Two Words for Christmas

I don’t know about you, but I need Christmas this year.
Maybe more than ever.
But, this year, I need Christmas to be be more than the carols and the candles.
I need it to be more than the gifts that await our giving and receiving.
I even need it to be more than our being here on Christmas Eve.
As wonderful and as beautiful as all that is.
In a world seemingly turned upside down by hatred and violence, this year I need Christmas to really be Christmas. I need its message of Peace on Earth and God with us to be more than a card we send or receive. And more than a refrain in the carols we sing. I need the words and that message of Christmas to stack up around my life and to shake and shape me to the core. And because I long for the world to be different than it is and better than it is not just for you and me, but for all the children of earth, I need those words and that message to prop up my courage and to strengthen my resolve. I need that Christmas hope to hang on to and to turn me in the direction I need to go. I need Christmas to be Christmas this year and not just another Hallmark holiday.

So, if you are at all like me and the dream wrapped up in the promises of Christmas tugs at your heart and mind and soul, I have two words to offer to you this Christmas.
Not Merry Christmas.
Not Happy Holidays.
Not Silent Night or Mary and Joseph or Jesus and Bethlehem.
What I have to offer are the two words whispered by those heavenly sent angels.
Words first whispered to Mary’s cousin Elizabeth and to her husband, Zechariah, and then to Mary and then to Joseph and finally to the shepherds in their fields abiding. Two words which, as they took them to heart, changed their lives.

Our Christmas memories and traditions soften the harsh reality of the story. Mary and Joseph and Elizabeth and the shepherds were just ordinary people living in an occupied land dominated by a foreign power and struggling each and every day just to get by. To have enough food and to find enough work and to maintain their sense of who they were amidst the hardships and challenges of life. It was to the likes of them the angels came.

And, now all these years later, those same two words are whispered again waiting for you and me to hear them. And, if we dare…to take them to heart.
Two words which stand counter to everything you see or read in the news.
Two words up against all those other words. All that shouting. All that hatred. All that bigotry.
“Fear Not.” Those God sent angels say. “Fear not.”
Can you believe it?
With the world as it is?
Two words for Christmas which turned their world and ours upside down or maybe, just maybe, turned it right side up.

That is not to say there is not craziness in the world out there.
Or terrorism.
Or violence.
Or hatred.
All that is real.
All too real.
The question is how will you live in response to it?
The fear not of the angels did not gloss over the harsh reality of the world in which Mary and Joseph lived and into which Jesus was born. The fear not of the angels was a call and a challenge for them to live their lives differently. To live their lives not dominated by fear, but instead to live their lives believing believing that a different day was possible.
When fear takes hold of your life it soon festers.
And becomes anger and hatred and suspicion and vengeance.
You point fingers.
You blame them.
They become not quite human to you.
They deserve what they get or what you can dish out.
But Gandhi was right when he said, “An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.”

The Christmas story…
Reminds us of something else.
Promises something more.
It tells us there might be another way.
That God imagines another way.
That anxiousness and anger and fear when converted becomes hope.
And that hope enables us to see our lives and their lives differently and to begin to build a world that will be different tomorrow than it was today.

A couple of weeks ago, on a Sunday morning, I asked those who were here with me to close their eyes and to imagine what the world might be like. This evening, here in the beauty and quiet of this space, I invite you to do the same. If the promises wrapped up in Christmas are real, what would our world look like and be like.
Can you see it?
Can you imagine it?
If you can then the question becomes:
This Christmas, what can you do to make that world which you can already see THE world in which we all live?

“Fear not,” the angel said.
“I bring you good news of great joy.”
Indeed, good news of great joy!
This evening, may you hear and claim those brave words for your life and for our world.
For after all, it is Christmas.