“Awed & Odd:  Hope in the Midst of Hopelessness”

First Congregational United Church of Christ

December 19, 2010

The Rev. Sharyl B. Peterson

Scripture Readings:  Isaiah 9: 2-6; Matthew 1: 18-23

Years ago I was working on a sermon for one Advent Sunday, and as one of my reading resources for that sermon, I took a look at a collection of “Advent reflections” that a friend had recommended.  I don’t remember much else about this book, but I do remember being struck by what one writer said about this season of the year.  And it was something like this:  “My favorite Gospel version of the birth of Jesus is in Mark.  Because he doesn’t talk about the birth of Jesus at all.” 

            In fact, if you pick up your pew Bibles this morning, and turn to the very beginning of Mark’s Gospel, you may be surprised to find that this commentator is right.  In Mark’s version of the story of Jesus, there is no Mary … no Joseph … no donkey-back-trip to Bethlehem (or Nazareth) … no wise ones bringing gifts from the East … and not a single solitary angel or shepherd anywhere!  Mark simply jumps into Jesus’ life as a teacher and healer, beginning with his baptism by his cousin John in the river Jordan, and immediately challenges all of us would-be followers to pay attention, and to get with it on our own discipleship! 

            I have to admit that there is a part of me that agrees with that commentator who thinks it may be best not to pay much attention to the beginnings of Jesus’ life.  That Mark’s rendering of the beginning of Jesus’ life – which is actually a non-rendering – is the best of all, because he doesn’t include all those strange story-elements we find in Matthew and in Luke.  Those things like angelic visitations, and “overshadowings” by the Holy Spirit, and virgin births, and all those other parts of the Christmas story that so many people struggle with. 

In fact, every year, I’ll have at least half-a-dozen or more visitors in my office, some of them our members, some of them total strangers who think they’d “like to come to church, but…” and as we talk about theology, and the stories of our faith, and the “real world” as they understand it, it never fails that at some point in the conversation, they say something like this:  “You know, I really do think there is a God,             although I’m not sure what “he” is like (and it’s almost always “he”).  And I can believe that some guy named Jesus may have lived 2,000 years ago, and taught some really good things about how we should all get along.  But … but I just can’t go along with all that utter nonsense in the Christmas story about angels, and virgin births, and things like that that couldn’t possibly have happened.  (They sometimes include what they call the utter nonsense in the Easter story about Christ’s resurrection, too, but that’s another sermon for another season.)

            And as a thinking individual who believes that we are supposed to come to God with our minds, as well as our hearts and spirits and bodies, I know exactly what they’re talking about.  The origins-of-Jesus story that we’re offered in Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels is indeed an incredibly odd story. 

The woman whom God selects as the mother of God’s own special child isn’t someone important – or well-educated – or wealthy (the kind of mother you’d think God would want for God’s child).  Instead, she’s a nobody … a poor village girl uneducated in anything beyond how to run a household … a girl who has no importance in her own world, much less in anyone else’s world  (like ours).  And then we have the whole business about angels showing up making pronouncements, and then gathering a bunch of sleepy shepherds and singing to them, as if a bunch of grubby homeless shepherds would have even been noticed by God, and as if they could possibly have understood “angelese” if they heard it.  And then, of course, we have the so-called “Holy Family” trip – where the pregnant out-of-wedlock teenager and her carpenter fiancé Joseph respond to an IRS audit summons by traveling to some town far, far away (the Bible isn’t all that clear exactly where), and they end up in the greasy, smelly garage out behind the Motel 6 where she gives birth to the Son of God.  Folks, all of that is beyond odd. 

            And so, lots of us struggle with the details.  With the inconsistencies.  With the odd bits that are so hard to believe.  With questions like, should we really be celebrating Christmas now, or in the spring, when it’s much more likely that’s when Jesus was born?  And some people do decide it’s just not worth the struggle, and give up on the whole Christmas story altogether. 

