(indistinct) 

Speaker: Grace and peace be to you from God, our father, and from the Lord, Jesus Christ. Unto you, child, a son, is given. Praising, proclaiming the ingression of love earth, darkest invents, the blaze of heaven and frigid silence meditates a song. For a great joy has filled the narrow and the sad while the emphasis of the rough and the big, the abiding crag and the wandering wave is on the forgiveness of God. Therefore sing glory to God and goodwill to men. Let us now go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing, which has come to pass, which the Lord our God hath made known unto us. (organ music plays) 

- Let us continue our worship of God, as we read responsively, the reading of confession and for pardon numbered 640, the second reading. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and a sheep that is before cheers is done. So we opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away, and as for his generation who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth yet it was the will of the Lord to bruise him. He has put him to grieve when he makes himself an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see the fruit of the travail of his soul and be satisfied by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to debt and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. (organ music plays) (woman sings gospel music) 

- Let us open our hearts and our minds to the reading of the word of God, as it is contained in the book of the prophet Isaiah and in the gospel of St. John, let us hear the word of God. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness on them has light shine. Thou has multiplied the nations, thou hast increased its joy. They rejoice before thee, as with joy at the harvest. As men rejoice when they divide the spoil for the yoke of his burden and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, thou has broken, as on the day of Midian for every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult, and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as for fuel for the fire, for to us, a child is born. To us, a son is given and the government will be upon his shoulder. And his name will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, the prince of peace. And of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no end. Upon the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. The lesson from the new Testament, from the gospel according to St. John, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God. And the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life. And the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Here ends the reading of the lessons. (organ music plays) 

- The Lord be with you. Let us pray. Almighty and ever-loving God, Thou who has so wondrously created us and who does daily sustain us. We lift unto thee, our prayers of thanksgiving for this occasion of worship and Christmas time. Thy majesty, oh Lord is shrouded in mystery and Thy ways are far beyond our knowing. Yet, Thou has come to us and the gift of the Christmas child and has offered to us Thy graceful and faithful love and has called us to live, and to come before thee in adoration and in praise and in thanksgiving. With heaven's angels, oh Lord, and with shepherd's awe, we praise and bless and magnify thy holy name. For all this season means, our father, we lift our thanks unto Thee. May all our celebration here, and in the days to come, we ask, be a hymn of thankful and faithful response to the gift of thy love, which it brings to us. Oh Lord, we also would seek the hope that the coming of the babe of Bethlehem brings unto us for our world is very dark, and as of old, when he first came, Herod, the king sought to slay him. So the murderous passions of many men lie wait for him still in our time, yet we in this community know he is our chosen hope. We have seen his light, however dimly, and once seen, we can never forget it. He is our salvation, our father. He is the firstborn among many brethren. We would believe in him afresh today and follow him with more faithful and loyal hearts. Thanks be to thee for him, without sin, full of grace and truth. Oh Lord, we would lift our petitions and our prayers for others before thy mercy. Most merciful, God abundantly blessed, those we ask in whose hearts there is little room for joy because sorrow has come close to them in the season. May the Christ who has been the sharer of their joys and their comrade in toil, now come to them as the great comforter and in the knowledge of his sympathy and love, may they find the peace that knows no end. We pray oh Lord for the happiness and wellbeing of all thy children of every race and color of every climb and coast. We beseech thee oh God to bless those, especially, who are linked to us by the bonds of family and of friendship during the season, enable us by the witness of thy spirit to know that love will never lose its own. And that thou does keep thy children ever near to thee both in this world and in the world to come. We pray, oh Lord, for peace on earth, in the season of peace. We pray not because we have been men of goodwill, but because we have come at last in our bewilderment to long for thee, that we might become men of goodwill. Today, oh Lord, we pray for children, the hungry and the helpless and those who long for