The Greatest Gifts: Hope Isaiah 35:1-10 Daniel Harrell, a pastor in Minnesota, writes about a Christmas pageant at his childhood church. For years, at the pageant, they had used a doll for the baby Jesus, but bothered by the imagery of that substitution turning the Word- made- flesh into the Word- made- plastic one year, when the child chosen to play Mary happened to have a 3- month- old younger brother, the church decided to try a live Jesus instead. Of course, as the little choir sang, but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes, right on cue, baby Jesus let out a blood- curdling scream, having been poked by the hay in the manger. Mary, who had already had enough of the screaming at home and who, perhaps, had already had enough of the baby brother altogether, turned around and shouted at Baby Jesus to shut up, which didn t go over so well. You re not supposed to yell at Jesus, after all. So the next year, they went back to using a baby doll. 1 Somehow, over the years, we have bought into the idea that Christmas is about perfection whether or not it is real: the silent night, with the snow softly falling, the perfectly- decorated tree, the beautiful gifts ready to be given and received, the children all smiles and gratitude, smells of home- baked goodies wafting through the house with happy, familiar tunes. But let s get real: your Christmas probably doesn t look like that I know mine doesn t. The night is never silent, especially if there are little ones around. If snow is falling, it means cold temperatures and traffic problems and perhaps even power outages, so instead of snuggling by the fire, we re watching the local news or hitting the refresh button on the power company s website map of outages. The gifts never work out exactly as we d planned some of them inevitably don t arrive on time, or we just don t have the money this year and either someone in the family ends up fighting or we find that we re awfully lonely. In real life, instead of it being a perfect, picturesque night, someone shouts at the baby Jesus to stop crying, 1 This story is told in Harrell s Living By the Word column in The Christian Century, December 3, 2013. 1
tired of sharing attention, or just so stressed out by trying to make everything perfect that they snap. All of this is evidence that we are not there yet. While Christmas is a wonderful season, while miracles have come and the baby Jesus was born in the manger, we, like the Israelites for whom Isaiah wrote, still live in the in- between time. All is not yet right with the world. Like the Israelites, we are a scattered people, living fragmented lives, with torn- apart families and broken hearts. We live in a world where blindness is not just a physical reality but a spiritual one, as well; a world where children go to school and take others lives and their own; where whole towns come together to burn and loot in protest of injustice; where, as much as we d like to believe it isn t true, black and brown bodies still matter less than those with lighter skin. We live in a world where people are still enslaved quite literally in sex trafficking, in addiction, in mental illness; where war has been raging for decades, with no end in sight; where diseases devastate families and sometimes whole communities; where the news is all violence and gloom; where some people starve on the street and others sit in the lap of luxury and throw away ten times more than what we need. In our world, in this in- between time, we yell at the baby for crying, stress ourselves out over the preparations, go into debt to buy the Christmas gifts, trying desperately to show, at least for a moment, that all is right with the world, even though we know it isn t true. We live in tension, because we re singing, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel every week, and yet we know that Emmanuel has already come, and while we have some of the gifts promised by the prophets, there is still suffering and dissatisfaction. The earth is fading quickly, our bodies are broken, whole cities are joyless, and human hearts everywhere are still sighing; and no matter how perfect our pageants, they do not quench our deepest thirsts; they can never satisfy our most earnest longings. 2
But the crux of Advent and Christmas is not only that the baby was born in a manger on an altogether not silent night but also that he is coming again. We aren t just looking back, waiting to remember that first Christmas: we re looking forward, waiting for the day when all brokenness will finally be healed, and believing that it will happen. The first gift of Advent is hope: hope of a new tomorrow, hope that this is not all there is, hope that the future kingdom promised by the prophet is still coming, and that we will one day be the beneficiaries of liberation and homecoming, of healing and joy; hope that someday, disability, grief, and sighing will all be swept away and overtaken by health, strength, and safety, with multitudes fools like us included singing their way home. 2 Advent isn t about chocolate calendars or happy carols. It s about how the world is so dark that we need the light of life to come. Pretending that the darkness isn t real actually does a disservice to the season. If we pretend that everything is perfect, we don t need the Messiah, we don t need to prepare for the coming of the Lord. If we aren t honest about how difficult things are, then there s no way we can hang our hopes on the miraculous transformation that is to come. If we