Let us pray: O God, we often, perhaps usually, close our eyes when we pray – seeming to say that it is easier to be place ourselves in your presence in the dark. May these words I speak help us to be open to new ways of experiencing your presence. May they lead us to discover new ways to celebrate your creative work in our world. Amen.

Maura had always been a night person. Some of her best work had been done in the dwindling evening hours, heading to the wee small hours as the phrase goes. She had learned to drive in the last year of high school and then when she headed off to university the next year, on those weekends when she went home to visit her parents she often found herself driving home in the dark on Friday evenings and then back to school in the dark on Sunday night,. She enjoyed night driving. She found that the tunnel of light created by the headlights of her car, helped her to focus her attention, and she was counter-intuitively more awake at night than when she was driving in the daylight hours. This did not surprise Maura. She often found herself at odds with mainstream thinking and activity. The program she had completed at university was in computer science. Most of her classmates were geeky guys, with only a few girls like herself. That didn't bother her, she enjoyed being different. She always had. Mathematics at high school were her favourite subject. She loved the order to be found in numbers and equations, and the elegance that was apparent to her in some of the famous solutions to math problems and proofs of mathematical theorems. When it came time to head off to university a burgeoning field for the application of mathematics was in the area of computers and computer science. She dove into the work with ease and brilliance. She loved the opportunity to make machines follow her instructions, and lapped up the different programming languages she learned in the process. Each language had its strengths, and she enjoyed learning all of them for the different opportunities they gave her to solve various logic problems.

Many people, especially those who weren't adept in the field, saw her work as science. Even the name of her university program – computer science - seemed to emphasise this, but she knew that there was a great deal of art as well. Often in her university days and then in the career that followed, she would come up with an algorithmic solution to some vexing logic issue, either as she lay in bed thinking about it, or as her mind worked away on it sub-consciously while she dreamed about it. She could not count the number of times she had woken up, or tossed and turned at night in bed, trying to solve a problem, only to have an idea pop into her head, such that she had to get up and put it down on paper, or more often, head to her home computer to implement her solution in code, and run a few tests to make sure it worked. She was amazed at how beautiful some of the solutions were, as if there was some kind of created order behind the math and logic. This mystery and beauty was key in her spiritual life. She would describe some of her programming projects as elegant, she could see them as a type of beautiful piece of artwork. She wondered if there was some way to translate the beauty she experienced in an elegant algorithm into something that could hang on a wall and depict some of the same emotions and joy that she felt.

It wasn't just the night time eurekas associated with her career, however, that attracted her to darkness and the night. She had often participated in full moon hikes, offered by a local outdoor club, and was always awed by the heightened sense of perception she discovered within herself. The bright white orb of the moon, casting an eerie, but surprisingly bright glow on the land around her, opened up new perspectives and insights that suited her desire and love for things that were different. They always carried a headlamp or flashlight on these hikes, just in case, but most often, light was an enemy on a full moon hike. A bright beam of light could ruin in a moment any acclimatization her eyes had accomplished over a period of several minutes. Of course, the hikers had to walk more slowly and carefully in the darkness, but she felt that this only allowed her to enjoy things more closely and intimately. A hike in daylight lent itself to a macro view of things – wide eyed vistas through the trees, across valleys, toward distant landmarks, but a full moon hike allowed her to enjoy a micro experience. She could feel the undulating texture of the ground beneath her feet and the subtle contrast between light and dark that was so obvious when the only illumination came from the full moon.

Conversley Maura also loved clear night time skies when there was no light from the moon. There were places she had been with no earthly light to mar the vast and profound feeling that could be experienced on a new moon night when the milky way was bright, and the stars and planets twinkled their light back through the years and time to her eyes on earth. It gave her a feeling of being both large and small at the same time. Here she was, a single living being on this planet, and really when it came right down to it, she was nothing much more than her eyes drinking in the light and her brain cells processing it – how small was that in relation even to the size of the earth, and yet she felt in some strange way as large almost as the universe itself, because here she was drinking it all in as she looked skyward. How could it be that the cosmos extending out as far as her eyes could see, and a million times further, would be observable by her and anyone else who cared to watch along with her. She would spend time trying to fathom it all, wondering whether the beautiful elegance she found in an algorithm, could be translated into something to describe what she could see on these profoundly dark, yet brilliant nights. What astonishing theorems and equations were there yet to be discovered that would help to explain both in art and science, the way she felt.

