Hope of the Hopeless

Hope.  What a powerful narcotic it is.  Hope.  Just a tiny bit can change the way we see our lives.  Just a touch of hope can make a young girl’s face light up… can make an athlete run faster or jump higher… can bring a smile to the lips of an angry man… can make a mother sleep peacefully at night in a world at war.  Hope.

On evening not too long ago, I thought of Christmases past and the times I spent with my brothers and sister waiting for Santa Claus to come.  Oh, there was no doubt that he would come.  Even if I hadn’t been the “poster child of goodness” all year, I knew Santa would not forget about me.  He never did.  My sister and I would sit and talk about the gifts we wanted to receive:  a horse (yes, I was horse crazy as a child), watercolor paints, comic books, a new bicycle… on and on.  We could spin the dreams out for a long time.  Mom would call us to come sing Christmas carols around the piano, but even that wouldn’t keep us from dreaming about the treasures we would find in our stockings the next morning.  And we always did find something wonderful.  Hope.

I remember watching my son, Julian, on Christmas Eve, knowing that he, too, was hoping for treasures.  The stockings would be hanging from the mantel or a shelf in the living room.  Every so often, he would come over and pull on my sweater and say,  “When will he come, Mom?  Will he come soon?”  And I knew that it wasn’t the baby in the manger he was talking about.  In response, I would smile and faithfully repeat the same story that my parents had shared with me – that parents everywhere share with their children – in the hope that the children will want to go to bed early:  “Well, honey, he won’t come until after you are in bed and sound asleep.”  Did that line ever work for you?  Yeah, well, it never worked for me either.  My son would stay awake as long as he possibly could… just like I did when I was a child.  Hope.   He knew there would be something in his stocking when he came down the stairs the next morning.  He knew that Santa would not forget about him.  So, bedtime was a laughing, giggling affair.  Little did he know how close we came to disaster one year!

We were celebrating Christmas at my older brother’s home in Green Valley, Illinois, that year.  He had a huge, rambling manse, but he and his wife had no children yet.  They would later adopt two lovely girls who are teenagers now.  My mother and father were back from Thailand and were living with them, so they would be there.  My sister came from Seattle to be there, too, leaving her boyfriend behind.  Sometime later, they would marry and have two children, but it hadn’t happened yet.  My younger brother was in the US Air Force stationed somewhere stateside.  My mother had wanted him to join us for Christmas, but he was busy, he said.  Someone had to work so that others at the base could have the time to be with their families.  It was better that he, a bachelor, volunteered.  He would also marry later and have two daughters, but it hadn’t happened yet.  He would be alone for the holidays.  Mom was not happy about it, but she understood.

We had a tradition in our family of dividing up the chore of buying stocking gifts by drawing names from a hat and setting a dollar limit for the total.  We’d already drawn names and the dollar limit was $15.  Everyone came prepared.  That Christmas, Julian was the only child in the family, so, after he went upstairs, took his bath and crawled into bed, the adults gathered by the stockings with bags of gifts to begin the stuffing process.  With whispers and a lot of laughter, the long, skinny, and flat stockings turned into plump, wide, lumpy, overflowing cornucopias of tiny gifts…  with one glaring exception.

I think my sister noticed it first:  Julian’s little, tiny green felt stocking was still flat, floppy and very, very empty.  The room got very, very quiet as we stared at each other in horror!  How could this happen?  The only person who still believed in Santa Claus was the only person whose stocking was empty!!  It was 11:00 o’clock at night on Christmas Eve in a little, tiny rural Illinois community.  There were no stores open at that hour!  There was no redemption at hand!  This was a catastrophe!  This would take some thinking…

So, we all poured a hot mug of apple cider and gathered around the kitchen table to look at our options.  After some discussion, it was agreed that we would all look through our belongings to see what we had that could be wrapped as a gift for this little child.  One by one, we all thought through the gifts we had purchased for our “stocking buddy” to see if something could be “re-assigned” to Julian.  Then came the challenge of finding those gifts – which were already wrapped and stuffed into someone’s stocking on the mantle.  Within a half hour, we had collected a very strange assortment of items to be used as gifts, but it was decided that most were clearly inappropriate for a child.  So much for Plan A.

