Waiting for the Light
“Christmas Eve in prison is so terrible because a wave of sentimentality passes through the gloomy building. Everyone thinks of his own loved ones, for whom he is longing; everyone suffers because he doesn’t know how they will be celebrating the festival of divine and human love. Recollections of childhood come surging back, almost overwhelming some, especially those who are condemned to death, and who cannot help looking back at their past lives. It is no accident that in prison suicide attempts are particularly numerous on this special day; in our case, however, the most remarkable thing was the sentimental softness which overcame our guards.”
The pastor who wrote those words was a leader in the confessing church that boldly opposed Hitler. In his memoir, The Valley of the Shadow, Hanns Lilje tells of his imprisonment in both the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. On that memorable Christmas Eve of 1944, in a moment of “sentimental softness” the SS commandant removed the chains of a violinist awaiting execution and allowed him to play in the large vaulted hall of the prison.
Lilje paced back and forth in his cell, listening to the beautiful music so different from the normal prison sounds. He recalled the Christmas message he had given the previous year, before his arrest. Allied bombing raids were leveling Berlin, and many families, especially those with children, had left the city. Speaking in his unheated church, he had addressed a motley congregation of senior citizens who had nowhere else to go. He chose a passage from Isaiah 9: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.”
While preparing his sermon, Lilje had reminisced about childhood Christmases, when he would walk the streets with his playmates, excitedly peering into homes at the brightly lit Christmas trees inside. During wartime, however, all windows were darkened under strict blackout rules. As a pastor, what light could he possibly offer in such dark and difficult times? And now, a year later, what light could he even imagine, waiting in a darkened cell for his own death sentence to be carried out?
As I read Hanns Lilje’s remembrance of Christmas eight decades ago, my mind went to contemporaries who are walking in darkness. Ukrainians huddled around a kerosene lamp in a basement bomb shelter as Russian missiles fly overhead. Palestinian Christians in Gaza sharing a Christmas “feast” of bread and water. Members of unregistered churches in China who face arrest simply for gathering together. Nigerians wondering if terrorists will choose this night as a time to raid their church and kidnap their children.
Then I turned to the Gospels’ accounts of the event that started it all. Elizabeth and Zechariah rejoiced at the news that God had at last answered their prayers for a son—but did they live long enough to learn of his decapitation at a king’s party? Even Mary, who had confidently sung of the Mighty One bringing down rulers and scattering the proud, had to flee to Egypt in order to escape Herod’s massacre of infants. The old man Simeon had it right when he told Mary, “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel… And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
Advent both remembers and anticipates. From the very beginning, the church has marked advent as a time to commemorate both Jesus’ birth and his promised return. We live out our days between already and not yet. The author Fleming Rutledge marvels at the prospect. She writes in her book Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ, “Here is a man who was born into a poor family, who went to no university, who owns nothing, who has no bank account, no resumé or portfolio, no job or house, no title or rank, a man who is about to be judged guilty and not fit to live by the highest religious and political tribunals of his time, and here he is saying that he is going to come again, personally, at the end of the world, to determine the fate of all human beings who have ever been born.”
Does it matter, this extravagant hope that someday Jesus will return—not as a baby this time, but as a conqueror of evil who will make all sad things come untrue? Rutledge responds:
We realize that people act differently if they are convinced that there will be a definitive future action. A prisoner who knows he will be freed is a very different person from one who knows he will never get out. A group of hostages who know that the SWAT team is on its way is a very different group from the one that has no hope of rescue. If you know that your chemotherapy really might heal you, you can tolerate it a lot better than if it is just a last, desperate measure. Advent is like that. In this season, the church celebrates two things: God has already acted definitively on our behalf, and God will act definitively in the future to bring his purposes to pass once and for all. That is what it means to watch and wait for the second advent of Christ, no matter how long it takes.
Suddenly, that Christmas Eve of 1944, Hanns Lilje heard his number loudly called—which usually meant interrogation, torture, or even worse. A guard led him from his third-floor cell directly to the commandant, who motioned for him to follow. “Bring number 212 to this cell too!” the commandant ordered.
Lilje recognized the prisoner inside as a noble count who had participated in Operation Valkyrie, a failed plot to assassinate Hitler (the same plot that led to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s arrest). The count had asked for a pastor to hear his confession and offer Holy Communion; it being Christmas Eve, the commandant had granted his request. The guard brought in number 212, the violinist about to be executed, and then left.
So now, Lilje would be addressing an audience of three: a violinist, a count, and an SS commandant. He read the Gospel account from Luke, and gathered his thoughts as the violinist played a Christmas chorale. Once again he chose the passage from Isaiah 9: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.”
