Introduction

Now that it’s December, we can say we’ve officially entered the holiday season. For many of us, the holidays are a time of fond memories and great expectations. But for others, the Christmas season is a challenge. In fact, the Christmas season often coincides with a spike in mental health crises. For some people, when everyone else they know spends time with friends and loved ones, it reminds them that they don’t have friends or loved ones. For others, the expectations that are placed on Christmas fall so short of their own experiences that they can’t help but be disappointed. Others struggle with the expectations that spending time with extended family can be stressful (they get to spend time with the proverbial drunken uncle). Christmas isn’t always magical.

The experience of stress during the Christmas season is actually how the holidays began. After all, Jesus wasn’t born into a winter wonderland of snowmen, reindeer and Christmas trees. He was born to a family in a difficult situation, to people in a difficult situation. Jesus was born into darkness, but it’s because the darkness was so dark that he shines out all the brighter. Christmas is one of those stories that is so special because God acted in a desperate situation. But it’s easy to overlook that the desperate situation was an essential ingredient in the Christmas story.

Israel Experiences the Darkness

Patriarchs & Exodus

Israel certainly had a great deal to be pessimistic about on the first Christmas. They’re story was invested with such high expectations, but that made their fall from grace all the more shocking. God had chosen Abraham as the head of a family that would produce his people. He confirmed this by giving Abraham and Sarah, an elderly couple, a miracle baby—Isaac. Isaac’s son Jacob (later renamed Israel by God) was a trickster and schemer, but God still honoured his promise to bless his descendants.

Israel’s dependents hit their first big crisis when living as foreigners in Egypt; they were enslaved by Pharaoh. But, in a bit of foreshadowing, the depth of their despair at their enslavement made God’s miraculous deliverance from Egypt that much more astounding.

God led the people into the wilderness, where he made a covenant to be their God and they would be his people. This is a tremendous honour, but right off the bat, we can see trouble brewing. The proverbial ink isn’t dry on the covenant when the Israelites make a false god for themselves and worship it. When the Israelites finally arrive at the border of the promised land and hear that the inhabitants are large and formidable, they lose their nerve and refuse to take the land. God says that the whole generation (with the exception of two leaders who remain faithful) will die off during 40 years of wandering in the desert.

Conquest & Kings

40 years later, the next generation of Israelites invades and conquers the land, but they struggle to remain faithful to God, so God allows them to be oppressed by their neighbours. When they cry out for deliverance, though, he raises up judges to deliver them, until they fall into idolatry again. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Eventually, the people ask for a king. God gives them exactly the kind of king they want. Tall, handsome and powerful. Saul proves to be an arrogant disaster for the Israelites. When it’s time to find a successor, this time God picks an unlikely king, a shepherd boy named David, who, despite being a flawed character, really does try to be faithful to God. God promises to build David a dynasty with a king on the throne forever. Things are looking up!

David’s Son Solomon succeeds him and becomes incomparably wise and rich. Yet, he too is seduced by idolatry and injustice. As a consequence, the nation fractures into two. From that point on, Israel (the northern 10 tribes) is ruled over by a series of evil kings. Eventually, they are swallowed up by the Assyrian Empire, and they vanish (presumably assimilated into the Assyrians).

The Judahites (later called Jews) do somewhat better, but after several hundred years, their kings begin to trend toward the bad. God sends prophets to warn them: if the people don’t change, they’ll be exiled. The Jews had been forgiven many times before—in the Exodus, during the judges, and the monarchy—so they might have believed that consequences would be manageable. This time, however, the prophets speak of a break unlike anything that has ever happened in Israel’s story.

Exile & Return

We need to understand the resulting exile as a national death sentence. The Jews’ identity rested on four things: 1) a unique covenant relationship with God, 2) God freeing them from slavery in a foreign land, 3) receiving the land of Canaan, and 4) being ruled by descendants of David. Exile reversed all that defined them. It was God’s punishment for breaking the covenant: they were expelled from their land, forced into slavery in a foreign place, and ruled by a king not descended from David. If the Exodus marked their nation’s birth, the exile marked its death.

