My boys are going crazy for Christmas. Insane. Absolutely bonkers. We’ve gotten and decorated our tree. We’ve bought presents and wrapped them and even gone to see the new Frozen movie. They have an Advent Calendar gives them a little piece of chocolate each day until Christmas. Their energy is through the roof. They are full of anticipation: A break from school. Presents. Time with Grandparents and a gaggle of cousins. We’ve had to give warnings and count to three more than we’d like to, the noise level is off the charts, and the energy is through the roof. But they’re so full of joy about what is to come. Their Joy is sometimes annoying, a little out of control, but also sometimes contagious.
We celebrate Jesus’ birth during the darkest time of the year. Not because this was probably Jesus’ actual birthday, but because Christmas is a light in the darkness, a joy in the midst of sadness and despair. Today, we light our pink candle of Joy to remind us that there’s still joy in the anticipation, in the coming of the not yet. The kids show us the way. And Mary and John are here today to tell us of this joy, even in the midst of their own struggles and hardships. They proclaim a light in the darkness. They point to the Christ, who is the one to come, who has come, and who will come again.
This is sometimes hard to see. Even John the Baptist had a hard time seeing it. Even John the Baptist, who was to prepare the way of the LORD, wasn’t so sure that Jesus was the one. He’s stuck in prison, facing his own death, and Jesus isn’t doing what John thinks a Messiah should be doing. He’s not riding through Jerusalem on a white horse to free the captives and destroy the corrupt government. He’s not gathering a huge army with which to overtake a system of oppression. Instead, Jesus is sending folks out two by two to heal and proclaim the good news to the poor. He’s meeting people and healing them one by one. He’s eating with outcasts and tax collectors. It’s a revolution of quiet actions and peaceful protests. It’s a revolution of healing person by person, slow and quiet like the coming of the sun after the longest day of the year.
He’s not the military leader that everyone expected. Where’s Jesus with his militia come to bust John out of prison? Why isn’t Jesus planning an attack on Herod or a tearing up of Rome or a systematic dismantling of the powers that have oppressed the Jewish people for decades? John had his doubts. And so do we.
Is Jesus really the one who is to come? Sometimes this is so hard to see. There’s so much bad news everywhere. It's the bad news that’s so easy to find.
Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of the shooting in Newtown. The life expectancy in the United states has gone down for the second time in three years. We have lost more children to gun violence this year than active military and police officer deaths combined. Children are dying of the simple flu at the border, and Greenland is losing its ice sheet at accelerating rates. Measles has come back. Our government is wrapped up in impeachment proceedings while food stamps are cut for our poorest families. Where’s the good news? Where’s the joy?
Jesus tells Johns disciples to simply report what they see. Just tell the story of what’s going on around them. And this might mean they need to see a little differently. They might need to have their own blindness healed so that they can see what is happening, what is truly happening, beyond all the corruption and the hunger and the suffering and the trouble. They might need to light a candle in the darkness so that they can see and hear and feel the good news of the coming of the Kingdom of God.
The blind do see.
The lame really walk.
The deaf can hear.
The dead are raised.
The poor have good news brought to them.
There is good news. We just have to find it in the stories.
These stories are hard to find in the darkness. But they’re there. Hidden in all the bad news and devastating statistics are stories of people who are being healed, who are seeing things anew, who are hearing a new word, who are being raised from their own lives of death and depression and poverty. The stories are there. We just have to light a candle and look for them. We just have to step out of our doors and outside our comfort zones to find them. They might look a little different from what we expect, but they’re there. Ordinary people are traveling to the border to provide care and meals and water to those in need. Greta Thunberg was just named Time Magazine’s person of the year. Dozens of people are finding hope and paths out of addiction in our own church building.
And you’re here, in the midst of your own struggles, to find a little light and a little hope in this dark season. The stories are there. We just have to look for them. Sometimes we have to be healed of our own blindness in order to see them, but they’re there.