“Our chief concern, now,” Lilje said, “is to receive this promise in firm faith and to believe that God, through Jesus Christ, has allowed the eternal light to ‘arise and shine’ upon this world which is plunged in the darkness of death, and that He will also make this Light to shine for us. At this moment, in our cells, we have practically nothing that makes the Christmas festival so familiar and so lovely, but there is one thing left to us: God’s great promise. Let us cling to this promise, and to Him, in the midst of the darkness.”
The count knelt on the hard stone floor to receive the elements of communion, and the violinist played a final chorale. Lilje shook hands with his fellow-prisoner and then with the commandant, who to his surprise said, “Thank you! You cannot imagine what you have done for me this evening, in my sad and difficult daily work.”
Lilje adds that soon afterward the commandant was removed from his post for proving too humane. The count was sent to a concentration camp, and the violinist was killed by the Gestapo during the last days of Nazi rule. Lilje himself survived to become a bishop and president of the Lutheran World Federation.
John’s Gospel sets Jesus’ birth in a cosmic perspective, positioning him at the very moment of creation. “Without him nothing was made that has been made,” John declares. Yet the master artist who spanned the universe took on flesh and blood, and “moved into the neighborhood” (as The Message has it). Like a streak of light across the darkling sky, his life brought hope to all humanity, and especially to those who walk in darkness.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” John writes. I pause to consider that he wrote these words after watching Jesus’ agonizing death, the martyrdom of his disciples, and the Romans’ ravaging of Jerusalem. But John has faith in a radiant future, and elsewhere he explains why: “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”
We dare not underestimate the relentless power of light. Right now, space telescopes are processing light that has been traveling nonstop, at a speed of 186,282 miles per second, for thirteen billion years. Also, it turns out that John is scientifically correct: light extinguishes darkness.
When I camp on the edge of a mountain in Colorado, darkness rules inside the tent. Yet if I flick on my LED headlamp, immediately the darkness disappears. The reverse does not hold true. If I introduce darkness into a lit room in my home—say, by opening a sealed box—the darkness vanishes, overcome by the light.
When he later wrote about a Christmas Eve service attended by four people in a prison cell, Hanns Lilje remembered the light more than the darkness. “I praised God, and indeed, I praised Him from my whole heart that in this building, under the shadow of death, and in the face of so much trouble and distress, a Christian congregation had assembled to celebrate Christmas.”
“For it is possible,” Lilje reflects, “to have every external sign of festivity and comfort and joyful celebrations, and yet not to have a true Christmas congregation, while in the shadow of death and in much trouble of heart a real congregation can gather at Christmas. It is possible for the candles and the lights to blind our eyes, so that we can no longer see the essential element in Christmas; but the people who ‘walk in darkness’ can perhaps see it better than all who see only the lights of earth.”
*JESUS MAFA The birth of Jesus with shepherds, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48387 [retrieved December 19, 2023].
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26 responses to “Waiting for the Light”
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About Philip Yancey
For Yancey, reading offered a window to a different world. So, he devoured books that opened his mind, challenged his upbringing, and went against what he had been taught. A sense of betrayal engulfed him.
I just finished listening to “Where the Light Fell!” I grew up in East Point, born in 1956. Our church Jefferson Ave Baptist was so close to Colonial Hills. I related to so much of your story but fortunately not the more fundamentalist part but so much of the guilt and shame. Thanks for it- I was sad when it was over. I am starting Soul Survivor this week.
Hi Philip, I’ve just finished reading your memoir, Where The Light Fell and cried when I reached the end of the book.
Thank you for sharing so openly with such humility and vulnerability. Your books have been a great solace to me as a teen and even till now as a 30 year old.
I am grateful for your words, your endless pursuit to discover truth, the Light Himself and sharing how it’s okay to feel disappointed and express this in our walk with God. Our dark valleys, our questions that are within the thin line of doubt and faith. I instantly recognised the story you mentioned so vividly in What’s So Amazing About Grace when I read it again in your memoir.
During the Christmas service back in my home country Malaysia last year, the speaker preached about turning to God’s light in the midst of darkness and as I read your blog post today, it struck a chord in my heart again. I’m encouraged that even when I walk in darkness, I can still experience and see the Light. Reading your memoir gave me a full circle moment: ‘I couldn’t look at the sun directly, but I could look at where the light fell.
Thank you for your ministry, your writing, Philip. I am so grateful that your writings have point me back to Jesus. May God’s grace and love be upon you and your family.
Joycelyn from Malaysia
Just reading this now,after Christmas,as the year comes to an end and a new one begins. The light of the world is with us and in us. Thank you for sharing,always.
