Episodes
Wednesday Dec 24, 2014
Word of Hope: A Christmas Homily
Wednesday Dec 24, 2014
Wednesday Dec 24, 2014
“Word of Hope”: A Christmas Homily
Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli
Foundry United Methodist Church
December 24, 2014
How do you speak a word of hope into a world so bruised and skeptical and guarded? How do you speak a word of faith into a world so dulled to the realities of things unseen? How do you speak a word of peace into a world so entranced and bound by violence? How do you speak a word of love into a world so brokenhearted? These are my questions for God tonight. Words fail in the face of so much that we experience in the world—the violence and tragedy and wars that never cease and a consumptive culture eating us all alive. What word does a preacher speak that might have any chance of being heard over the din of all that—not to mention the noise of personal worries, to-do lists, football games, work stress, concerns about our children, about our finances, about our health, about our future? Human heads and hearts have always been full of worry and concern, of questions and confusion. And God’s messengers have been trying to get a word in edgewise for such a long time. Prophets ancient and new proclaim and plead, they write poetry, they sing, they do all sorts of crazy public acts to interrupt the status quo, to get someone’s attention, to communicate what matters most of all, to share God’s love and mercy, to call humankind back to some semblance of sanity; to show forth what is possible with God, to speak a word of peace and hope that will be planted and take root and grow and bring about the life that God intends.
But, even with all the crazy antics of God’s messengers and prophets, it was never enough, could never be enough. Because what the world needed then and what we need now is God—no one else will do. God knows what we need and how we struggle and suffer and get so lost. And as much as we don’t want to admit it—it’s downright un-American after all—we can’t save ourselves or anyone else on our own. We need God. And because God so loves the world, God gives us what we need. Because God so loves YOU, Jesus was born, a creature of flesh and blood and bone and breath, holding within his very human body, the very heart of almighty God. In Jesus, we see who God is and how God acts: God is humble—not born into wealth or privilege, but rather born in a borrowed barn, God favors women and men like Mary and Joseph—the little ones of no account, calls upon common folks to be witnesses to glory, chooses to be vulnerable in order to lovingly stand in solidarity with us. In Jesus we also see what it looks like to be fully and truly human, what life looks like when it is lived fully in God’s love and mercy. In Jesus we see and hear and experience beyond any doubt that God is a God of love who chooses to dwell with us in the messiness, confusion, and brokenness of human life so that we might share in the peace and purpose of God’s Kin-dom.
Why is it so difficult to hear this message of God’s love and mercy, much less believe it or be transformed by it? Among the answers may be: we are distracted, we are forgetful, we are lazy, we don’t understand, we are turned in on ourselves, we are deceived, we think we know better, and on it goes. My guess, however, is that for many people the biggest challenge to hearing and receiving God’s saving Word is the sorry state of so many things in the world. The things that Jesus came to save us from—violence, greed, selfishness, small-mindedness, hatred, fear—these are the very things that keep many people from receiving the gifts offered to us at Christmas. Many will look around and say, “How can these things be if God is a God of love?” The late, modern prophet William Sloane Coffin challenges us with these words: “God comes to earth as a child so that we can finally grow up, which means we can stop blaming God for being absent when we ourselves were not present, stop blaming God for the ills of the world as if we had been laboring to cure them, and stop making God responsible for all the thinking and doing we should be undertaking on our own…God provides minimum protection, maximum support—support to help us grow up, to stretch our minds and hearts until they are as wide as God’s universe. God doesn’t want us narrow-minded, priggish, and subservient, but joyful and loving, as free for one another as God’s love was freely poured out for us at Christmas in that babe in the manger.”[i]
Tonight we are invited to “grow up” and become more responsible, more spiritually mature, more broad-minded, joyful, loving, and freely self-giving. And if we are paying attention, we will see that, should we choose to accept, we will not be alone; we will never be alone. For God is with us. And so are other people who, like Mary, have said “yes” to God’s presence and saving activity in their lives. If we have the eyes to see and the hearts to understand, we will look around and see not only brokenness and pain, but also extraordinary beauty and courage and faith and generosity and love in the world. As people hear and open themselves to the tender voice of God’s Holy Spirit, they begin to do crazy things like humble themselves, to forgive and be forgiven, and to spend hours in prayer for the sake of those who suffer. They hear their pastor announce that a dying parishioner needs a kidney and that very day tell that pastor that they will give one of theirs. They take unhoused, struggling drug addicts into their home. They start fundraising for church missions at the bar that is their daily hangout. When people open themselves to receive God, they give up their Saturday mornings to cook for the sick and vulnerable, they give up a Friday night to stand along a luminaria-lighted street as a witness to the truth that black lives matter, they spend hours helping folks navigate the system to get ID cards and driver licenses, they give up vacation days to stand in solidarity with friends on trial, and give up hours every Sunday to teach and care for children at church. As people make room for the living Christ within their lives and hearts you see them hanging in there with a friend or family member who just can’t seem to get it together, sitting with and listening to the lonely and grieving. Those who are welcoming the presence of God more fully into their lives show mercy and kindness in a million little ways each and every day—in their work, in their homes, and everywhere. They give more of themselves and of their treasure than might be advised by fearful observers but they do it freely and joyfully for the sake of God and God’s Reign of love.
We can hurl our questions at God tonight should we so choose asking for a word sufficient for a world such as ours. And the response will come to us: “I have spoken my Word and his name is Jesus. And he is enough.” Once upon a time, that Word became flesh—lived and suffered and died and rose—that we might share life with him in God. And that Word continues to become flesh in so many wondrous ways; just look around. Hear the word of hope spoken through so many lives…and let it become flesh in you. God’s best hope for the creation is for us to hear and receive the Word—to allow God’s love in Jesus to be made manifest in our day to day lives and decisions even alongside all our worries and flaws; for us to live as people of hope, to remember that there is more to life than business as usual, more than what meets the eye; to rejoice that there is more love in the world than hatred, more good in the world than evil, that the Light will never ever be overcome by the darkness; to give thanks that we are invited to share in God’s life of love, generosity, and joy. Jesus came to BE this Word of hope, eternally spoken, eternally present, for you and for me and for the whole world. May we have ears to hear, eyes to see, hands to share, feet to follow, and hearts that beat with the love of Jesus the Christ. By God’s grace, may your life (and mine) be among the signs of hope that shine in the darkness; may God continue to speak through us.
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