Everlasting Light | 12/24/25

In 1865, Phillips Brooks (1835–1893), an Episcopal priest, then rector of Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia, had the opportunity to visit the Holy Land during Christmas. One evening after dinner the group rode on horseback two hours until they broached a hillside and looked down on the town of Bethlehem. It inspired him to write the poem which his music minister put to music, producing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” with that enduring line, “In thy dark streets shineth, the everlasting light; the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” In the middle of the darkness, there comes a light. Jesus is the light of God breaking into the darkness of history. Jesus is the light breaking into the darkness of human sin. Jesus is the light of God breaking into your life. The light of Jesus is not a temporary or momentary light. This is the light that never ends. The light shines in the darkness. Darkness cannot beat it back. Darkness cannot overcome light. Light wins. Jesus wins. And his victory is forever. Receive the light of Christ into your dark streets tonight. 

Transcript

In 1866, a man named Phillips Brooks, the Episcopal Priest of Holy Trinity Church in Philadelphia, was riding horseback in the Holy Land from Jerusalem to Bethlehem after dinner under the darkening sky. He had suffered a lot during the Civil War. His brother died. His church suffered. A once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Holy Land was to restore his weary soul. For two hours, they rode out in the dusk. They crested a hilltop in the dark and looked down into a small valley, and there in the night he was met by the glow, the light of Bethlehem. It moved him; it rocked him. The whole thing landed on his heart so powerfully, he woke up the next day and wrote a poem. Back in Philadelphia, he gave it to his music minister who wrote the tune. [PICTURE] “O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie! Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by. Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light; the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”  
 
 He imagined himself on that same hill, looking over that same town, on a different night 1866 years ago. Of course, it isn’t because Bethlehem is Bethlehem. It’s the child born. The Son given. That’s where our hopes and fears are met. Riding horseback in the dark, it must have been such a relief to find the light. This is a luminous event, the birth of Jesus. The greatest moment in history—God entered the world he made! But the city sleeps through it. The Light of the World is born, but the people can’t see it. All the hopes, all the fears, all the longings of us all, they all lead to this little child, but they can’t get there. Can we? Can you? 
 
 This Christmas, it is all about the light, the Everlasting Light. We have seen enough darkness. “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.” (Isaiah 9:2) It’s all about light breaking on darkness. Maybe that’s all this is, really. Some say Christmas is just a baptized version of ancient winter solstice rituals born out of fear when the days got short. We needed light to encourage us. Actually, some of what we do does go back to those superstitions. You might notice a lot of folks cut down evergreen trees and dragged them into their homes for some reason. The Bible never says to do that. That was a way of saying, “I sure hope death doesn’t win. I sure hope life endures winter. I sure hope the sun comes back.” But that’s not why 2.6 billion Christians are gathered around the world. Something happened. Light has come.  
 
 Now, this doesn’t sound like the Christmas passage we are used to. Where’s the census, the pregnant lady on the donkey, the shepherds keeping watch by night? Yeah, their in a different text. John starts with a cosmic story. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) Now that’s a big claim. In the beginning. If you know some Bible, you know that is exactly how Genesis starts, that’s how creation starts. If you are going to start your book with “In the beginning,” you better have something big to say! John is saying something big. Something as big as creation itself has happened. As big as the start of the whole universe, something new has been created, something new has started. The Word. God, he says, is much more complex than we thought. God is real. God is God. God is also the Word. The Word is also God. It’s beyond our understanding. In Genesis God spoke a Word and all things came into being. God said, and there was. All of this, everything that exists, came from God. God made life. God spoke. And do you remember what God said? God said, “Let there be light.”  
 
 “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.” (John 1:4-5) And that doesn’t mean that maybe one day the darkness will overcome it. No. It can never overcome it. The darkness cannot destroy the light. Light and darkenss are opposites, but not equals. The light shines in the darkness. Forever. The source of eternal light is also the source of eternal life. Everything that exists, all that was created, all life, where does life come from? It all goes back to this one moment when God spoke a Word. Nothing that was made was made without that. We have a Creator. God made us. What does that have to do with Christmas? This Creator God wants to know you, and wants you to know him. God wants a personal relationship with you. For that, the Word became flesh. The Word, the Life, the Light, became flesh. The source of all existence, all being, was born of the Virgin Mary, wrapped up in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger. Is that an embarassment to our philosophical minds, to our scientific thinking or to our notions of what a God should be? It is not a shame; it is a glory. “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 1:14) 
 
 The writer, John, knew Jesus well. They were buds. They were bros. John followed Jesus as a Rabbi and teacher and guide. They also camped out, they also ate lunch, they also cracked jokes, took care of each other when they got sick, all that stuff. Jesus was a normal guy to John. But looking back, John realizes, this man, Jesus of Nazareth, was God in the flesh. Look at what this passage says Jesus is. I’m looking from bottom to top here, “the one and only Son of the Father,” “the Word become flesh,” the light that gives all light, the life, the One through Whom all things were made, the Word, the Word who was, the Word who is, God. God made himself approachable, relatable, a man with whom you and I could have a relationship. That’s Jesus. Not just a baby, not just a man, but the Light of the World. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5) 
 