And sometimes, like John, we need a little help. We need others to point it out for us, sometimes in neon lights, “LOOK! the blind see! The deaf hear! The dead are raised and the poor are given good news!” Sometimes, as Fred Rogers used to say after a tragedy of unfathomable proportions, we have to find the helpers, because there are always helpers.
I find so much hope in the fact that John struggled with a little bit of doubt.
That’s my light in the darkness. That Jesus comes to him - even while he’s in prison, even second and third-hand, to tell him that he’s the one we’ve been waiting for. Jesus is the one who will turn everything upside down for us, and in us, and through us for the coming of the Kingdom of God. It’s ok to doubt, because there’s always stories that will come through to tell us to keep hoping, keep holding on to the joy with a stubbornness that won’t go away.
This is Mary’s story, too. Except she’s able to find the story of the coming of the Kingdom of God in her own life. She says, “Because of me - because of how God made me - everything is going to be flipped upside down. Because I’m the mother of Jesus, God has scattered the proud and brought down the powerful from their thrones. And God has lifted up the lowly, fed the hungry, and sent the rich away with nothing but lint in their pockets.”
Mary is owning her power. Power given to her by God. She’s proclaiming a world changed. She’s positioning herself in history, in the long story of the Israelites full of powerful kings and warriors with their swords and their armies and prowess and political power. This is Mary refusing to deviate from that gift of God’s strength and power and grace and greatness. She’s not the exception to the history of powerful men; she is the culmination. She is the theotokos, the “God bearer” - the fleshy one who brings holy flesh into the world.
She finds the joy in her own story, a story of difficulty and heartbreak. Just like John’s. They’re both given a rough deal. John lives a life of asceticism out in the wilderness and ends up in prison and eventually beheaded for his supposed “crimes.” Mary’s life is no less difficult. Young and pregnant and unmarried, she gives birth in a stable and then must rush to Egypt as a refugee to escape Herod’s wrath. Then, later, she’ll sit by and watch as her son is crucified in the most horrific of ways.
They both had their moments of doubt, of being unsure of who Jesus is. But they find the light in their darkness and they listen to the stories of their lives - the stories of what Jesus has done and is doing and will still do even in the midst of the darkness. They hold on to a stubborn joy of the Good News of the Coming of God. They hold on to Jesus, even when their life circumstances seem to contradict all that Good News.
Listen to the good news in your own life, Jesus says. What ways has your blindness been turned to sight? How have you been made to hear? In what ways were you paralyzed, but now you can move? How have you been raised to life? It’s there, in every one of your stories. We can all be Marys and John the Baptists, folks who have gone through our own tragedies and darknesses and disappointments and who have come out the other side to say, “Here I am. Jesus, is that you? How can we know that it’s you?” By listening to our stories, by finding the stubborn joy in our own lives, by seeing things anew, by hearing with fresh ears, by asking our friends for a little help.
We are asking, “Jesus, is that you? because it’s kind of hard to see sometimes. There’s stuff going on in our world that proclaim the opposite of your coming kingdom. There’s stuff happening in this world that has us floundering in the darkness. We’re in our own prisons, we’re so unsure. Are you the one who is to come?”
And Jesus responds to all of us: “Look around you. Listen to your stories. Listen to your lives. I’m there, even in the darkness, even in your hopeless despair. The blind see. The deaf hear. The lame walk and the dead are raised. There’s good news for the poor.” It’s there, we just have to look hard to find it. There is a stubborn joy of this season.
And like my kids, we can anticipate the joy that is to come. We can look forward, past all of our hardships, beyond all our tough stories, to the good that is to come. Because good is coming. God is coming. We watch and wait. We see with new eyes and hear with new ears. We are in Advent, a time of anticipation, when we open the doors of our advent calendars and deck our halls and prepare for the coming of the Christ child in our midst. Enter in to the joy of the season. It’s there, just look and see.
Thanks be to God.
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