Hope found only if we trek our way to the stable beyond our home
Advent III, 2008 Isaiah 65:17-25

More often than not, there is not much about us human beings and our ventures that gives me hope and peace. Our personal stories and communal histories are full of deception, betrayal, greed, suspicion, disappointments, jealousy and hatred. It is because of our common greed that today we have this housing crisis in our country. Hundreds of businesses are shutting its doors because we had opened far too many businesses in the first place to cater to our endless materialism. Now that we are scared of not having enough money we have stopped going to buy yet another thing we do not need. Often as we see and experience the depressing news of our world, we tend to seek some momentary peace in churches. But the truth is that our churches are not immune to any of the darkness that surrounds our lives. We come to church Sunday after Sunday but we do not take the time and energy, or the pain to resolve grudges we hold against each other. We like our serene looking sanctuaries to attract others but we cannot generate the warmth needed to make strangers feel at home. We long for good and lasting changes but we defer opportunities of involvement and leadership to someone else, who passes it on to someone else in the line until no one is there to get their hands dirty. My dear brothers and sisters, if in our churches we are not stirred to get involved in the lives of each other and in building God’s Kingdom in our broken world we have no business confessing our faith week after week in our well protected, beautified chapels and cathedrals. As people who believe in the redemption brought to us by Jesus, we are called to live a life of hope, a life of reconciliation and healing, not a life of mistrust, discord and indifference.
If there is good that we see in someone we are called to encourage and acknowledge that. If there is misunderstandings amongst us we are called to talk to each other in love and in hope. Our call is to bear each other’s burdens, not to make it heavier for each other. In and beyond our churches, the observance of Advent and the celebration of Christmas is not meant for us to feel good about ourselves, nor is it about escaping the suffering and pain of life for a brief time in the year with gifts, lavish food and merry greetings. Christmas is about our God and Father showing us what it means to bring healing and peace to our depravity and broken-ness. It would indeed be a petty and meaningless message if Christmas was all about me, my family and my friends feeling good in each others’ company. In the Magnificat, Mary acknowledges and rejoices in God’s regard for her by saying
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
For He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden,
For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name. But the greatness and hope of her song lies not so much in her receiving God’s favor upon herself, it lies in her immediate solidarity with the downtrodden and her embrace of healing for all the pain and broken-ness of this world as if it had already happened. She says,
And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with His arm:
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and exalted those of low degree.
He has filled the hungry with good things;
and the rich He has sent empty away.
He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy;
As He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to His posterity forever.
Christmas is about living in the hope of the new heaven and the new earth that God promised. The ultimate and most precious gift of God’s son Jesus Christ to us is a gift that must transform us. It is a gift that God deliberately brought to us in the cold, smelly, unprotected stable beyond our well-stocked homes, so that we can understand that there is no such thing as a god-forsaken place. We, not God, create the forgotten places of our world. Jesus is a gift that brought the lowliest of shepherds and foreigners into the embrace of God’s love. He is the gift that waited to unwrap in the midst of rough working class fishermen, despised tax collectors and prostitutes, unclean lepers and tortured souls, forgotten widows and oppressed women.
The birth of Christ has put us in the future already as in the words of the prophet,
I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people; this Advent, have we asked ourselves, are we living as God’s delight?
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. This Advent are we asking ourselves if we have truly embraced the hope that Christ brings? Or do we still grumble and weep like there is no tomorrow?
It would be a shame if this Advent we do not see and embrace the profound hope the words of the prophet bring,
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labor in vain,
or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD--
and their descendants as well.
Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
In the middle of our global debate about deforestation, destruction of mountains and rivers to drain natural resources, loss of habitat for all sorts of life on our planet, pollution and global warming, we read from the prophets’ words that were written nearly three thousand years ago.
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent-- its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.
Now, if these words do not bring us to our knees in humility before our God who cares not only for you and me, but all His creation, we have truly lost it. May we all take the time to trek our way toward the lowly stable out of our comfort zone to behold the healing and hope brought to us in Christ. Amen