life. We pray for those in every land who hide amid the ruins of their hopes and who suffer from the cruelties of war. We bow our heads in shame for any part that we have had in visiting thy beautiful and lovely world with ghastly terror and with tears of human pain. Grant us, we ask, oh Lord, the calm, which comes when doubt thus enter into our hearts, grant us the faith that dares to risk it's all on love. Grant us, we ask, our father the will to make our own amid the blackness of the night. The angel song of peace on earth strengthened the wise in every land to the end that love may be transmuted as it once was of old, into deeds decisive for the ends of peace and goodwill. May we live close enough to thee to know that only holy methods will produce thy holy ends. That love alone survives, defeat and ushers in the morn, which we call resurrection. Almighty God whose mercy brought thee to earth in the coming of our Lord, deepen and widen our vision of thy presence among us, that thou mayest not be turned away from our crowded busy hearts, but welcomed with joy and with thankfulness, our hearts as ever rejoice in the glad tidings of the Christ who was born in Bethlehem to be the savior of the world yet in all our joy, the long centuries behind this of our hearts that have been made glad in yesteryear by his coming. We know that there is much in us that deafens our ears to the sounds of the angels, much that blinds us to the sight of the guiding star, much that crowds our hearts and minds leaving little room for the arrival of thy gift. Even in the midst of our Christmas this year, oh Lord, some of us are as lonely as shepherds, as wayfaring as the Kings, as busy as the innkeeper. Forgive us, Oh Lord. And turn us, again, to the quietness of thy peace. Come, we ask oh Lord, as Christ came with healing and with peace. Thou shalt find this proud for we have not yet learned what it means to be humble. Thou shalt find us guarded and defensive for we are weak within and full of fear. Thou shalt find us irritable and not a little arrogant for we are uncomfortably guilty and have not been willing to admit our frailty or our sin. While we dress, and we parade like little helots and lordly pilots, we know we have deeper need of thee, old Lord. Come again, thou meekest of all kings, and save us from ourselves that we may learn to live joyfully as thou didst for others. In the name of the Christ child of Bethlehem, our Lord and Savior who taught us that we should pray together when we assembled to worship. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us, not into temptation, but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. When the world can celebrate Christmas this year, who at least with any sensitivity to the cries of anguish from Vietnam, from the opera, from the Jordan valley, from Prague, from Brazil, from Rhodesia, from Chicago, from Marion county, West Virginia, from Durham, North Carolina. Add the war casually lists the starvation statistics and the highway death toll multiplied by the number of political assassinations, subtract the concern for foreign aid and nuclear arms control divided by the square root of inflation plus devaluation, 1968 just doesn't come out even. Somehow the tinkly Christmas music sounds a bit more out of tune than usual. And the tinsley decorations look a little shabbier and more artificial this season. These are man's shoddy efforts, and we cannot really celebrate Christmas until we seek to understand what God is doing. There is an old saying that when it is dark enough, you can see the stars. Indeed, there have been many other nights of human history when men of faith rope their way over treacherous ground, by looking upward, Isaiah described one such period when he wrote, "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in the land of deep darkness, on them has light shine." There are many who believe that he was speaking, not merely of a single experience, but of a universal hope. Yet we in this century of science are afraid of the dark, determined to use all our technological resources to push it back, to shut it out. And thereby we miss the stars. The sun goes early for the year is old, leaving us here together yet alone, too dark to see our other neighbors in the cold, huddled like us turned in for fitful warmth, too far to reach them with the warmth we give our own. Let us look up this night to see a star. Our knowledge tells us that there is no star, finding no orbit marked upon the charts. Too schooled, to heed a message from our hearts. We are too knowing far, to seek a star. Our brightly lighted business hides the star. Great enterprise would fail if we went peaking, no time is budgeted for idle seeking. We are too busy, far, to seek a star. We have rituals to run, which use no current star. Rash will fold, questing simply will not serve our people's great traditions to conserve. We are too righteous, far, to seek a star. The dark comes early for the year is old, knowing, busy, and righteous, yet alone. Our public sight too dim, our public heart too cold. Let us forswear the world, accept our plight ignorant, idle, unrighteous on our own. Let us look up to seek a star this night. We are too knowing far, to seek a star. How true, after all, the whole Christmas bit is pretty ridiculous. I don't mean just the Harris people driving store clerks crazy while