24 December 2012

Christmas Eve
“Hope is here!”
24 December 2012


Many of us like to go to movies during these Christmas-New Year’s weeks. Many of us prefer to stay home and watch the Old Movies on TV instead.
I fall into that latter category ... probably some of you do too ... and so, we’ve been treated to numerous airings of “White Christmas,” “Miracle on 34th Street,” and the multiple versions of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”
But one rarity made it onto AMC a week or so ago ... that wonderful 1968 classic ... set in a medieval Christmas of 1183 AD but with dialog rich with double meanings, written for that most difficult year in our more recent American history ... I’m talking about The Lion In Winter.
Near the end, Peter O’ Toole as King Henry II – who has many, many such wonderful lines in the film ... speaking to Katherine Hepburn, she playing Eleanor of Aquitaine ... near the end of the film Peter O’Toole utters my favorite line:

We’re both alive, and that’s what hope is.
We’re both alive, and that’s what hope is.

We are alive, and that is something to celebrate, isn’t it?
Certainly, fresh off yet another in a long, long line of failed predictions about “the end of the world,” we can and do jokingly rejoice and give thanks for still being here ... but don’t let the hysterics of a few cheapen the weightiness of this statement ... We are alive, and that’s what hope is.
It has been a year, that’s for sure ... a year since we gathered here last to mark this Night of Nights, for us, and for all the world.
We have been around one full cycle once more ... from shortest days and longest nights, the darkness of winter, through the rebirth of spring, a most glorious, warm, sunny summer and early fall, then sliding back into greyness and rain once again.
And that’s just been the weather-year.
For us, for all, the rest of this year of living has had its share of ups and downs, blessings and banes, sorrows and joys, losses and gains; in some ways, like every other year that comes along. In other ways, most unlike other years. We give thanks for the gains and suffer and mourn the losses, that is for sure ... but through all that, we must not forget tonight that

We are alive, and that’s what hope is.

That is, after all, why we have a celebration in the middle of winter, as we mark things in the Northern Hemisphere of the world. In the midst of the darkness of this time of year, there has seemingly always been time for celebration ... witness the winter solstice celebrations which go back thousands, tens of thousands of years, filling that basic of human needs ... to be hopeful. I found a few words on Wikipedia that allude to just that:

The winter solstice [was] immensely important because communities were not certain of living through the winter, and had to be prepared during the previous nine months. Starvation was common in winter between January and April. In temperate climates, the midwinter festival was the last feast celebration, before deep winter began. Most cattle were slaughtered so they would not have to be fed during the winter, so it was almost the only time of year when a supply of fresh meat was available. And the majority of wine and beer made during the year was finally fermented and ready for drinking at this time.

Celebration and hope ... for millennia ... in celebrations Druidic ... Greek, Iranian, East Indian ... it’s been this way.
So when the Church decided in 354 AD ... yes, that’s right, three and a half centuries after Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem ... when in 354 the Church set Jesus’ birthday as December 25th ... replacing all those non-Christian celebrations, and most especially the one which had been taking place in Rome on that exact date ... Saturnalia, the birth date of Mithras, the festival of the Unconquered Sun God ... well, it just made sense.
We don’t know when Jesus was born, the time of year, what the weather was like, or much of what else was going on. Trying to pin the events of Luke’s telling of the story down to history doesn’t work, because whatever historical records other than the Bible that existed have been long lost.
But celebrating his birth at the darkest time of the year “worked” for the Church back then, trying to Christianize history and remove the other preexisting religions and gods and goddesses from the calendar and replacing them with Jesus-festivals. So that is just what the Church did ... and kept doing ... going further and further ... asserting its own place, authority and rightness about all earthly matters just because it Was The Church, and That Settled It.
And that worked for, oh, about 2000 years.
But now, I wonder. I wonder because much of the world wonders. We wonder ... because some ends of the Church sound more and more like they are less and less connected with our real lives ... with what we experience every day.
We hear words about how “God has abandoned people” ... people who suffer abuse and scorn ... children in a school, shoppers in a mall ... and we wonder.
We hear criticisms and condemnations of people whose lives don’t always fit into the Church’s neat little constructions of life, and we wonder.
We witness stubborn adherence to traditions, rites and rituals which made sense at one time to people but are no longer understood, but they are still piously asserted by the Church just because “we’re the Church” with no explanation provided, no connection made to life outside church walls ... in some cases, asking people to check not just their brains, but their whole lives at the church door before they enter worship ... and we wonder.
We wonder ... is Church meant to be one big NO in our lives ... my way or the highway to hell?
We wonder ... wasn’t God active in the world before there was a Church?
Well, of course God was.
God’s plan for saving the world started long, long before there was a Church, with buildings and bishops, pews and pastors, to systematize and regularize it all, to tell us How We Are To Believe, and How We Are To Hope.