The exile was a bitter pill to swallow. The Jews memorialised their torment in the poignant Psalm 137

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land? (Psalm 137:1-4, NIV)

The Jewish people had fallen on hard times. They wondered if God had totally and irrevocably rejected them. Yet, for those who dared to hope, the prophets who had foretold this shocking judgment had also told of a future hope for the people. The prophet Jeremiah, writing to the newly arrived exiles in Babylon, dares to speak of hope for the Israelites in the midst of their catastrophe.

This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile” (Jeremiah 29:10–14, NIV)

About 50 years following the destruction of Jerusalem, the Babylonian Empire was overthrown by the Persian king Cyrus. Almost as soon as he takes over, he decrees that Jews who would like to return to their former homeland are permitted to do so, and the Persian royal treasury will pay for a new temple to be constructed. About 50,000 Jews return to the promised land. They restore the walls around Jerusalem and build a new temple, although it pales in comparison to the old one. Ezra tells us that the older leaders among the Jews wept aloud when the temple foundations were laid. The return was not to be all that people had hoped. The Persians were, for the most part, beneficent overlords (except that one time the king permitted one of his officials to set up a plan to eradicate the Jews).

Greeks & Hasmoneans

But empires rise and fall, and after a couple of centuries, the Persians were overthrown in their turn by Alexander the Great. At the peak of his powers, Alexander died, and his empire was divided among four of his generals. The promised land sits between the territory of the general Ptolemy (and his successors, the Ptolemaic Empire), based in Alexandria, Egypt and general Seleucus and his successors (the Seleucid Empire), based in Damascus, Syria.

The large Arabian Desert means that the Israelites live in a strategic location, a narrow land bridge between Asia and Africa, so the two empires fight for control over their territory. At first, the Israelites are ruled over by the more moderate Ptolemaic Empire, but eventually, the Seleucids seize control. One of their Kings, Antiochus Epiphanes, tries to unite the different people of his empire under a common national identity, so he tries to suppress Jewish national and religious identity. He profanes the temple, building an altar to the Greek god Zeus and sacrificing a pig on it. He savagely punishes Jews who refuse to participate in pagan worship or who celebrate the festivals of the Jewish faith.

Eventually, the heavy-handed approach leads to a priestly family, the Hasmoneans, who take the moniker Maccabee (hammer). They win victories over the Seleucids, and the people gain autonomy. But eventually, the Hasmoneans prove to be a corrupt disappointment.

Romans

After about a hundred years in power, they were swept from power when, in 63 BC, the Roman General Pompey captured Jerusalem, making the Hasmoneans client kings to the Roman occupiers. To make matters worse, the pagan Pompey strolled into the Holy of Holies, and God didn’t strike him dead (as they assumed he was supposed to). The Romans began to rule over the territory with a heavy hand. Dissent was brutally repressed (Can anyone say crucifixion?!). Heavy taxes crushed the already poor masses of peasants.

Eventually, Caesar Augustus demands that a census be taken (so they can wring every last bit of taxes out of the people). This led to a revolt by a man named Judas of Galilee. Judas was killed, but he became the godfather of the Zealots, a group of Jewish nationalists who saw it as their duty to violently oppose Roman rule. But that same census created a difficult situation for a couple of peasants.

It starts when an angel visits a young woman:

God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. (Luke 1:26–35, NIV)

This miraculous pregnancy puts Mary in a tough spot. She’s engaged, so somehow she has to convince her fiancée that she hasn’t been unfaithful (God appears in a vision to Joseph to confirm Mary’s story). She’s going to be presumed to be sexually immoral (and that will involve social consequences). Added to all of this, she is forced to travel on a long journey to Bethlehem to register in the Census just as the baby is ready to be born.

In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world…. And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. (Luke 2:1, 2–7, NIV)

This is what the prophet Isaiah was talking about when he said, “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, NIV). In the midst of Israel’s humiliation, the light breaks in unexpectedly. Reflecting on this moment when God’s light reached into the darkness of Israel’s story, John writes:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it….

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. 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.

The Big Picture

So the story into which Jesus was born was a difficult story. While the Israelites had had great moments of triumph and faithfulness, the overall thrust of the story is pretty downbeat. The Israelites had proven to be unable to keep the covenant. They had been sent into exile, and in the half-millennium since their return, they had lived as an oppressed and marginalised people, who must have wondered if they had actually been abandoned by their God.