 Technically, darkness doesn’t exist. It’s just the absence of light. Like technically cold doesn’t exist; it is just the absence of heat. What about evil? Does evil exist? Or is it just the absence of good? People struggle with this question of evil. What is evil? Where does it come from? Why would a good God allow it to be? St. Augustine long ago argued that evil is like darkness, or cold, it is not a substance but the empty cavity caused by the absence of a substantial good. Good is a thing that exists, but evil is just a hole. I don’t know. I don’t want to get in a fight with St. Augustine, but I’ve seen some evil. Darkness, cold, evil, whether it has substance or not, we experience it, don’t we? The experience is real. We’ve seen some evil. A friend said to me the other day, “On that day Charlie Kirk got shot, I just closed the door to my office and wept, all day.” He said, “I have to be careful who I say that to.” Really? A mass shooting on Bondi Beach turned the first night of Hannukah into a nightmare of horror. Students at Brown University. There’s evil in every set of headlines. Children abducted, helpless slaughtered, and the value of every life bearing the image of God seems a forgotten idea. I’ve seen evil. My family, like yours I’m sure, has been through the darkness this year. Unexpected loss. Unfair death. Hospital nights and graveside tears. Darkness is real. So is the light. 
 
  A shadow is caused when the light is blocked. If you turn your back to the light, if you turn away from the source of light, then your eyes will be pointed to the shadow, to the darkness. “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.” (John 1:4-5) Why, then, the darkness? Why, then, the death? Something is turned the wrong direction. With your back to the light, all you see is shadow. If the light goes brighter, the shadow gets deeper, the darkness gets thicker, the evil gets more horrible, more terrible, more…evil. “Evil” spelled backwards is “live.” Something needs to turn around. That’s Christmas. That’s why Jesus came. That’s why God took on flesh. That’s why Jesus grew up, taught the way of life, shed the light of grace and truth in every direction, then, here’s the hard part, that’s why Jesus died. Jesus took on the darkness. With our backs to the light, Jesus ran ahead of us into the darkness and died the death that we were walking steadily toward. He came. He was born. He lived. He died for us. Then he rose again from the dead. Now Jesus is our everlasting light. Turn to him. Turn for the first time; turn again. Turn to him and to his light. 
 
 These cosmic stories matter, you see. It’s not just about the sweet little baby in the manger or the happy twinkle lights in the dark. You have a need for the eternal light. Your soul was made for eternal things. You will not know peace until your soul is resting in this everlasting light; not just light, but everlasting light.  
 
  When I was a kid I loved to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I didn’t like the movie much. It was too far from the book. I liked the book. Willie Wonka had lots of creations. He made some wild candies. But none so great as the candy to end all candies: the Everlasting Gobstopper—a candy that never lost its flavor, never shrank, never went away. You just kept sucking on it, forever. One day I learned they were actually making, in real life, Everlasting Gobstoppers. Wow! I thought. Science has finally caught up with Wonka! I rushed home, shook money out of my piggy bank and walked up to Albertson’s to buy, what I believed, was the last piece of candy I would ever buy! This is it! I was surprised to find it was actually a box of them. A whole box! You only need one. The Everlasting Gobstopper. I was deeply disappointed. It was just a jawbreaker. It had layers of colors, which was cool. I would spit it out and look at it. But shrink it did. Disappear it did. Everlasting. It didn’t last ten minutes.  
 
 Your soul is an everlasting thing; an eternal thing. It needs an everlasting foundation to rest upon. It needs an everlasting place, an everlasting shelter, an everlasting purpose. Most of what we attempt to rest our trembling souls upon are temporary things. Jesus is the everlasting light.  “In the dark streets shineth the everlasting light.” But most sleep through it. Most turn away from it. Most don’t receive it. What would it feel like to rest your eternal soul on the eternal light of Jesus?  
 
 The candles we hold tonight we hold in front of our faces. The light is right in front of you. Are you humble enough tonight to turn to the light? “No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin, where meek souls will receive him, still, the dear Christ enters in.” This wonder of Bethlehem, this Jesus, is the everlasting light you need. Don’t turn away in pride. He is here. He is as present here right now as I am standing before you, and if you will humble yourself and turn to him, you will know the everlasting light of Christ flooding the dark streets of your own soul. You will. And from there, everything will look different, every city, every night, every shadow, every coldness, it will be relative to the eternal, everlasting light of Jesus Christ. Will you open your heart to him now?  
 
 I want to invite you to pray with me. Crest the hill and look down into Behlehem and see the light. It’s as simple as prayer, and as profound. Will you pray with me? All of us together, in one accord, “Almighty and Everlasting God, I see now you sent your son, you sent your son Jesus to be my everlasting light. I bow before you tonight, and in humility ask for your light in my darkness. Come into my life, Lord Jesus Christ; my light and my hope, my Savior and Lord. In Jesus name. Amen.”