Sorry to comment twice, but had saved this blog to reread…and riding shotgun on a long ride home to NC from middle TN was a great time to do that! Your story-telling and quotes always give us readers great truths to ponder. And meditating more (rather than consuming more) seems to help me grow deeper in faith now, and closer in companionship with Jesus. Praying you will see Jesus more clearly than ever as you struggle with physical issues. Your insights drawn from your life in Him are beacons of Hope timely sent ❤️
Thank You. I am left both refreshed and wanting!
Thank you for this article, it totched my heart. I also had not heard of Hanns Lilje before, and also your books have introduced me to many interesting people
Thank you, wish you a blessed christmas, and hope that you will come with more books.
They have been a great blessing.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Suddenly, this verse has a new meaning for me, someone who has dealt with depression for over 25 years, and has spent most of 2023 in a deep, dark sadness. As dark as it has been, there has always been light. In my worse moments of doubt, even when, for a short period of time, I decided to be an atheist, Jesus was always there.
To my fellow pilgrim, thank you. What a meaningful reflection on this day as the light begins to increase each day for those of us living in the northern hemisphere.
I think of my wife Joice and I living in a remote village in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea in 1958. We were alone at Christmas and hoping to help provide the light of the Gospel to a group of people who, at the time, could not read or write anything. Joice wrote a poem, which started outline this: “Christmas in a primitive Papuan tribe this year will find us laboring to learn a language of an unwritten kind.Yearning to tell our new-found people whose hearts are black with sin of the Lord who came to save all–regardless of the color of skin.” Probably not acceptable today, but it expressed our heart. Fifteen years later the people had the New Testament.
This is the first I have heard of Hanns Lilje. Love his favorite scripture, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. Secure in His hands. Peace on earth, good will to men, God is with us this Christmas, as always.
“A streak of light across the darkling sky” . . . what a beautiful image of Jesus. And then, considering that “we dare not underestimate the relentless power of light,” by placing this streak in John’s cosmic context from the beginning of creation to God’s promised act in its fulfillment, we can believe that this streak does not vanish, but consumes the darkness hovering over human lives in this world. Thank you for gathering us to hear this message from you, Philip.
I think of the Palestinians who are going to experience Christmas in a dark and dangerous place, surrounded by dead loved ones, and waiting for some relief. There are surely Christians among them, but my prayer is that all of them, even non-Christians, will reach out for the true Light and look beyond their current circumstances. My heart breaks and tears fills my eyes just thinking about them.
Thank you and Merry Christmas.
All this season I have been hearing, seeing, reading about light – all from different sources. And so many Scriptures talk about the light of God in Christ. I am looking to Him for His light to shine in all of the tangled and damaged places in my family. He is so good, and I trust that He will bring His light where needed, at the right time.
Thank you, Philip for sharing this impactful story. Merry Christmas to you and Janet.
‘A congregation of four’ this is such a powerful image for many micro-congregations or home churches who meet not sure what tomorrow might bring. Thank you!
I have only one complaint on your blogs—They are never long enough and leave me yearning for more! Thank you! I just reread your blog on Jimmy Carter and was reminded of a time when I went to a taping of your interview at Crossroads, in Burlington, Canada. You were gracious enough to allow the group of ladies I was with to have our photo taken with you! May we all pray that those who walk in darkness will see the Light this Christmas! And Merry Christmas to you and your wife!
Thank you 🙏🏽 for this uplifting story ❣️🙋🏽♀️🫶
Thank you.
“We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations.” Einstein I KNOW PHILIP’S BOOKS ARE IN GOD’S LIBRARY!
Thank you for this poignant article, Philip- Hope is real, as you help us to see– even in our current darkness.
Thank you Philip for once again “feeding” me. God bless you and your loved ones as you celebrate God coming to dwell among us. Best wishes as you journey into the New Year. I pray your health issues can be managed well so you will be able to continue to feed His sheep through your writings. Kindest regards and blessings. Duky
Thank you thank you thank you. I needed this reminder this morning.
Thank you so much for this timely message full of hope.
Being Swiss and living in Switzerland, I’m a neighbour to Germany, and its Nazi past seems ever so close. It means a lot to read about Hanns Lilje and his courageous witness. Thank you for reminding us of the many people who suffer at this time, whether in prison or in war, or both. God bless you!
Franziska
Thank you. I share this hopeful blog with a Burmese Kachin Judson College graduate, whose uncle, a Christian leader, is imprisoned in Burma, for his actions of help to his people.
Thank you for this thought provoking message, Mr. Yancey. I need to remember that “the Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it” as I watch what is happening in the United States. It seems as though darkness is trying to overtake the light, but we can rejoice that it cannot extinguish the Light …. a comforting thought and promise.
Thanks for this wonderful message!