they try to make up their minds. There are long lines at the post office with odd shape bundles that cost too much. No, the silly idea of fat old men trying to squeeze down sooty chimneys, nor the empty frustration of torn paper and discarded string from stationary we didn't want, and ties we didn't need. These are absurd enough if we stand aside and look objectively, but the main thing was kind of far-fetched too. How odd of God to choose the Jews as one that summed it up. Rome and Egypt and Greece and China were lots more civilized than the bare little province of Judea. Major nations today know they've got to demonstrate their power and importance. It was foolish of Mary to believe, even before she was married, that she would have a son, and foolish of Joseph to take his young wife on a strenuous journey under those conditions. We've studied more about science and medicine today, so we know more about antiseptics and psychology, presumably more about life and other miracles. Shepherds, like farmers, are usually hard-headed realists. So it sounds a bit preposterous that after a moment of fear, they should believe an unusual light and voices and go chasing off to town in the middle of the night. And those so-called wise men, what was so smart about thinking that a star would lead them anywhere and what dumb presets to take to a baby. We scoffed at the Russian cosmonaut for declaring that he didn't find God up there in outer space, but does any good Christian American this season expect our astronauts to see any angels flying around the earth or the moon? Of course not. They're up there to snap TV pictures, and test out mechanical equipment and survey landing spots for colonizing the moon. It won't be long before we will be reducing the Christmas star to its physical material components or maybe we already have. So the poet Kenneth Benny is right. We are too intelligent to go hunting for a migratory star. It's easier to push back the darkness with all the brilliance of our libraries and laboratories, all the wisdom of academic pursuits. Going out and finding a star, a real life glory of the Lord, won't get us a PhD. It might even lead us off on some crazy new direction to the Peace Corps or the Christian Service Corps, or Project Bolivia or even down to Edgemont. But most of us are perfectly safe. Our private worlds are radiant with privilege and opportunity and comfort, so that the darkness we hear people talk about remains a respectful distance away. Things really aren't black enough for us to see a star. We are a much too schooled to heed a message from our hearts. Similarly, we are too busy, far, to seek a star. Denunciation of the commercialism of Christmas has become as fashionable and as sterile a cliche as the offense itself, the garish splendor of most municipal decorations of this season, the glittering window displays the flood lip, Santa Claus, cavorting down an avenue of colored lights. All these certainly dispel the gloom of night, but do they dispel the gloom of frustration around an untenable war? Do they push back the shadows in slum alleyways and wrath infested tenements? Do they brighten the mood of tired sales girls inside the stores or shivering pickets outside? Oh yes, our brightly lighted business hides the star quite successfully for most of us. To be sure, great enterprise would fail if we went peaking, it simply doesn't do to inquire why 6% of the world's population should have more than 50% of its wealth or whether corporation executives are really worth ten times as much as university professors. The military industrial complex, which president Eisenhower warned against eight years ago, has grown more powerful, more all pervasive. Our great nation seems to have nothing publicly to say about the extensive racquets, which oppressed so many little people, corrupt so many citizens and manipulate so many cities. Just this week, a columnist of the entertainment world remarked the prostitutes are flourishing on Broadway so openly that New York has become what Paris and London were before those cities were cleaned up. The glitter of false jewels and of guilt edge stock and of spectacular parties all serve to keep away the darkness by dazzling ourselves with gaiety and opulence. Even, or should I say, especially, in our academic ivory towers, no time is budgeted for idol-seeking. Without a pre-filed flight plan, the itinerary of the wise man would have been rejected. The research of the shepherds clearly lacked footnotes and the credible bibliography. Obviously no starlight ever filtered into the old Duke library stacks. And it's doubtful whether Denisons of the new building will have much opportunity to peer up through the vaulted windows. Indirect lighting and high-intensity lamps, not to mention examination schedules and thesis deadlines, pretty thoroughly preclude any serious stargazing. At the bright and boisterous performance of the Nutcracker last Wednesday, one faculty wife leaned over to remark to another, if we didn't have Christmas, by which I took her to mean all the parties and concerts and programs and activities, we might have a lot more Christmas spirit. In other words, if we didn't try quite so hard to be festive, we might catch a glimpse of that wandering star. Ironically, the busy-ness that so often shuts out God's holy night is often composed of good deeds and thoughtful