December 27 Christmas I
There are certain things you expect at a staff Christmas party. Holiday food and drink and Christmas decorations that range from the elegant to the tacky, put up in a room at work that gets transformed from utilitarian to festive. Depending on your coworkers, perhaps some even decorate themselves with Christmas light necklaces and Santa hats. Generally speaking, you expect a reasonably fun time when the staff let their hair down a little bit and enjoy one another’s company on a more personal level.
At the Christ Church staff party last week, we had all of this and more. The potluck lunch was delicious, the tables were festive, and because we genuinely like each other anyway, we had a good time. We even exchanged tacky gifts, many of which were religious, or rather sacrilegious, in theme. The party was a much needed break in the midst of a busy church season. But it also reminded each of us that we are part of a wonderful group of people, which, I think, is precisely what you hope for in a staff Christmas party.
I recently heard about a very different kind of staff Christmas party from my father-in-law, who runs an English-language school in Russia. Instead of the usual decorations and music and gifts and food, he went with his administrative team this year to a hip new restaurant in Moscow. Not only did they not see any holiday decorations, they didn’t see anything at all. The restaurant is called Dining in the Dark, and that’s exactly what happens. When you arrive, you enter a dimly lit room and place your order. Then, you are led through a corridor that gets progressively darker, until you enter the dining room, which is pitch black. The wait staff, who themselves are blind or sight impaired, guide you to your seat and help you get oriented when they place the food in front of you.
This Dining in the Dark experience is part of the latest dining trend sweeping across Europe and around the world. So far we have been spared this level of trendiness in Little Rock, but it could happen here, too. The creators of the restaurants describe the experience with these words:
“In this era of information overload, visual stimulation has reached an all time pinnacle. But imagine, just for an hour or two that you cannot see, that you are abandoning vision in exchange for a new, more stimulating experience that caters to the senses and a deeper consciousness – this is ‘Dining in the Dark.’”
These restaurants have sparked controversy in major cities around the world. There are those who praise the concept as a chance to experience the world as one who is blind and thus to better understand what that is like. There are others who see dining in the dark as nothing more than an over-priced gimmick. But no matter what we might think about it, my father-in-law said it was the best staff holiday party he’s ever been to.
There they sat in the dark, he and his admin team, completely devoid of all of the usual trappings of a staff party. There were no decorations, no familiar holiday foods, and no tacky gifts to open. In fact, being plunged into such a strange environment stripped away something else as well. They found that they began to relate to one another no longer as employer and employee, or rival employees, or coworkers with certain tensions, but simply person to person. The usual interpersonal dynamics went out a darkened window somewhere, and there they sat, human to human. The walls came down. They were more honest and genuine with one another, more deeply connected. Having gone through this experience together, their team was strengthened.
We just heard the prologue to the Gospel of John, which is a Christmas story, though very different from the ones in Luke and Matthew. Like that holiday party in the dark, the usual trappings of the Christmas story are stripped away. There are no angles, shepherds or stars. We do not hear about Mary and Joseph or the babe lying in a manger. There is nothing sentimental or decorative about John’s Christmas story. It is a simple yet profound story that takes place in darkness.
“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 came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
The language of light and darkness is poetry that John uses to tell the story of Christ. Light breaking into the darkness is a metaphor for God becoming known to us, as a candle flame in a dark room or a ray of light piercing the darkest parts of human life. The light is a symbol of understanding, comprehension, and grace against a backdrop of loneliness or ignorance or despair. Where there is light, there is hope. Where there is light, there is warmth. Where there is light, there is the assurance that we are not alone. This is the Christmas story in all of its graceful simplicity, that God is with us and that no darkness can extinguish that light.
The Christmas story of light shining in the darkness is a bit like that group of teachers sitting in a dark restaurant. The light that night was to be found not in what they could see but in what they experienced around that dark table. They were more deeply connected to each other, relating to each other in all honesty, person to person. Even in the darkest place, they were not alone.
John tells us that the word became flesh and dwelled among us. God became incarnate in this human life as one who would find us in a darkened restaurant and sit down at the table. Christ came to be connected to us, person to person. And from the fullness of that dinner conversation, we have all received grace upon grace. Amen.