Isaiah’s words are old ... older than the Church, that’s for sure ... coming some seven centuries before Jesus’ birth ... and they proclaim that hope and joy of salvation to people “who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shined.” These are words of deep, lasting hope ... for their age, and ours ... “the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.” An end to war, to hate, to fear and darkness ... humanity’s eternal enemies ... will come, come in the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
Of course there were many who came to Isaiah’s people, God’s people, in the centuries prior to Jesus who exhibited some of these tendencies ... these earthly rulers brought some light, some peace, some salvation ... not perfectly, but those Small Signs of Hope, Hope from Their God, those kept people going, going through the darkness, gathering each year in hope that one day, one day The One who would fulfill these words perfectly would come, and bring The Hope that would save them, save them from their suffering and sorrow and sinfulness and loss.
And of course that’s precisely why the Christmas story from Luke’s Gospel holds out so much hope for us. Jesus comes as God’s fulfillment of that Isaiah-Hope-Word ... Jesus comes, yes, but he comes in the way unexpected and mysterious ... certainly not in the way we humans, with all our rules of what’s right and proper, are all about.
Jesus comes not to the “church people” ... not to the religious leaders of his day, place and time ... nor does he come to the political leadership ... no, Jesus comes to those on the outside of things, those of the outside of the world, who are always looking in ...to the poor, the powerless, the politically weak and downtrodden, the economically distressed ... those whom the world would say, are of little worth. But it is to these that God comes ... comes, to shepherds in the fields ... and to a man with a young wife carrying a child who he knows is not his ... God comes to them, not in their home, but ‘on the road,’ in a strange place, a mean place, not at all the place the Nice Religious People of his or any age would choose for the birth of the Son of God.
But to those whom he comes ... he brings signs of hope ... unmistakable signs of hope ... and joy.
And that’s where I think that story ... that old, old story ... crosses with our stories, here, with us, tonight.

We are alive, and that’s what hope is.

When we gather in our mid-winter celebration, just as hundreds, thousands, millions of people have before us and ... I hope, millions more will gather after us, until the day when God decides it’s time to bring it all home for us ... bringing us all home, not to a place of fear and dread but into the place for which he sent his Son to be born, to live, to suffer and die, to rise again so that all creation might find their, our place deep in the loving, living heart of God forever ...
... when we gather in our mid-winter celebration, because of God’s continual, everlasting, permanent love for us ... which is made its most perfect in the cross-shaped life that is Jesus the Christ ... because of that, because of him, we can look back at our year just passed, and see small signs of hope, amid the scum and offscourings of our days, in our bad days and good days and just plain old boring days, we can look back and see and say, YES ... YES, in that day, in those times, I have seen hope, on the horizon, drawing near, ever growing within me, because I felt God with me in those times, through someone God sent to me, or in my being sent to someone, because I believe that God was working and moving through me.
To me, THAT’S faith. THAT’S HOPE.
It might not be Church, in the historic, official, pastor-collar-wearing and brick building sense. But then, nowhere does the Bible say that the Church has a lock on all the HOPE and FAITH. Actually, the Bible has a lot to say that’s the exact opposite ... which should serve to remind us that, when we hear that language of what Martin Luther called “the theology of glory,” the Church, church people, Christian brothers and sisters, speaking those lies of hate and separation, division and condemnation ... well, those aren’t Christ’s words ... or Christ’s acts. And so we who celebrate the “theology of the Cross,” God’s power made perfect through weakness, God’s strength made clear through his suffering, Christ’s choosing to be with us in the muck and mire of life so he could, can, always be God For Us ... well, we have a responsibility to speak the Truth. So that the life-destroying Garbage that some try to pass off as “Church” is put where it belongs ... in the dung heap, forever. So that the Truth is heard, clearly.
That’s why I love you, this place and people called Nativity. Not just because we spend the whole year reading and worshiping, studying and praying, baptizing and communing, so that we can be living that cross-shaped word of service-HOPE into the world.
But more ... because you give me hope on my dark winter days ... hope that brings me joy ... hope because I see signs ... some small, some huge ... some on the horizon, and some right here in my face... signs that show me and the world that you GET IT ...
... this table, open to all, every age, every background, whether you’ve been a lifelong follower of Jesus, or if you just walked into worship for the first time tonight ... if you feel called to come and eat and drink Jesus’ meal, then COME ... for Christ invites you ...
... this faith community, risen as from the dead, living that resurrection faith into the world, serving the hungry and homeless, the lonely and depressed, welcoming all, caring for all. Our parking lot this past year looked just like the rest of America. We had Obama and Romney stickers, McKenna and Inslee, pro and con R-74, legalizing and condemning weed, you name it, we are the rainbow of opinions here just like everyone else.
But we leave that stuff in the parking lot. Because here ... around this table ... in this faith community ... we do not condemn and demonize “the Other,” that lie that is perpetuated that somehow, some way, we are distinctly different from one another ... no, here, We Are One in The One who came to save the world. And that gives us HOPE ... HOPE that we can change the Church ... HOPE that we can change the World ... one person we encounter, one life we touch, at a time.
I think it’s no mistake that this place, we people are called Nativity.
For we are God’s sign of HOPE, right here, right now, into the places and to the people in the world, the life-places into which each of us are called, every day ...
this winter’s night, when all appears cold and dead around us, GOD IS STILL SPEAKING, speaking to us, speaking through us, living, active, as God has always been, as God will continue to be ...
... in the birth of Jesus, we have God’s blessing-stamp upon us, GOD LOVES US ... loved us then, loves us now, loves us still, has not, will not abandon us through ANYTHING. Through ANYTHING.
Christ, indeed, was born for this. Born for us.
And so we celebrate.
Lift your voices, embrace, shout it out, sing it out, Christ Is Born!
HOPE IS HERE!
Thanks Be To God.
Amen.