One of the best things about Christmas, in my opinion at least, is the sense of anticipation that comes with it. We see it most readily among little children, who follow the “Elf on the Shelf” around the house from day to day, and carefully craft their Christmas wish lists, and eagerly jump on Santa’s lap. In our house, it starts right after her May birthday. Mary Ellen sees something she wants, and so we advise her to remember it and ask for it for Christmas, which, of course is too far away. But as December 25th approaches, you can watch her excitement grow as she anticipates finally receiving these things she has been wishing for for weeks, or even months. And really, it’s that way with all children, and even some of us adults, too.
There are most certainly more than a few people in this world who joyfully announce that Christmas is their favorite time of year. Whether that’s because of the decorations, or the carols, or the homemade goodies, or the gifts, varies from person to the next, but that doesn’t change the simple truth that there are a lot of hopes built up around Christmas. What’s ironic about such Christmas hopes, though, is that often times we end up disappointed. The gingerbread cookies get burned, or we don’t get the gift we wanted most, and just like that, all our hopes are dashed.
I remember one year when I was about nine or ten years old. My sister and I had both decided we wanted a “Barbie Dream House” for Christmas that year. And, of course, that was a pretty extravagant gift, so my parents explained to us on more than one occasion that if we were going to get Barbie’s “Dream House” at all, we were going to have to share it. That didn’t deter us, though; the “Dream House” was what we wanted. And so we wrote it on all our Christmas lists, we told Santa all about it and anyone else who would listen. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, we would get out our Barbies on the weekends and play with them, excitedly dressing them and preparing them for that day when their new home would arrive!
And sure enough, Christmas morning, we were elated to find a beautiful, glorious, real-life Barbie Dream House sitting under the Christmas tree! But it gets even better, because next to Barbie’s Dream House was a Barbie swimming pool! My sister and I were beside ourselves. We had gotten everything we wanted and more! Well, needless to say, before Christmas dinner had settled in our stomachs, we were up in my sister’s room with the Dream House all set up, the pool full of water, and the Barbie’s arrayed around the new landscape. But it goes downhill from there. It wasn’t too long before the front door broke off the house, over-extended by our excited hands. Then, my sister picked up her favorite Barbie doll, now dressed in a glittery pink bathing suit, and placed her in the pool for Barbie’s first swim. Which also turned out to be Barbie’s last swim because the water made her hair a tangled rat’s nets, and her beautiful rubber legs a splotchy mess. She looked like she had leprosy. Suddenly, that Dream House that we had so looked forward to was pretty disappointing.
And really, that’s the way it is with a lot of Christmas gifts, isn’t it? We get our hopes built up all around some supposedly wonderful things, only to quickly discover that the gift card runs out too quickly, or the toy isn’t as great as advertised, or the new electronic device is too complicated to operate. But you know, when it comes to Christmas, there are some gifts that won’t break. Ever. Of course, the obvious answer is Jesus Christ. But over the next four weeks, we are going to consider some other amazing Christmas gifts, too: Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace. Today, as we think about the gift of hope, we may quickly conclude that our Christmas hope is in the gift of Christ’s incarnation, his birth as God in the flesh. But that misses the wonderful fact that HOPE itself is a gift. Religion and culture writer, Andy Crouch, says this, “Human beings can live for forty days without food, four days without water, and four minutes without air. But we cannot live for four seconds without hope.”
Just think about how very true that statement is. When a loved one is taken away from us, what would we do without hope in the promised resurrection of the dead and life in the world to come? When we are fighting against cancer, what would we do without hope that the treatments will work? When wars are raging between nations and our loved ones are deployed overseas, what would we do without hope that sooner (rather than later) those wars will end, the killing will stop, and our beloved family will come home? When we are out of work, and falling behind on house payments, what would we do without hope that we will once again be employed?
The truth of the matter is, there is a lot in this life that causes despair, sometimes even debilitating despair. But hope is the antidote to despair. Hope is what keeps us from falling into complete depression. Hope is what stops us from just giving up completely. Hope is what makes life worth living. And indeed, hope in Christ, can carry us through any storm. The book of Hebrews tells us that “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. In other words, with faith in Christ, we are assured that all the hopes we have in God’s promises to right the wrongs of this world and to save each of us will be fulfilled! Isn’t that amazing?!?
For thousands of years, the Israelites had been praying and hoping for the great Savior promised by God. God had once delivered the people from slavery in Egypt, but in the time since, the Israelite nation had defied God and as a result, they had been divided and conquered many times over. Ultimately, they were exiled from their Promised Land by the Babylonian Empire. Once again living in a foreign and hostile land, the Jewish people’s hopes for God’s salvation magnified immensely. Psalm 130, which we heard this morning, captures the essence of that hope. “I hope Lord. My whole being hopes, and I wait for God’s promises” And even before he ends the Psalm, the Psalmist shares once again the promise of God, salvation is coming, “He is the one who will redeem Israel from all its sin.”
Fast forward a thousand years or so, and Joseph, as we heard this morning, is receiving a strange word. He is told that his wife, with whom he has never had sexual relations and will not for one full year, will bear a child that is conceived by the Holy Spirit, and that he must call the child by the name Jesus. Jesus is the Greek form of the Jewish name, Joshua, which means Jehovah is salvation. And Joseph is told that the child to be born would grow into the Savior who would save God’s people from their sins. The angel is telling this Jewish man that the salvation his people have been waiting and hoping for for thousands of years is finally coming! And it’s going to happen within his own family, by his very own wife!
We know that it must have been so scary for Joseph to hear that news from the angel. But at the same time, Joseph was also the first to learn of the coming fulfillment of all the hopes of the Jewish people. The Christmas gift to the Jewish people some two-thousand years ago was the fulfillment of their long-established hope of the Savior promised by God. The Christmas gift that won’t break for each of us this year and every year is that because Jesus was born, because the Savior came, we, too can have hope.
Now, that doesn’t mean that everything we ever hope for is going to happen. It doesn’t mean that God is busy right this moment making sure we will never be disappointed about anything. We all know there is disappointment in this life. We all know that sometimes our hopes are shattered. We may even feel at times as if hope breaks just the way so many Christmas gifts do. But true hope, the kind of hope we can have because of Christ never breaks. The coming of Christ proves that God has our best interests in mind. The birth of Christ at Christmas shows that God fulfills God’s promises and that God is busy making this world a better place. At the very least, we can keep hope in that promise. So, I urge you, receive this wonderful gift this year. Know that if you lose hope, you let go of faith too, and even life. So keep hope alive. Know that this is an amazing gift that will never break. Hope will carry us through every valley and help us to weather every storm because Christ is with us. And the reminder of each Christmas is that the coming of Christ means that we have a reason to hope.
Thanks be to God!
