CHRISTMAS EVE – 24 December 2006, 10 PM

ST PAUL LUTHERAN CHURCH, ABQ NM – The Rev. P. L. Holman

Isaiah 9:2-7, Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20

“Hope is Alive!”

“Zeal.”  Now there’s a word we don’t hear often.  It’s like one of those “Bible words,” something you’re likely to hear only in church.  I did Google it, just out of curiosity, and found links to an optical company, hair products, Occupational Safety and Health Consultant Specialist, a kingdom in a certain video game, even a band in Thailand. 

God’s zeal is a different matter.  This enthusiastic devotion -- ha! God-filled indeed – enthusiastic devotion to a cause and diligence to its furtherance, this is God’s zeal for healing and peace.  Isaiah names it: the whole world will be transformed, all the boots of the trampling warriors burned as fuel for fire, for a child has been born to save the world, and it’s the ZEAL of our God that’ll do this. 

Titus also has a word for us about zeal: Jesus gave himself for us, the pastoral letter reminds its hearers, in order to create a people worthy of his name, “a people who are zealous for the good.”

We don’t do ZEAL so much these days.  We do apathy and fear quite well, and maybe a little compassion and kindness from time to time.  But ZEAL – as in downright enthusiastic on-fire-for-the-cause …    I knew folks who were zealous for an end to the Viet Nam war.  It cost them their college loan eligibility and got them labeled for life.  It’s easier – safer, even – to remain aloof, to dismiss folks or assume they are somehow off kilter or suffering from some diagnosis if they show too much passion for anything, safer than trying to relate to them and risk being changed….safer to mind our own business as though the pain and hurt of the world God died to save is none of our concern…

Yet into that very dearth of passion, those chambers of fear, into the midst of lives hardly zealous for anything God speaks; like the angels to Mary and to Joseph and to the shepherds, God’s words speak to us this night: “Do not be afraid!”  This is good news – a sign, a baby, not at all what the world expects, no room for him with the honored guests in the upper rooms he is warmed and welcomed amidst the animals and common folk on the ground floor accessible to all.  This IS good news -- things will never be the same for hope is born!

Christmas is the season of hope.  This hope takes on flesh and blood; it is the incarnation of hope we can sense even now.

• See it – in the smiles and lights 
• Hear it – in words shared, written and spoken and sung
• Touch it – as caring hands are offered person to person, even across miles
• And the smells – ah! The pine sap and candle wax, the aroma of the goodies and hearty meals to warm our bodies…

Of course, not all smells and sights, not all words and touch are gifts of hope.  Some sap our strength and leave us empty of anything remotely akin to zeal…

• Pain of suffering is palpable as it linger still in places right outside our doors – hunger, shelter, the need is great; and nearby in our hearts, the aching we carry for friends and loved ones whose healing seems a far distant hope
• Words of hate are salted amidst seemingly rational calls for homeland security and safer borders
• Visions of despair are as close a TV screen, or computer monitor, or right outside our windows
• And the smell of death….

Yet into the midst of all this heaviness we’re offered familiar words – God is with us – and the simple meal of forgiveness … and in this we know hope:

• Hope born of Mary by the grace of God
• Hope born of Christ who flesh gives our flesh the possibility of another chance
• Hope renewed by those who go forth in God’s name, the body of Christ now

And suddenly as for the first time we hear these old, old words anew:

For a child has been born for us … “That’s from the prophet Isaiah?!” The ninety-something was astonished as I read the old words preparing to share Christmas communion with her.  Verna couldn’t believe she hadn’t heard that before.  Maybe preparing to die has opened her in a new way to life.  “I’m going to have to look that one up and read it again!”  Indeed.

And suddenly the separation of a soldier serving in a wintry desert thousands of miles from family and friends is transformed by pictures in a Christmas email from the foothills of the Himalayas: Chaplain Meyners helped deliver 1000 pounds of school supplies and three tents “to keep the sun off the students” when they study outdoors.  School leaders were so eager to receive the supplies that most had been moved indoors before the soldier could snap a photo.  Instead pictures show strangers turned friends, shoulder to shoulder, cultures and languages apart yet bound together by the determination to teach the children and be a sign of hope in their lives. 

And suddenly even the sad blues of consumerism and illness and death takes on the hopeful color of God with us:

• a young family shops the thrift stores and keeps a Christmas tradition of hiking in the foothills so their children can be shaped by grounded expectations of what these days – this Greatest Gift – is all about;
• a man takes time from his holiday busyness to sit with a longtime friend as the woman holds her dying pet, family member really, finally too ill to keep going any longer;
• and a woman will sit on Christmas Day rocking infants too ill to go home so their families can get some much needed rest, and the little ones will be cuddled as the Christ child was so long ago …

 Zeal, indeed…

• Shared with us in a simple meal of bread and wine, zeal poured into us by the grace of God even when we are too tired to consider it, too devoid of energy or trust even to stand…  
• God’s zeal, real for us now even as it was thousands of years ago and thousands of miles from here.  For unto us a child was born, unto us child-like trust births hope anew.  In our weakness is God’s strength, and in our emptiness – ah, thanks be to God – in our emptiness there is room for God after all.

Amen