors;

Are all that’s left to linger on.

All the snow has turned to water. Christmas day has come and gone. Broken toys and faded colors are all that’s left to linger on. Who said that? Who wrote that? A singer and songwriter named John Prine. Mr. Prine is one of my favorite singers, but there are times when his music is depressingly pessimistic. The man seems to have a gift for finding the dark cloud hiding beyond the silver lining.

He can even take the joy out of Christmas, but then maybe that’s how he personally experiences it. And his experience does have some superficial validity. Yes, according to the calendar, Christmas day has come and gone. December 25^th, 2004 is a memory. It’s over. It’s done. It’s gone. A lot of those bright new Christmas toys probably are broken by now. The bright, beautiful paper in which we wrapped our presents is mostly trash, its colors already fading away in some dump. Those wonderful Christmas dinners so many of us enjoyed are nothing more than leftovers. Visiting family members have headed back home. Any Christmas snow we might have had will eventually melt, if it hasn’t already.

If we approach Christmas from John Prine’s pessimistic and secular perspective, then, yes, it is over. But in terms of the church calendar, the order of our liturgy from season to season, the season of Christmas is still being celebrated. Ecclesiastically speaking Christmas does not end until Epiphany begins on January 6^th. Counting today, there are still four more days of Christmas.

Furthermore, when we view Christmas through the eyes of faith and from the perspective of God’s Word, Christmas is not a one-day event that comes and goes on an annual basis. Nor is it just a season. Christmas is something eternal. It is an act of creation rooted in God’s love. It is the event that brought, and still brings, God into ultimate communion with the human race, an event that forever changed the course of human history.

Without that divine mystery we call the Incarnation, that moment when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, broken toys and faded colors would be the best we could ever expect. But Jesus was born. The Word did become flesh. Emmanuel walked among us. Jesus, as God-with-us, became one of us, and lived as one of us. He came bringing the gift of abundant life. He spoke God’s truth and demonstrated God’s will.

His ultimate demonstration of that will took him to death on a cross. But death didn’t have final word. There was resurrection. Evil could not defeat our Lord Jesus. The devil’s own darkness could not extinguish the light of God’s love. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

This light still shines in the darkness of human sin and despair. It’s not a candle we light on the first Sunday of Advent, and blow out at midnight on Christmas Eve. It’s not some humanly contrived bit of holiday cheer that we turn on for a few hours on a particular day. This is God’s light, a light that he spoke into being long before we were ever created. It’s something eternal over which we have no control. We didn’t create it, nor can we destroy it. We can never imprison it within the confines of the calendar or clock. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

That’s the great truth missing in John Prine’s song, the powerful reality of God’s eternal love. His song lacks hope for anything beyond the here and now of human experience. Its words communicate a surrender to the darkness. But before we point a finger of judgment at Mr. Prine, let’s be honest and admit that those words he wrote can sometimes reflect our own feelings about Christmas. Theologically I agree much more with John the Apostle than I do John the songwriter. But there are days, even Christmas days, when I’m tempted to buy into the depression of Mr. Prine or the cynicism of the old Peggy Lee song, “ Is That All There Is?” That’s when the cynical questions start buzzing around in my head and in my heart.

Is John Prine’s vision of Christmas all there is? Are broken toys and faded colors the only legacy of Christmas? The darkness that surrounds us and invades our hearts tells us that, “Yes! That is all there is.” The depressing reality of living as sinful people in a sinful world says to us, “Yes! The darkness is stronger than the light.” Our every failure, disappointment, defeat, and lapse into sin tells us that, “Yes! The darkness has overcome the light.”

But remember, this is the Devil’s own darkness we’re talking about. And the Devil is the Prince of Lies. When we take him seriously, then deep within us the light does go out. We surrender to the darkness, believing that this really is all there is. In the words of Isaiah, we become those people who walk in darkness.

Darkness is a reality. So are sin, hatred, violence, depression, and despair. They infect our world and afflict our lives. Death, that reality we all eventually share, steals life from us and those we love. But it cannot steal the abundant life that came into the world with Jesus Christ. This life is the light that shines in the darkness, a light that darkness cannot overcome.

December 25^th comes and goes. The day we call Christmas is over until it rolls around again near the end of this year. This particular Christmas season will end on Thursday. More than that, the days of life allotted to each of us will come and go. In every season of our lives we will be afflicted by the darkness. History as we know it, the history we think we control with the clock and the calendar, is winding down even as I speak. The days we call life are numbered. All our times and all our seasons are going to end.

Days, seasons, and years come and go, leaving behind the broken and faded remains of things we once thought important. But in the words of Yogi Berra, “It ain’t over ‘till it’s over,” and by the grace of God, it ain’t ever over!

“Who shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus?” asked the Apostle Paul. “Nothing in all of creation,” is his answer.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Christmas, the real Christmas of God’s making, is not over. It does not end. For those of us in Christ, it has only begun. Amen.