The Hopes and Fears of All the Years

The Hopes and Fears of All the Years
A Sermon preached at St. Luke's Church
by The Rev. James B. Craven III
on Christmas Day, 25 December 2005

In the name of God - Father, Son & Holy Spirit. Amen
    This is the day the hopes and fears come together. As Philips Brooks, then at Trinity Church in Boston, wrote in 1868, “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” It is a time I think when those of us long out of our childhood look back on that childhood, and all those memories that are there, good and perhaps not so good, happy and not so happy. Some of us have been at this for some years, while others here at St. Luke’s are celebrating their first or second Christmas, fertile parish that we are. It is a time of joy and renewal, yet also a time when the numbers tell us that homicide and suicide are at a high. Coming as it does just a week from the beginning of the calendar new year, Christmas sort of affords us an opportunity to start over, in the words of an English song of the second world war, “in the land of begin again.”
    In an Advent sermon I mentioned that pre-Christian devout Bible-believing Jews of 2000 years ago anxiously awaited the long heralded coming of the Messiah, a King who would bring salvation from the occupying military power of Rome. O come, o come Emanuel. Likely they expected a warrior King, the prototypical man on horseback, not a helpless new-born baby aware of little beyond the innate sense of smell all babies have of his mother’s breast. A rather different sort of King, as illustrated some 33 years later.
    Do you remember what Emanuel means though? God with us. Not a bad description of the gift that is Christmas. God on our level. God in human form, fully human yet fully divine, yet another lesson for another day. God in the guise of a baby. Not just the Son of God, but God, by George. Remember that Karl Barth said of the Holy Trinity - God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, “It is God, it is God, it is God.” No longer the fire-breathing mountaintop God encountered by Moses, but God very much on our level, born and come to share our lives, our very fallible human condition, our hopes, our fears, all that we have, all that we are, all that we ever will be. A loving father and a friend and brother in one. A God who understands, who has been there. The same God Moses encountered on the mountain, to be sure, but rather God in a different light, God easier to identify with. Is adolescence driving you nuts? Jesus has been there. Feel lonely, even abandoned? Jesus has been there. Worried about who is going to look after your mom in the event of your untimely death? Jesus has been there. People, even your family, don’t understand you? They never figured Jesus out either. I don’t want to die. Jesus didn’t either. Ever been arrested? Jesus was, but unless you made it to death row, you did better. Who at the manger scene in Bethlehem would have predicted any of this? At least one could get to Bethlehem then, to comply with the emperor’s census/tax listing edict. The Israeli Army has Bethlehem cordoned off this Christmas, yet another story for another day.
    For lots of reasons I am glad, and proud, that we are here today. The catch phrase is whenever two or three are gathered together, not two or three thousand. A number of super mega-churches around the country are closed today, not in spite of the fact that it is Christmas, but because it is Christmas. And they will be closed next Sunday too, as it is January 1. A spokeswoman for a huge church near Chicago said that the last time they were open for business on Christmas, only a dozen or so showed up to pray. Only a dozen. And, she added, our mission is to reach the unchurched, and they sure aren’t going to be there on Christmas. Really? The article I read went on to note that Roman Catholic and Anglican churches never close. Well I guess not. After all, this is the Lord’s Day, the day that the Lord has made, and the day of the Lord’s birth. Rejoice and be glad in it.
    As Thomas Becket noted in his Christmas sermon at Canterbury 835 years ago, this is nothing less than the morning after the night when the angels appeared to the shepherds at Bethlehem and announced God’s peace to those of good will. Peace, when ceaselessly the world has been stricken with war and the fear of war, as much today as in 1170, when the Archbishop was killed. And that baby there in the manger, when grown, said to us “My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. But not as the world gives.” Well the gift of Christmas we celebrate today is not as the world gives, but it is God’s gift to us, at all times and in all places. He is born in us this day. Happy Christmas.

                                Amen.
St. Luke’s
25 December 2005