O Little Town of Bethlehem
“O little town of Bethlehem,
how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
the silent stars go by;
yet in thy dark streets shineth
the everlasting light.
The hopes and fears of all the years
are met in thee tonight.”
“The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
Phillips Brooks, who wrote the words of this hymn, was referring to Bethlehem, the place where all hopes and fears meet, around a manger and the new born child Jesus.
Tonight we gather around the manger in our own Bethlehem here at St Peter’s. We bring our own fears and hopes to the manger, the ones spoken and unspoken, the ones known and unknown. We bring the fears that threaten to destroy us and the hopes that sustain us.
Michael Gerson writes about his own hopes and fears meeting in his column which appeared this morning in The Washington Post. The title of the column is “This Christmas, hope may feel elusive. But despair is not the answer.”
In the column, which he is writing from a hospital ward, Gerson reveals that the cancer he has fought for years has become terminal and will eventually kill him, that he will not be getting better.
Gerson says that “nearly every life eventually involves such tests of hope. Some questions, even when not urgent, are universal: How can we make sense of blind and stupid suffering? How do we live with purpose amid events that scream of unfair randomness?”
And then, this question. “What sustains hope when there is scant reason for it?”
What sustains hope?
For Gerson, the birth of Jesus sustains hope.
And here’s why. Gerson says that “the nativity presents the inner reality of God’s arrival.”
And then he goes on to say what the birth, and also the life and death of Jesus tell us about God.
That God “goes to ridiculous lengths to seek us, a God who chose the low way: power in humility; strength perfected in weakness; the last shall be first; blessed are the least of these.”
God is cloaked in blood and bone and destined for human suffering—which he does not try to explain to us, but rather just shares.” And this willingness to share our suffering “is perhaps the hardest to fathom,” Gerson says, “the astounding vulnerability of God.”
Gerson goes on to say that God “is a God of hope.”
God “offers a different kind of security than the fulfillment of our deepest wishes. God promises a transformation of the heart in which we release the burden of our desires, and live in expectation of God’s unfolding purposes, until all of God’s mercies stand revealed.”
Listen to these words again. “God promises a transformation of the heart in which we release the burden of our desires, and live in expectation of God’s unfolding purposes, until all of God’s mercies stand revealed.”
In the familiar Christmas story that we are here to celebrate tonight, Luke tells us that as Mary holds her newborn son, the fulfillment of an angel’s promise, the flesh and blood Son of God, and her own flesh and blood in her arms, that “she ponders all of these things in her heart.”
Mary must have felt the burden of her desires, as any parent, or anyone who loves another might feel, the burden of the desire that the beloved will live a long, happy, fulfilled and blessed life, the burden of the desire to make it so for the beloved.
Mary must have felt the expectation of God’s unfolding purposes. Maybe she knew that she was part of that unfolding, that her child was to be part of God’s unfolding purpose of releasing God’s love into the world. Maybe she knew that this child would help us all to remember God’s love and our longing for God’s love to transform each one of us and ultimately God’s completion of the redemption of the world.
Maybe Mary pondered the idea that this child would be our hope even in the face of our sorrows, even in the despair of our unrealized desires, and even in the face of death.
Richard Rohr, the Catholic theologian from whom we often hear in my sermons, says that “God comes to us disguised as our life.” As Prior Aelred points out in The St Gregory’s Abbey Christmas letter, Rohr says that “our willingness to find God in our own struggle with life, and to let our struggles change us turns out to be our deepest and truest obedience to God’s eternal will.” Rohr says that “we are always the stable into which the Christ is born anew.”
Many of you contribute to the discretionary fund. So I share this story with you tonight from a person who has benefited from the discretionary fund as an example of how love can transform our hearts and in so doing be part of God’s ongoing plan for the redemption of the world.
Lisa (not her real name) called me at 10:30PM one night. She apologized for calling so late. She had been with friends whose 26 year old son had just died of Covid and was trying to give them support. Lisa has a sister who has problems with drugs. This sister is the mother of a six year old girl. The sister had dropped her daughter off at a relative’s house and, unbeknownst to Lisa, told the relative that Lisa would be picking up the little girl and taking her home for Christmas. So Lisa had gone from her friends who were full of grief over the death of their son, to the house where her six year old niece was asleep, and had brought her niece home for Christmas. Her sister was not answering the phone, and so Lisa had no idea when the sister might come back for her daughter.
Lisa periodically asks for help from the discretionary fund for herself, but more often she is calling on behalf of someone else, often for her uncle, who is disabled and sometimes has trouble paying his rent, or for a friend who needs help with an electric bill or some other bill. This time she needed help to complete her rent payment, and thanks to your generosity I could help her.
As I’ve reflected on her story, I see Lisa as a person of hope. She is a good example of Rohr’s metaphor that we are the stable into which Christ is born anew. That rainy night, in the midst of her own struggles, this woman had spent time with grieving friends and brought them comfort. And then she had brought a child home unexpectedly so that the child would have a “home” for Christmas.
Lisa carries the burden of her desires that the lives of the people around her should be better. Although she probably wouldn’t put it into these words, she also, to use Gerson’s words again, “lives in expectation of God’s unfolding purposes, until all of God’s mercies stand revealed.” She is playing her part in the unfolding of God’s love in this world by her compassion for others.
And you all play your part in the unfolding of God’s purposes in this world through your generosity to those in need.
So this Christmas, as Gerson says in the closing paragraph of his column, as his talks about the hope that the Christmas story brings into his unfilled desire that he might be healed of his cancer–“we consider the disorienting, vivid evidence that hope wins. This story is a story that can reorient every human story.” The birth of Jesus “means that God is with us, even in suffering. It is the assurance, as from a parent, as from an angel as from a savior: It is okay. And even at the extreme of death (quoting Julian of Norwich): ‘All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’”
So in closing, let’s join in singing the last verse of “O Little Town of Bethlehem. May that last verse be our prayer as “we live in expectation of God’s unfolding purposes, until all of God’s mercies stand revealed.”
And even in the face of all our fears, may we be people of hope in and for this world.
“O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray, cast out our sins and enter in, be born in us today. We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell; O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!”
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