I love using symbols when I'm leading worship, whether it's during sermon or working with
children. I find that symbols often work better than words for getting ideas across to people,
for helping us see things in new ways.
Christmas, of course, is full of all sorts of wonderful symbols, many of which come to us from
other traditions, but which Christians have happily adapted over the years- things like
evergreen branches and trees as symbols of God's ever enduring love, stars that show us the
way, candles and lights bring God's light into our lives and so on.
Even candy canes have a connection to the real meaning of Christmas. Their hooked shape
symbolizes a shepherd's crook, the white is for purity of J and the red for the joy he brings.
Kids in church always love that one because it's an excuse for me to give them candy canes at
the start of Advent, the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas.
This year I discovered a new symbol of Advent, that preparation time for Christmas.
It was in that reading from Malachi that you heard today. It says that God's messenger will be
like a refiner's fire or fuller's soap. I don't know how many of you know much about refining
metals, but it involves heating them to very high temperatures so you can separate the pure
metal from the impurities.
Fuller's soap was used by fullers, people who cleaned sheep fleeces. It was very harsh soap,
it had to be in order to get all the muck, oil and other nasty things out of the fleece.
Those images fascinated me. They're so different from our usual soft and pretty symbols of
Christmas. As I said that Sunday, there aren't any Christmas cards or carols featuring refiner's
fire or fuller's soap. No “O holy soap of Bethlehem, come wash us clean tonight.” No, “Joy to
world fire has come, to burn our wrongs away.”
They aren't the sort of images we want to think about in the lead up to Christmas, are they?
We would rather focus on gifts and lights, decorations and special treats. We tend to want to
keep things light and pleasant, especially since there can be so much stress around
Christmas, what with high expectations, family drama, overspending and so on. Why add
something hard like self examination?
But sometimes things happen in our lives that jolt us, and force us to look more closely at our
selves, and when that happens near Christmas, it can be quite profound, if we let ourselves go
there.
That's what happened to me this year. Two days after I preached on how we need to accept
the refiner's fire, welcome the fuller's soap, how should be open to where we need to let go
and grow, we had a death in our family. It was very sudden and shook us all. The hardest part
for me was that although I loved the person who died, it was someone whom you might call
challenging.
It was someone who had deeply hurt people I love. So I did my best to support those who were
feeling the most grief, but deep inside, I realized I was feeling a lot of anger.
Somehow death let loose anger I had been carrying for years. It was the last thing I expected.
I talked to a few people about it, and they all said of course you're angry, you're human! They
said, it's completely understandable that you have anger towards this person. They reminded
me that anger in and of self isn't bad, sometimes is needed in order to motivate change.
But in this case, soon realized that anger wasn't helpful. Anger wouldn't change anything, in
fact, it could get in the way of me supporting those who were feeling the most grief. So I
thought, well I'm pretty busy right now, what with Xmas and dealing with details around this
death, I'll sort through my anger issues later, maybe in the New Year, or the spring.
But soon I realized I couldn't wait that long. The problem was Xmas. I had already decided
that I wanted to talk about light tonight, the idea that Jesus brings light to our times of
darkness, that the world needs the light he brings now more than ever.
But as I mulled over the readings and thought about light, that darned verse from Malachi kept
coming back to me about refiners fire and fuller's soap. I realized the light of Christ isn't just
about bringing light to situations of darkness in our lives, it's also about shining God's light into
our places of shadow, so we can see where we need that refiner's fire and fuller's soap.
When I imagined the light of Christ shining into my life, all I could see was big shadow from my
anger. I couldn't truly celebrate Xmas unless I started to work on letting go of it and on
opening myself to offer forgiveness.
I can't say that shadow is completely gone yet, but at least I'm aware off it and I'm working on
it, and I think that's enough for now, enough to feel that I can welcome the light of Christ this
Xmas, that I can preach with integrity tonight, that I can even start feel love where before there
was only anger.
When it comes to Christmas, we can look at the light it brings in two ways. We can see it as
twinkling electric lights, there to make us feel good for a couple of days, to brighten up the
house, or we can see it as pure, deep light, coming from something beyond us, from a power
of love greater than anything we can imagine, a light that can illumine our lives, not just our
homes.
And if we see Christmas as a source of love and light, a moment, an event, that connects us to
the divine in powerful way, then we have to accept that that light shines in our lives in several
different ways. It shines in our darkness and on our darkness, and what I learned this year is
that sometimes it has to shine on our darkness before it shines in our darkness. What I mean
is that sometimes we have to acknowledge the places of shadow in our lives and hearts before
we can let God's light shine and help us through shadows that surround us.
Christmas nudges us to look at ourselves and our lives more honestly to name the places of
shadow and to open them to God's light. Are we holding onto unresolved, unhealthy anger?
Are we avoiding addressing issues that are hurting us and others? Are we judging others,
individuals or groups, and unfairly blaming them for difficulties in our lives and our world?
The passage from John 1 says not only that Jesus is the light of the world, but also that what
has come into being in him is life, and that life is the light of all people. That's pretty powerful,
when think about it. Xmas is about life and light, the two go together.
Right now the world around us seems pretty dark to many people. There is a lack of stability in
world relations, growing concern about climate change, growing division between rich and
poor, list could go on.
But Xmas reminds us that there is light, that Jesus preached a gospel of justice and love,
that he gave us solid teachings on how to address societal issues like oppression, division and
inequality and personal issues like despair, resentment and fear.
Most of all, Xmas reminds us that no matter how deep the darkness in our personal lives or in
the world, God's light, the light that comes into world through Jesus at Xmas, is more powerful
than the deepest darkness.
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot, will not, overcome it.
We are called first to shine that light on our own darkness, to acknowledge and name our own
shadows, and then to let it shine in world, to trust that light to lead us in finding our own way,
no matter how small, of being a source of light ourselves.
This Christmas may each of us open ourselves to that light of life, letting it shine on our
darkness and in our darkness, and through us, may the world be made a little brighter.