pretend that we have everything figured out ourselves, that we can redeem ourselves, we ll never prepare ourselves for Jesus arrival. Hope isn t about pretending that things are fine now: it s about knowing how dark the world is and believing that the light is coming. The song of Isaiah, this poetry that was written for a people in literal exile, is a song of transformation. The prophet has already sung about the transformation of weapons, economies, and social orders; and here, he sings of the transformation of emotions and destinies, assuring us that even the deserts will be replaced with pools of blossoms. There will be leaping, singing, everlasting joy. Even the land itself will rejoice, with scorched earth bursting into bloom. Reading it, we can t help but smile, and we might even hear bells ring in the distance, as it 2 Paul Simpson Duke, Feasting on the Word, Year A Vol 1, Homiletical Perspective, p. 51-55. 3
dawns on us again that God hasn t given up on us yet, and in fact, God already has a plan to heal all that is currently broken. In today s Gospel lesson, we heard about the foretelling of John the Baptist s birth. He was one of those hoped- and- prayed- for sons, one of those miracle babies born to the elderly and barren. And Luke 1:17 tells us that his role was to prepare the way, to prepare the people for the coming of the Lord. That is the role of Advent, too, to prepare us to meet Jesus again, not only as the baby in the manger but as the coming King who will set the world to right. Advent is a time for us to make room in our hearts and lives for Jesus, to open our hands, loosening our grip on the façades we cling to so dearly so that they are free to receive the gifts of liberation and transformation that Christ has already brought and is still bringing. The most important things we can do this season have nothing to do with putting up decorations or attending parties or buying things online. The greatest gifts of Christmas aren t things you can buy at the mall or find under a tree, or even interactions you can have with the people you love. They are the gifts of God coming to earth to pitch a tent among us, the gifts of the Christ- child himself, who brings hope, peace, joy, and love into the world, the gifts of the Christ who is still yet coming, who promises the best is still ahead of us, that though the world is full of darkness now, the light will come and dispel it all. And on that, we hang our hope. Emily Dickenson wrote hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all. Desmond Tutu said, hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness. Hope isn t perfection. Hope isn t pretending that we re living in a Norman Rockwell painting. Hope is knowing that the baby in the Christmas pageant is going to let out the blood- curdling scream right at the perfect moment, and that still, Christ will be present, 4
making all things new. Hope is being willing to dream that some day life will be better, that we can make a difference, that God s love truly can transform the world. It s the willingness to challenge the idea that what we see now is all there is and all there ever will be. Hope isn t about certainty: it s not about guarantees, but it s a willingness to trust the promises of the prophet, that some day we will enter Zion with singing, everlasting joy crowning our heads, sorrow and sighing fleeing away, even if all present evidence is to the contrary. Rabbi Hugo Gryn was arguably the best- loved rabbi in all of 20 th - century Great Britain, and a leader in both interfaith dialogue and progressive Judaism. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1930, he and his entire extended family were first forced into a local ghetto, and then, taken by train to Auschwitz, Young Hugo was 13, but lied and said he was 19, so he and his father were put to work his younger brother and their grandfather were not deemed able to work, being too young and too old, and they went to the gas chambers. While at Auschwitz, Hugo s father insisted that they continue observing their Orthodox Judaism, including Sabbath prayers, even though it put their lives in great danger. Near the end of his life, Hugo told the story of his father putting a bit of string in a tiny pat of butter to make a Shabbat candle. Hugo was furious, protesting, Father, that is the only butter we have. And his father responded, Without food, we can live for weeks. But we cannot live for a minute without hope. 3 As we light the first Advent candle today, we remember that this season isn t about painting pictures of holiday perfection in our homes. It s not about decorating or buying or baking: it s about longing and prayer and waiting, recognizing and being honest about the darkness in the world and in our lives, but trusting that the light has come and is coming, and that the Light of life will not just 3 The quote is from Thomas G. Long s book, Preaching from Memory to Hope (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009), p. 132. Further details filled in from internet research, including the site www.hugogryn.com, accessed November 29, 2014. 5
scatter but eliminate all darkness. So hear the words of the prophet today: Strengthen the feeble hands! Steady the knees that give way! Say to those with fearful hearts, Be strong, do not fear; your God will come he will come to save you. The light is coming. This is our hope. This is the first gift of Advent. Amen. Rev. Elizabeth Ingram Schindler Faith United Methodist Church Issaquah, WA November 30, 2014 6