acts of Christmas kindness. Last Thursday's Chronicle devoted an entire page to some touching scenes from the Giles house party for underprivileged kids with the plaintiff caption, the Christmas season at Duke. Is there anything to it besides last minute hourlies, term papers, and the Hong Kong flu. I hope that the Chronicle frequently cynical and sometimes childishly obscene was answering its own question, but to continue my own cynical symbolism about trying to outshine the dark, the largest picture on the page showed Baldwin auditorium and the Christmas tree, both blazingly lit up against an otherwise black background. The only specs that remotely resembled stars were flaws on the photographic or engraving plate. Yes, even with charity bazaars and buying gifts for others, we are indeed too busy, far, to seek a star. The third judgment of our keynote poet is even more devastating. We are too righteous, far, to seek a star. How often we try to deny the existence of the world's night by turning up the rheostat on our own traditions. Some of you have been reading this week of preparations for the Christmas Eve pilgrimage from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Eighteen months ago, I stood in the grotto of the church of the nativity, surrounded by colored lamps and smoking incense, telling myself that wherever the exact spot might be, Jesus was not born on a brass star set in a marble floor. As I turned to leave, a priest shouted indignantly and came running towards me with beard and ropes flying, to hold out a tambourine like collection plate that I had tried to bypass. But there are Christians closer than Bethlehem who still desecrate the birth of Christ. At least one local church, which has balanced its budget by lopping off $800 from its benevolence giving for the year, was nevertheless festooned gaily with reeds inside and out last Sunday morning. Rows of bright red candles in traditional nine branched holders struggled bravely to push back the shadows. But I noticed that several of them burned themselves up, sputtered and died before the service was over. Since the patterns were very uneven, the center candle shrinking between two tall ones, or one straight and another flaring and dribbling away, I meditated metaphorically on the inequality of candles, or of man, on their lack of inner integrity. On the way in which fitful gusts of unpredictable wind buffet some individuals and spare others. Oh, there are many great traditions to conserve at Christmastime. The family gathering, so often unfairly caricatured, is truly joyous in many homes, yet it can be an occasion for shutting out the lonely and the homeless, for ignoring the darkness and cold beyond the family circle. The camels, an assumption in very early Christian history, have become almost interchangeable with reindeer. Some of the best choir directors try to brighten the corner where we are and thus obliterate the sacred star by forbidding Christmas hymns in advent. But those of us who insist on caroling lustily, but naively, about that glorious song of old and angels' harps of gold, very seldom get as far as the millions beneath life's crushing load, whose forms are bending low, who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow. Or we exhort all merry gentlemen to let nothing you dismay, but we'd rather mumble into our Walsall bowl. That line about saving all from Satan's power. When we have gone astray. It would be very bad taste to raise a theological question in the midst of seasonal merriment. To wit what really happened between God and man on that first Christmas day. After all, we are too righteous, far, to seek a star. At least the church should be bright enough without any extraneous light from outer space. This is not intended to be a bitter prescription for our Christmas hangover. Indeed, as we suggested at the beginning, the world has seldom been in greater need of light and life and love. Our country may have been in worse circumstances, less prosperity, more bloodshed, less goodwill, but there have been few times when the nation has been more acutely aware of the dark midnight of her soul. Yet our pyrotechnic human displays are not the kind of illumination we need in this somber year of our Lord, 1968. Our stoplights and stage lights and spotlights and strobe lights are not quite suitable for a stable. As Kenneth Benny put it, let us forswear the world, accept our plight. Ignorant, idle, unrighteous on our own. Let us look up to seek a star this night. What I am proposing is that we pull the master switch for all this radiant pretense, technological and ethical, and wait to see what God may have to say. Military searchlights and television floods have not vanquished the darkness. They have simply revealed more starkly than ever man's folly, greed, and inhumanity. They have enabled more of us than ever before to see our inability, or worse, our unwillingness, to cope with the moral and spiritual problems we have created. And that's precisely why we need Christmas. But we don't need a bright gay gaudy Christmas this year, we need a black Christmas. Now don't misunderstand me, I'm not referring simply to a local shopping boycott. That may be one necessary way to achieve justice, but it will not produce peace and goodwill among men. I'm suggesting that we need a dark Christmas at the end of a dark year. When we