“Sing we now of Christmas,
Noel, sing we here!
Hear our grateful praises
to the babe so dear.
Sing we Noel, the King is born, Noel!
Sing we now of Christmas, sing we now Noel!”
There is a lot of singing and telling going on in the Christmas story:
- An angel announces to Zechariah what’s going to happen.
- The angel later appears to Mary and tells her what will happen to her.
- Mary, in the presence of Elizabeth, tells out her song of glory and praise to God for what God is preparing for her.
- John is born to Elizabeth and when he is to be named, Zechariah’s divinely imposed silence is broken by telling the promise the child bears.
- An angel then appears in a dream to an anxious Joseph to tell him know to worry about the social issues he and Mary are living with; it’s all according to God’s plan.
- An angel, backed-up by the heavenly choral society, tells the rural Bethlehem shepherds about a special birth just happened in the village.
- The shepherds race off to Bethlehem, find the new born Jesus and tell the astonished parents all that they have seen and heard. Then back in their fields and homes, they tell everything to anyone who would listen.
- Then on the day of naming Jesus, first Simeon and then Anna proclaim the future of Jesus as the hope and salvation of his people Israel.
And if we step back from the individual stories, the reason that the gospels were written was that the good news of Jesus could be told. The apostle John notes in the opening of his first letter, “What we have seen and heard, we also announce it to you....We are writing these things so that our joy can be complete” (1 John 1:3, 4).
What is John’s joy? Simeon says it so well:
“...my eyes have seen your salvation.
You prepared this salvation in the presence of all peoples.
It’s a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and a glory for your people Israel.”
There is one theme throughout all the series pf “Christmas” tellings. That theme is hope. What John, Anna, Simeon, Zechariah, Mary proclaim is not wishful thinking. It is not rose-tinged optimism. It is pure unadulterated hope.
German theologian Jürgen Moltmann published his Theology of Hope nearly fifty years ago. For Moltmann, the hope of the Christian faith is hope in the resurrection of Christ crucified. When following the Moltmann’s Theology of Hope, a Christian should find hope in the future. Yet at the same time the believer will experience much discontentment with the way the world is now, corrupt and full of sin. The hope of Simeon, Anna, and others, is for the divine reordering of creation; not just the cancelling out of sin, but its complete removal. For Simeon and Anna, this is not a question of when in the future, but a present reality. Simeon declares, “Let your servant go in peace according to your word, because my eyes have seen your salvation.” As the gospel writer Mark says in the opening of his account, Jesus declares, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom” (Mark 1:15).
This is not optimism. It is hope. Miroslav Volf, in reflecting on Moltmann’s theology writes, “Optimism is based on the possibilities of things as they have come to be; hope is based on the possibilities of God irrespective of how things are....Hope is grounded in the faithfulness of God and therefore on the effectiveness of God’s promise.”(1)
For Isaiah, for Simeon and Anna, for Paul as he encourages the Galatian believers, hope is more present tense than future. God is indeed effective. There is a whole biblical record that supports that. God has worked through the underdog. And at times God has deliberately guided the situation so that the odds for a hopeful outcome were increased to the point of being incredible longshots. And that is when God came through with stunning results in favor of God’s people Israel. Of course there were times, too many times, when the people threw out hope in God and the reality of God’s effectiveness and blundered on in their own independence, ineffectiveness, and sinfulness, They rued the consequences.
If all we had was optimism, then school bombings in Pakistan, targeted killings in Ottawa and New York, house fires in Washington Court House, auto fatalities here and there, Ebola in West Africa, priest killings in Mexico, confrontations with law enforcement officers in countless cities, gridlock in Congress — they would all limit our ability to think that anything significant and good could happen ever again. Optimism is based on the best we can realistically envision. Hope is based on what God will ultimately bring about.
Because we are followers of the one who was born in Bethlehem, because we stake our lives—spiritual and physical—on the God of creation, salvation, redemption and eternal life, we know that God will not be mocked by the cruelty, the arrogance, the greed, the self-centeredness that rules the world and holds truth and righteousness prisoner.
As Isaiah of the exile wrote the final poems, he did so out of hope, out of the sure and certain knowledge that God was about to do a new thing, about to upend the tables of power, about to change the course of Israel’s life.
Israel's release from exile, her “righteousness shines out like a light, and her salvation blazes like a torch” (62:1b). The nations will witness Israel’s newly acquired “glory” (vs.2a); and Israel shall receive a new name (vs. 2b) revealing her new character. Finally, Israel shall be seen as a “splendid garland” and “a royal turban” in the hand of God. These metaphors emphasize once again that what is happening in freeing Israel from exile is God’s doing. Sovereignty over these historic events belongs to God alone, but yet they also exalt the place that Israel has in the divine plan of salvation for the world.
As Simeon said,
“You prepared this salvation in the presence of all peoples.
It’s a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and a glory for your people Israel.”
Christmas is more than bright lights, carols, gift cards, tinsel, eggnog, cookies, Santa and reindeer. Christmas is God’s affirmation that what God has intended from before creation is being carried out and will be accomplished. “The zeal of the Lord of heavenly forces will do this” (Isaiah 9:7).
Because what will be is already so—not only in the mind of God but also the minds of believers—we cannot keep silent. We have to gush forth the “Glorias” and “Alleluias” of the heavenly choir. We have to tell all that we have seen and heard like the shepherds. We have to declare,
“Joy to the world the Savior reigns!
Let all their songs employ,
while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
repeat the sounding joy.”
(1) Miroslav Volf, “Not Optimistic,” Christian Century, December 28, 2004, 31.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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