Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Perhaps, if there is one lesson to learn from the Bible it is this: that when God comes, he comes in ways we would never expect. When God speaks, he says things we would never dream of. When God acts, he does things we would never, could never imagine. Our God is full of surprises. That’s why we never give up hope. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, saith the Lord, neither are my ways your ways.”
Of the hundreds of examples in the Bible, examples of the unexpectedness of God’s Word, surely the Christmas story “takes the cake.” Who would have “thunk” it? A poor young girl, a sold-out hotel, a stable, shepherds, a baby in a manger. We would never have arranged the coming of the Savior like that. Such a one in such a place! So thoroughly unanticipated!

We miss the bitter irony in Luke’s words, as he recounts the birth of John the Baptist, because we don’t know the history. Tiberius Caesar and Pontius Pilate were the hated Roman overlords. They ruled in the world, and in Israel, by military might, and by fear and by unspeakable cruelty. Herod, the puppet Jewish king, was so insanely paranoid that he murdered three of his own sons and one of his wives, suspecting them of plotting against him. And he murdered thousands of others, too, for reasons just as crazy. Annas, and Caiaphas his son-in-law, the supposed religious leaders in Israel, the high priests of Judaism, had sold out to the Romans lock, stock and barrel. They were lackeys of the Empire. Into these hopeless times, Luke is telling us, the word of God came to Zachariah, father of the Baptist, the Baptist who would introduce the Savior of the World. As one preacher said, “God does the best of things in the worst of times.” He often does come as a rose that blooms at mid-night, “when half spent was the night.”
This is a source of great hope, this record of God’s coming when most needed and least expected. But that hope, like most important things, is not logical, not rational. The novelist Madeleine L’Engle, wrote of Christmas,

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason,
There’d have been no room for the child.

Bishop Monk Byron tells of one Christmas Eve, when, with his neatly-dressed family all in tow, he headed to church, to the midnight service, where he was to preach. On the way, his young son asked him, “Dad, are you going to let us enjoy this Christmas, or are you going to try to explain it to everybody?” You see, we can’t explain it, at least not its important parts and pieces. When we try to explain it, as when we try to explain the love between a man and a woman, it ruins it. Christmas is not rational. It’s a surprise, a profound surprise. It can’t be fully understood, but it does something for us. It restores hope. It proclaims to our despairing world an utterly hopeful message, “good tidings of great joy…to all people.” The commercialism of Christmas can overshadow the baby, I suppose. But, much worse, it can trivialize him. This beacon of hope to all mankind, this baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, this fleshing out of God’s love, this Christ, (if we’re not careful) can be reduced to wrapping paper and ribbons. This greatest and most unexpected gift, can be reduced to a few presents beneath the tree. Christmas is that, but it is much more.

During the recent recession, one commentator on television began his newscast by saying, “Due to the current financial crisis, the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned off.” The world turns off lights. Christians turn them on – look around you, in your neighborhoods, in this season. Light (especially light at the end of a tunnel) represents hope. Something that pierces the darkness. We know that many come to this holy season in deep despair. In their troubled minds the hopeful word is twisted into a melancholy message. “Others are joyful, hopeful, happy. Others have loving families, warm homes, ornamented trees, festooned gifts, tables full of food. What’s wrong with me? I must be the worst of failures. Why go on living?

If you should be one of these, let me express to you God’s love, and mine, and let me assure you of my prayers. But let me also say, with all kindness, you have missed the very point of Christmas. Jesus comes not with hope for those who already have plenty. He comes, instead, to those who must sleep in barns, and tend restless sheep all night. He comes to raise up the valleys and bring the mountains down, to straighten the crooked road and fix the potholes. It is to you, especially, that he comes. For hope in the things of this world is an empty hope. And if our extravagances at Christmas are born of that emptiness, then Christmas is a bust, and all our gaiety is a sham. When he came he didn’t come looking for rich people, or for successful, educated, influential people. He sought the poor, the downtrodden, the hopeless, people whose station in life left them with nowhere to go but up. People who knew how to hope against hope. People who would believe an impossible thing. And he found them. And he turned them around. And through them he changed the world.

From beginning to end in the Gospels the Jesus story is told in the dark shadow of the crucifixion. That is, the Gospel writers, even when writing about Jesus’ birth, knew how the story would end. In our faith tradition (the Western, or “Latin” church), we have emphasized the crucifixion, with its atonement for sin, as the most perfect sign of God’s love. In the Eastern faith tradition (the “orthodox,” or “Greek,” Church) they have emphasized the manger, the incarnation, as that perfect sign. Take your pick. You can start at the beginning or at the end of the story. It doesn’t matter. The message is still a staggering message of God’s wondrous love, and therefore it is a message of great hope – hope when there does not appear to be anything hopeful. Before the Word of God came to live with men and women, the world had little reason to hope. Before he comes to live with you and me, we have little reason to get up in the morning, to love others, to sacrifice, to believe. But he has come, and – our ultimate hope – he will come again. Let us drink to his coming. Ye that do truly and earnestly repent of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbor, and intend….”