acknowledge that we have made an ugly mess of God's creation. When we turn off the glittering lights of an artificial world, blow out the hollow drippy candles of our private lives, and rest beside the weary road to hear the angels sing. A dark Christmas when we stop trying to dazzle ourselves or our associates with the brilliance of our knowledge or our brilliant business or our piety, and look up into the blackness, which surrounds us. The bleakness, which we try to deny, and wait for a sign of God's forgiveness and his love. That sign is visible only when we welcome the darkness and give ourselves to it, instead of trying to chase it away with deceptive devices. More than a century ago, Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish theologian, affirmed this truth, quote, "Under you, a child is born, and yet it was night when he was born. That is the eternal illustration. It must be night. And it becomes the middle of the night when the savior is born." End of quote. In other words, he comes at life's darkest period, but once he has come, the world is moving toward the dawn, whether we know it or not. The same theme is simply expressed in a little verse written during the long night of World War II by Franklin Elmer, Jr. Not great poetry, but an eternal truth from which I borrowed the sermon title for today. Christmas always comes at night, when men grow blindly for a light. Christmas could not come by day, that is not God's or nature's way can wise men see a star at noon? And shepherds hear the angels tune when sun is bright? Death on the cross will come at eve, when weary daylight takes its leave and resurrection fits the dawn, when patterns for new days are drawn. But Christmas comes in deepest dark, through black despair, men see a spark, and battled with the night. Oh Mary, Mary, mother by the stall, exhausted in the darkness, did you sense at all that God has brought a brilliant star to birth matching your lonely labor there on earth? Did you know that from your anguish, angels made a song to cheer the hopeful few who kept long vigil for the right? I heard the song. I saw the star, but chilling visions plagued my mind to mar my peace. Children being born far down the years in poverty and bloodshed, in famine and in tears, men, steeped in hate, cruel in war. Oh, I had hoped, had prayed for more. And I would say, I saw the star I heard the song, and deep within my heart I knew that long, long after he and I were gone, my son would be a song of hope and every evil night that he would stand alone against all human power, as strong and pure as any star in any tragic hour. And I was glad. So Christmas always comes at night, when men are hungriest for light, Can wise men see a star at noon? Can shepherds hear the angels tune when the sun is bright? Christmas comes in deepest, dark. When in despair, man sees a spark, conquering the night. Oh, I know it was a very ancient Chinese proverb says that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. But I'm not asking you to curse the darkness. I'm asking you to bless it, to accept it as a gift of God within which His greater gift, maybe deserved, nor am I asking you to acquiesce in hatred, greed and bitterness. Everyone should light a candle for the workbench, for the kitchen, for the neighbor in need. But do this only after you have rediscovered the true source of eternal light. Relight your candle, not from a gold plated cigarette lighter or an exploding coal mine, but from that heavenly spark, even if it stretches your imagination, and your faith. Between now and New Year's Eve or between now and epiphany, that feast of lights. When we shall return to this campus ready to display all manner of academic brilliance in semester examinations, admit that the world looks black. That many of our traditional beacons have failed. Look up. And you may find, for this is the Christmas hope and the Christmas promise, that the light shines in the darkness, present tense, active voice, the light still shines in the darkness. JD Phillips says. And the darkness has never put it out. Not that there is no darkness, but that the only radiance which cannot be overcome is the light of a star announcing God's commitment, His involvement in human life. So Christmas always comes at night when men are hungriest for light, Christmas comes in deepest, dark, when in despair, man sees a spark conquering the night. Let us pray. Our father whose love made manifest that this holy season is the source of all life and light. Grant us that in the midst of fear and frustration, darkness and discouragement, we may declare with the wise men of old, we have seen His star and our come to worship Him. Amen ("Silent Night" plays on organ) (organ music plays) (woman sings gospel music) 

- Oh Lord, our father, we turn our faces like the wise men of old, toward the star of Bethlehem. And with willing hearts, we offer these, our gifts to the manger child who is our King. When at last, in the midst of this world tonight, the child is born. Give us, oh God, wisdom to kneel, and joy to serve, and courage to share the good news to all the world in the name of Christ, amen. And now go in peace into the world to do the work of God and the blessing of God, Allfather, Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, rest and abide with you one and all. Amen. (bells chime) (organ music plays)