The people long for a deliverer. Some prophecies in Daniel point towards the time they’re living in to suggest that something is going to change. But the more people want to see a change, the more they are confronted with the reality that things always seem to stay the same. But it’s the seeming hopelessness of their situation that makes the story of what God did on that first Christmas such a joyful occasion.

We Experience Darkness

Suffering Around the World

During the time of Advent, we not only celebrate the coming of Jesus, be we also recognize our longing for his return. We share this in common with our Jewish brothers and sisters. We long for God to come and be with us, because we live in a world that is still broken.

To be sure, we don’t experience the brokenness that others do in the world. The UN says that about 10% of the global population (so around 830 million people) live in extreme poverty. The UN defines this as “a severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, clean water, sanitation, health, shelter, and education, which is often measured by living on less than $3.00 per day.” Wars ravage Ukraine, Syria, Sudan, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Taiwanese live under the threat of invasion by China. And the people in Eritrea and North Korea live with brutal, totalitarian dictatorships. If we think the world is pretty good, there are still plenty of people who don’t experience it that way.

Suffering Here

But even in a country as prosperous as Canada, we have a sense that things aren’t as they should be. The trade war initiated against us by the US has made our economic future much less predictable than we would like. We may be nervous about the re-emergence of Great Power politics with Russia, China and the US becoming more aggressive in the affairs of other countries. We see the disintegration of the bonds that knit our nation together as fissures form along partisan political lines. We see an explosion of mental health challenges for young people. And we might worry about either the AI Bubble bursting (and the economic ruin that might cause), or we may worry about the AI bubble not bursting, making many of our jobs redundant. So many of us feel anxiety. Add to that the struggles I alluded to in my introduction, where the holidays become a difficult time, and we can see that things aren’t what we hope for.

So in a very real way, the Christmas story is our story. The Jews longed for the coming of the one who would redeem them. Not to take anything away from Jesus’ incarnation, ministry, death and resurrection, we still await the consummation of God’s kingdom. Like the Israelites, we’ve been waiting a long time. It’s been so long that we may lose hope that that reality will ever come. But the last time God stepped into history, it was at a time and in a way when almost no one noticed. So we see that, as dark as the night may seem, now as it did then, God can come when we don’t expect it. In fact, we must anticipate that Jesus tells us that his return will come at a time when we don’t expect, like a thief in the night.

Sightings of the Light

Along the way, we can catch little glimpses of God’s grace intruding at unexpected times in each of our lives. I remember a dark time in my life. I was desperately lonely and had given up on ever getting married. I worked a job that bored me to tears just thinking about it. I had lost my direction, and I despaired that God had abandoned me. A friend from church recommended I pick up a CD (Back before we streamed all of our music) called Between the Dreaming and the Coming True by a guy named Bebo Norman. That album title alone speaks volumes about the anticipation of Advent. I put on the first song, and was almost immediately struck by the lyrics of the pre-chorus and the chorus.

Hold on love

Don’t give up. Don’t close your eyes.

The light is breaking through the night.

Step out into the day.

All the clouds and all the rain are gone.

It’s over now

Step out into the Sun

For you’ve only begun to know

What it’s all about

As the hungering dark gives way to the dawn, my love

It’s over now.

That’s nice. I thought to myself. If only. But there’s no day coming where I am. But there was. In a few months, I had a new job I enjoyed, and I met and hit it off with a beautiful woman (who, with the use of guile and trickery, I persuaded to marry me).

Of course, the earth didn’t shake, and it wasn’t life-changing for everyone else, but it does remind me that just like at Christmas, God’s grace can break into our darkness in unexpected ways and at unexpected times.

Conclusion

Even when things seem dark, we can hold on to hope because we know that it is at precisely the darkest time that the light shines the brightest. Jesus came to a people who had experienced rock bottom 500 years before and then had kept digging. God came to them. No matter how dark things look now, we know that God is coming back. So hold on, love. Don’t give up, don’t close your eyes. The light is breaking through the night.