It didn't really bother Maura that the world seemed geared to the praise of light. She was used to being different, and she liked it. She knew and experienced things differently. It was part of what defined her uniqueness as a person.

Over the past three weeks, we have learned about life from three different perspectives. Adam was a young man who kept hoping for a reset button – something that could in an instant allow for a fresh start. The news was full of opportunities to think about reset buttons – both reasons why it might be a good idea and ways in which it might come about anyway. Climate change was already pushing some reset buttons. Political movements fuelled by the change in communications technology were pushing reset buttons in the Arab world. A close call with an asteroid caused a reset button scenario to come to mind. What if it hadn't missed? Adam was not pessimistic. In fact he was full of hope and he wondered how and if the Occupy movement would result in the pushing of a much-needed reset button for the way things work in the world. The past week's news that the gap between rich and poor is getting bigger, only served to underline the hope he had that something would change. Serena, whose name described her personality, was a leader among her circle of friends and acquaintances. People looked to her as a source of centredness and groundedness. She exuded a spiritual presence that was untouched by a formal connection with a religious community. We considered how Serena and people like her could be an asset to the community of faith that we are as a congregation of God's people. Last week, at the community Carol Fest, sponsored by the Yellowknife Ministerial Association I volunteered to speak after a reading from Luke's gospel – the passage where Jesus, as a young man, stands in the synagogue and reads the passage we heard this morning from Isaiah. There is a strong “reset button” theme in the way the story is told in the gospel of Luke, just as there is a very strong “reset button” aspect to the words we heard from Luke's gospel today. The Magnificat has often been the manifesto for faith-based liberation movements around the world because of the vision it offers of a leveling of the gap between the haves and have-nots. It has even been banned by some regimes as inciting communist activity. I won't bore you by repeating what I had to say last Sunday evening, except for the last sentence, which was something like this: It seems strange to think of God-with-us as Protector in the form of an infant child. It seems upside-down kind of thinking, that a baby could protect us. How could this be good news – gospel? But isn't the gospel always that way?

In advent this year I've been trying to get started on a book I received a couple of Christmases ago called “The First Christmas” by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan – two leading scholars on the historical Jesus, and might I say two contemporary champions of those who profess a liberal or progressive perspective on the Christian faith, a camp I apologetically place myself within. I finally got started on it yesterday, just in time to fill all the spare time I have these days!

I'm not very far into yet, but already it is helping me feel better. In the preface I read these words:

Because of the importance of Christmas, how we understand the stories of Jesus' birth matters. What we think they're about, how we hear them, read them, interpret them – matters.

They are often sentimentalized. And, of course, there is emotional power in them. They touch the deepest of human yearnings: for light in the darkness, for the fulfillment of our hopes, for a different kind of world. Moreover, for many Christians, they are associated with their earliest memories of childhood. Christmas has emotional power.

But the stories of Jesus' birth are more than sentimental. The stories of the first Christmas are both personal and political. They speak of personal and political transformation. Set in their first-century context, the are comprehensive and passionate visions of another way of seeing life and of living our lives.

They challenge the common life, the status quo, of most times and places. Even as they are tidings of comfort and joy, the are edgy and challenging. They confront “normalcy,” what we call the “the normalcy of civilization” - the way most societies, most human cultures, have been and are organized.

When I read those words, I heard echoes of Adam – who sees the gospel, the good news, the hope that is bound up in a reset button of the type sung about in Mary's Magnificat. I heard echoes of Serena, the young woman of peace, who has no connection with the church, but who lives a life that the community of faith tries hard to portray and live out, and who typifies the upside-down nature of the gospel – that it comes from unexpected places in unexpected ways from unexpected people. And I was drawn to tell the story of Maura, whose difference would speak an upside-down gospel not of light in the darkness, but of joy in the dark – the place where her creativity and spirit are most fully realized.

As I said last Sunday evening, and repeated a moment ago: How could this be good news – gospel? But isn't the gospel always that way? Amen.