The Gift of Hope That Endures

Christmas Day
December 25, 2008

The Reverend Susan Beth Pinkerton

Christmas could not have come at a better time this year. It has been a year of economic meltdown, record high foreclosure rates, growing unemployment, terrorist attacks, rampant disease, and hemorrhaging 401K’s and so on and so on. Many of us feel we are loosing our footing as institutions and industries crack and crumble before our eyes. …we are a people in desperate need of hope – a hope that endures. Where is the solid ground where we can anchor our lives and our hope?

Paradoxically, I believe that we find this hope in the nativity story about the tiny babe born in Bethlehem so many generations ago. The firm ground of our being lies in the unfathomable mystery of God’s Incarnation made present in the world and in us this Christmas Day.

John’s prologue introduces us to Christ with some of the most beautiful and majestic language in our holy scripture. These wondrous and multi-faceted images of the Christ engage and challenge both our heart and our mind. We meet Christ as the Word at the beginning of all creation, that exists now and through all eternity. This is the Christ that is the Light and Life of the entire world. And, finally we meet Christ as a human being, one made of flesh and blood; one who walks on this earth and dwells amongst us but most don’t seem to recognize him. Through John we encounter the mystery of the Holy One who is both imminently in us and at the same time, beyond us, cradling the entire universe.

These words have the power to feed our souls. They draw us inward, filling the deepest recesses of our beings with the wonder of their meaning; prompting us to ponder the deep and hard questions; who and what is God and who are we, in relationship to God and to each other. At the same time, the poetic rhythm of these esoteric images of light, dark, life and creation lifts us up out of ourselves, inviting us to transcend to a place, where linear time and eternity intersect. It is through this mysterious nexus of time and eternity that we encounter the Holy, the Word Incarnate, – Jesus the Christ, full of beauty and grace. Paradoxically, it is in this holy mystery that dwells deep within each one of us, where we claim our identity as children of God. We each become the womb for Christ, carrying him within the very depths of our souls.

Throughout the quiet darkness of the Advent season, we waited with hope for a savior that would overcome the darkness, lifting us up out of the stagnation of our lives and restoring us to a place of light, wholeness and well-being. However, we are never quite prepared for what we receive – God breaking into the world, into history, into our very souls through the personhood of the infant Jesus.

How bizarre! How strange! That something of such incomprehensible and colossal magnitude would take place in the form a tiny, howling infant, born in a dirty, smelly stable in some backwater town, whose poor parents had no money, position or title. A real nobody it would seem. Not exactly what the Jews had in mind as they waited patiently for generations for the arrival of the One they would call the Messiah, the Savior of the World.

But this is just how God seems to work in the world. Out of this tiny, obscure and fragile infant, God, the Holy One, is made manifest. This babe from Bethlehem is the fullest expression of the Divine that dwells within the universe and within each one of us for all of eternity.^[1]

This is the ultimate gift of this Christmas season; hope that endures all. Hope in the redeeming power of Christ’s love that brings forth a renewed life, full of promise. Hope in the light of Christ that fills the sanctuary of our souls, overcoming the life-denying darkness of despair and injustice, making the impossible seem possible again. And, hope in the power of love that defies and overcomes all. This is the source of our hope that endures; the Christ that comes into our lives and in whom we find the bedrock of our being.

Merry Christmas to you all. Amen.

[1] Ibid, 14-15.