            I’ll bet most of us here today understand exactly what I’m talking about, because so many of us struggle with these things too.  And yet … despite our struggles, for most of us, we’re just not quite willing to give the story completely up.  And given how many folks show up in church this time of year, I think it’s a pretty sure thing that there are millions more people who aren’t quite willing to give it all up, either.

            Part of that unwillingness, of course, may simply be sentimental.  We have wonderful memories of hearing the Christmas story read by our grandfather, as the family gathered on Christmas Eve, or of getting to wear shiny aluminum-foil wings and a halo, and playing an angel in our Sunday School’s Christmas pageant. 

            We associate the stories about Jesus’ birth with good times … with times of joy and celebration … perhaps with times in which we knew absolutely certainly that we were loved.  Why would we want to give that up? 

            And so, we do come to church in this season, and we set up our nativity sets at home on our bookcases, and as we’re rushing around doing a thousand things to “get ready for Christmas,” we occasionally do think about Baby Jesus, and Mary, and Joseph, and our hearts are warmed.  And there is absolutely nothing wrong with having our hearts warmed.

            But I think for those of us who are Christians, there is something about the story that goes beyond mere sentiment … something about the story that has to go beyond sentiment if it’s going to have any real value for us, if it’s really going to transform who we are and how we live.  I think there is something about the story that goes to the very heart and soul of who we are as human beings living on this earth ...  and because it does, it can in fact offer us real hope even in the midst of our badly broken and dysfunctional world.

            A world that, in fact, has always been pretty badly broken and dysfunctional.  If you want to read really depressing history – about a time when life was as utterly and completely hopeless as it has ever been – just read the first few chapters of Isaiah.  Isaiah was a real person, who lived at a real time in history, and while his language is poetic, the situation he describes is pretty awful.  “Your country lies desolate, your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence aliens devour your land; it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners (1:7).  (T)he faithful city has become a whore! She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her—now (is filled with) murderers! Your (rulers) are rebels and companions of thieves.  Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts.  They do not defend the orphan, and the widow’s cause does not come before them (1: 21,23)… People are bowed down, everyone is brought low (5:15)… the mountains quake, and the corpses (of the people) were like garbage in the streets (5:25).”

            Does any of that sound familiar?  And so, we have to wonder, what was Isaiah thinking (or ingesting) when he made those wild promises we heard again a few minutes ago:  The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined… For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Isa. 9: 2, 6).

And several hundred years later when Jesus was born, things weren’t much better for most people.  While the Gospels don’t tell us anything about the state of the world back then, plenty of other historical sources do.  And those sources tell us that just as in Isaiah’s time, the land was filled with a huge group of foreigners (in this case, Romans who ruled and often badly mistreated the regular citizens) … and many of the people had become so fixed on their own poverty and fear and survival that they, too, had forgotten the orphans, and the widows, and the other marginalized people … and the Jewish people of Jesus’ time too were “bowed down, and everyone brought low.” 

            The world before Jesus was born … and the world into which Jesus was born … and the worlds which have come after Jesus’ birth and life and death and resurrection do often seem hopeless to the people who live in any given time.  Human beings somehow can’t seem to get it right, and generation after generation, we keep creating worlds in which wars rage, and violence of all kinds against the weak and powerless is prevalent, and nothing seems to ever get much better.  So how on earth – where on earth – can any sane human being possibly find hope in the midst of those realities?

            And that is where I believe the Christmas story can, and does, offer us the oddest of hopes imaginable.  And it does that in part – or entirely – through that very odd promise that the author of Matthew’s gospel makes in the part of the story we heard this morning.  Quoting God, he says this:  “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” 

            God is with us.  Right here in the early first century (for Matthew’s audience).  Right here, now, in the early 21^st century.  God is with us. 

            And God is with us not just in some abstract, imaginary, unbelievable way, but is here with us as a real tangible touchable reality in our world.And that friends, is where and how we can find hope, even this morning on Dec. 19, 2010.

