Once upon a time, a tiny baby was born in a cold, stone palace in Jerusalem, a tiny baby prince upon whose shoulders rested the hopes of his people. He was born to an oppressed people in a land controlled by foreign despots who treated its inhabitants like animals, taxing them until they starved, forcing them to haul stones for building projects until they fell exhausted into the dust. The little baby was born in a time of war, in a time when the heavy boots of invading soldiers could be heard pounding back and forth across the country, leaving bloody cloaks and mangled bodies in their wake. He was born in a land in which God’s people had lost hope; wherever they looked it was as if they saw only “distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish,” and they felt themselves “thrust into thick darkness.”[1] The birth of this baby, this new king, became a sign of hope for his people, however. Their prophet, Isaiah, pronounced a loud “Yes” of hope in God’s name, when this child was born. Isaiah took God up on God’s Covenant promises of old and, holding up this child, he committed God to shine light into the darkness of this sad land, to infuse life into this land of death. Isaiah anchored God to the people’s hope in a name that recalled to them and to God who God is: “Planner of wonders, mighty, victorious God, Father for all the future, ruler of peace and well-being.” It was a name that fit neither the tiny baby nor the desolate, abandoned situation in which he was born, but this name made everyone dance and sing with the delight and joy usually reserved for the celebration of a bountiful harvest or a great triumph in battle. It was a name born of hope, a name that demands wholeness, justice, righteousness, and peace without end.
Some seven hundred years later, another tiny baby was born in a dank, dark stable room in nearby Bethlehem, and upon his shoulders lay the salvation of the world. He was put down to sleep in a stone feeding trough for animals, filled with insect-infested hay. He was born to a poor father and a teenage mother, who had been summoned by the occupying powers to a strange city, at a time when the heavy boots of soldiers could be heard pounding back and forth across the country, with men hung on crosses in their wake. He was born in a land in which God’s people had lost hope; wherever they looked it was as if they saw only “distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish,” and they felt themselves “thrust into thick darkness.”[2] The birth of this baby was a sign of hope for all God’s people, however. Hearing of his birth, the neighboring shepherds danced with delight and wonder, “praising God for all they had heard and seen.”[3] These shepherds pronounced a loud “Yes” of hope in God’s name, when this child was born. They took God up on God’s Covenant promises of old and, holding up this child, they committed God to shine light into the darkness of this sad land, to infuse life into this land of death. Later Christians anchored God to the shepherds’ hope, in a name that recalled to them and to God who God is: “Planner of wonders, Mighty God, Father for all the future, ruler of peace and well-being.” It was a name born of hope, a name born from God’s passion for the impossible, a name that demands wholeness, justice, righteousness, and peace without end.
Our Christmas hope is not a weak, fragile shrug of “oh well, things aren’t so bad.” It cannot be frantically conjured up with gifts and lights and carols. It is not a vague and sentimental “nice feeling,” prompting us to snuggle up under the tree, sure that things will somehow look better someday. Our Christmas hope is a desperately powerful thing that brings true rejoicing in the midst of darkness. French writer Jacques Ellul calls hope the “passion for the impossible”[4] that commits us “to those insane actions which alone are reasonable, to that critical knowledge which alone is constructive, to the relentless scouring of the real which is the only realism.”[5] Hope looks out with open eyes into a darkness where God seems absent or silent at best and demands that God speak again. Ellul writes, “Hope means to be invited, to find the doors shut, to be offended by that, to put in a claim that God operate in accordance with what he had said. Hope uses the most violent means to enter into the Kingdom of heaven, which is our passion, our expectation of joy, our abundance, our reason for acting, our every breath, more precious than each beat of the heart, our assurance of justice and our inner light of peace.”[6]
Hope is indeed like the birth of a child into a dark world: the powerful, living insistence upon future and love where those things seem impossible, brought into the world with determination and great cries, celebrated with great joy. Indeed, true hope cannot be manufactured; it can only be born, born because of and in spite of the circumstances surrounding it. W. H. Auden describes this kind of obstinate hope in his Christmas Oratorio, as the people in darkness cry, “We who must die demand a miracle./ How could the Eternal do a temporal act,/ The Infinite become a finite fact?/ Nothing can save us that is possible:/ We who must die demand a miracle./ … Therefore, see without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking:/ The Inevitable is what will seem to happen to you purely by chance;/ The Real is what will strike you as really absurd;/ Unless you are certain you are dreaming, it is certainly a dream of your own;/ Unless you exclaim—‘There must be some mistake’—you must be mistaken.”[7]
By bravely calling God to account, by speaking for a God who seems silent, hope gives birth to hope. Isaiah’s hope becomes the hope of the shepherds; the shepherd’s hope becomes the hope of the early Church; the hope of the early Church becomes the hope of our ancestors; the hope of our ancestors becomes our hope--if we decide to proclaim it.
Nigerian priest and novelist Uwem Akpan opens us up to Christian hope in our day in his book of short stories called, Say You’re One of Them. At the end of each one of his stories, stories that take place in the deepest darkness imaginable in our world, a child runs away into an unknown future. “Say you’re one of them, one of these children” he seems to be saying to us, “what kind of future will it be? Will you decide for life or death? Will you chose hope or despair? Will you speak for God, or remain silent?” In his first story, “An Ex-mas Feast,” Akpan describes a family’s desolate Christmas in a Nairobi slum. Let me borrow his setting for a minute.
Once upon a time, a tiny baby was born in a shack made of plastic in a Nairobi slum. He was born to an indebted people in a world controlled by huge corporations and foreign economic interests. The little baby was born in a time of unrest, in a time when the heavy boots of corrupt policemen could be heard pounding back and forth through the slum, rival gangs leaving bloody cloaks and destruction in their wake. He was wrapped in plastic bags to keep him dry in the rain while his older sister took him out to beg. He was put to sleep in a beat-up cardboard box and ravaged by malaria-bearing mosquitoes as he slept. He shared his mother’s milk with his twin sisters who were still nursing. He was born in a land in which many people had lost hope; wherever they looked it was as if they saw only “distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish,” and they felt themselves “thrust into thick darkness.”[8]
Tonight, remembering God’s presence in a stable over 2000 years ago, will we pronounce a loud “Yes” of hope at the birth of this child and millions like him? Will we take God up on God’s Covenant promises of old and, holding up these children, commit God to shine light into the darkness of this sad world, to infuse life into this land of death? Will we anchor God to the people’s hope in a name that recalls to us and to God who God is: “Planner of wonders, mighty, victorious God, Father for all the future, ruler of peace and well-being?” It is a name that will make us dance and sing with the delight and joy of abundance. It is a name born of hope, a name born from God’s passion for the impossible, a name that leads us to live in expectation, to pray with determination, and to act courageously for wholeness, justice, righteousness, and peace without end. Amen.
Thank you
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