Because what does “hope” really mean?  Hope is not simply some abstract philosophical idea like this tiny sampling of quotations from world-famous philosophers:  “Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man” (Nietzche); or “a leader is a dealer in hope” (Napoleon Bonaparte); or “The setting of a great hope is like the setting of the sun.  The brightness of our life is gone” (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow).  Not even a philosophical quotation that I especially like:  “Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn’t permanent” (Jean Kerr).

            Nor is hope simply some abstract theological notion like the one some of us memorized in catechism years ago:  Q:  Who is the hope of the world?  A:  Jesus Christ is the hope of the world.  Fine, we may have thought, even as third-graders.  But what does that really mean?  How can Jesus Christ be the hope of the world?  He hasn’t been around for about 2,000 years, and we don’t know when He might be coming back again.

            So, what is hope?  When we say “I hope for world peace,” or “I hope for peace in my family,” or even, “I hope my friend with cancer will get well,” what do we mean? 

I think we mean something like, “I hope for world peace, because that means my son or daughter can come home safely from his/her tour in Afghanistan.”  Or “I hope for peace in my family, because that means my teen-age kids will stop fighting with each other, and we can enjoy family activities together again.”  Or “I hope my friend with cancer will get well, so her children don’t have to be afraid they’re going to lose their mom, or so we can have lunch together again, or so she can go back to school where her students miss her.” 

            I believe we find hope most concretely in relationships.  I believe we find hope embodied in other people, and in our relationships with them, and in the ways we find and experience God through those relationships.

Look at the person sitting next to you this morning.  That is what hope may look like.  Look at the person sitting across the table from you at a meal, really listening to you and your story and your life.  That is what hope can look like.  Look at the guy coaching a Little League team, or the woman buying extra Barbie-dolls and Monopoly games to give to Toys For Tots, or look at the friend who says, “I’m so sorry this is happening,” or at the total stranger who gets up and offers you his bus-seat when you’re on your way home from work, and so tired you can barely stand up.  That and that and that and that and that and that are what hope looks like.

            There’s a delightful story that explains how this is so, and as a check on its truth-value, I invite you to think back to your own parenting experiences as I tell the story.

            It seems there was a little girl who woke up in the middle of the night, and saw a huge, terrifying monster standing at the side of her bed.  And she started screaming with all her might, “help me, help me.”  Her half-asleep Mom came and sat down on her bed, and hugged her, and comforted her.  And after awhile, her mom said, “Okay, now let’s say a prayer … and then I’ll go back to my bed, and you’ll be fine because you can remember that God is right here, keeping you safe.”  And the little girl looked at her Mom, paused for a second, and said, “I don’t want to say a prayer.  I want God with skin on.”

            And don’t we all?  When we are afraid – and we all are, of so many very real things – when we are feeling so much in need of hope, we too want God with skin on.  And that, I believe, is why so many of us – despite its many oddities – cling so tightly to the Christmas story.  Because it offers us “God with skin on.” 

            It offers a picture of what God just might look like – like a person who befriends all the people no-one else wants to be friends with,           like a person who reminds everyone that our job is to befriend and help others too – like a person who stands up to bullies and mean-spirited people – God in the flesh.  That whole “Emmanuel – God with us – thing.” 

            However we may understand Jesus’ divinity, most of us are awed enough to believe that in some way, He showed us what God in the flesh looks like.  Whatever details we do and don’t believe to be true about Jesus, most of us are awed enough to believe that He is real, and that we can still have a relationship with Him today.

            And because we are awed by who and what Jesus was, we may be odd enough to choose to live differently than we might otherwise do.  We might choose to be peace-makers in a world filled with conflict.  We might choose to love – or at least try to love – all those people no-one else loves or wants to be friends with.  We might choose to find joy in a world that sometimes seems filled with despair.  We might choose to trust our God … and to hang on to hope … even when there doesn’t seem to be one sensible reason to do so. 

            One final Sunday, then, I invite you, if you can do so with integrity, to affirm with me:  Yes, I’m a Christian.  Yes, I am awed.  And yes, I am odd.  I believe in making peace.  I believe in loving like God loves.  I believe that joy is possible.  And I believe there is always hope.  Amen.