With my sister-in-law’s help, we launched Plan B.  Her father lived on a farm at the edge of town.  We enlisted his aid to act as Santa Claus and place a call to my son during breakfast the next morning.  “Santa” would inform him that there had been a mix-up in the workshop and that his gifts had been misdirected to another home.  He was not to worry.  “Santa” was on top of the situation and working overtime to fix it.  “Santa” was on his way to the other home now to get his gifts. After breakfast, Julian was to get dressed and go to church.  Then, when he returned from morning worship, everything would be as it should be.

So, the next day, eyes alight, Julian came down the stairs to discover a lonely, flat stocking among the plump, fat ones hanging from the mantle. His tiny face crumpled and he turned to me in agony.  “Mom, what happened?”  I gathered him in my arms and held him close as we went into the kitchen for breakfast.  Not surprisingly, he was not hungry.  It tore my heart to see the big, fat tears roll down his face.  Then, suddenly, the telephone rang.  It was “Santa” and he wanted to speak to my son.  Julian’s eyes were huge as he picked up the telephone.  He could barely stutter a response to “Santa’s” queries – he nodded his head a lot.  And, at the end of the call, there was a hearty apology from “Santa” for forcing him to wait until almost noon to open his stocking gifts, but Julian assured him that it was OK.  And, while I took him to church that day, several of “Santa’s elves” collected gifts from various homes, wrapped them carefully, and stuffed his stocking to overflowing.  He not only received more stocking gifts than he had ever received before, but he could not stop talking about the phone call from Santa.  No other child had such a story to tell!

Why did we work so hard to keep Julian’s faith in Santa Claus alive that year?  NBC News this week showed a video shot of a man standing on a beach in South India, staring at the gentle waves lapping the shore.  Shoulders slouched, he stood for a long time without moving at all.  Have you ever seen the emptiness in someone’s eyes when that person realizes that hope is gone?  Have you felt the pain that slices through your own heart when hopelessness takes up residence there?  I have a bookmark that I keep in the book I am currently reading.  It says simply, “Never deprive someone of hope… it may be all that they have.”

As I sat in the church office this week, I found myself asking over and over again, “Why would the kings… the magi… the wise men… travel such a distance to see Jesus?”  Why would they leave the comfort of their homes… their families… their communities … to travel to a strange place, in a strange land, searching for a stranger? And the answer that came to me, very quietly, was…  hope.

            You see, the Jews were tired… weary of the oppression of the Romans… that followed on the heels of the oppression of the Greeks.  Scattered to the four winds by centuries of persecution and the wars fought by Greece and Rome to secure their territories, the Jews were a people without a home, a people bound together not by nationality or ethnicity, but by a belief in one God and the Law of Moses.  For generations, they’d had to practice their religion among nonbelievers in the rapidly changing, turbulent milieu of the Middle East.  They were waiting for a Messiah  – a  Savior – who would save them from their enemies.  They were hoping for a King who would establish his kingdom on earth – someone who would come for them and welcome them as His chosen people.  They’d been waiting a long time.

            Into that time of pain… persecution… war… and death… came a tiny, little baby.  A baby whose coming was foretold in the stars… the same stars that were seen by the kings… the magi… in their distant home.  The wise men understood that somewhere in the muck and mire of this world the Messiah, the King of the Jews, had been born.  They… these three… wanted to see the baby for themselves.  They wanted confirmation that the hope they had in their hearts was really real.  We don’t know whether they came of their own accord or whether they were sent by their communities to find this child.  We don’t know whether they came together or separately.  We don’t know how far they traveled.  We only know that they came, with hope in their hearts, to see their new king, their Messiah, their Savior.

            The hope that they saw in the star that guided their journey – the hope that kept them traveling over the miles to Bethlehem – was the hope of a people who had nothing to hope for, nothing but the promise of a Savior that the prophets had foretold.   It was the hope of a people surrounded by poverty, pain, war, and oppression.  It was the hope of the hopeless.  In faith… with hope in their hearts… the wise men… the magi… came to Bethlehem.  They came looking for Him… their Messiah… their Savior… and the hope that He represented.

We, too, need hope today.  As the people of South and Southeast Asia try to put their lives back together, they look for a sign… for something they can cling to… that brings hope.  In a world torn by war… poverty… pain….and emptiness, many of us here… and countless others besides… seek tangible hope for the future.  So, we too come looking for the baby in the manger – the One who was promised to us long ago. The same way that the kings, the magi, the wise men looked for him then, we come looking for him now… looking for confirmation of the hope that we so desperately need.  And the hope they had in their hearts back then is the same hope that we have in our hearts today.  That hope… the hope that lies with that baby in the manger… is the hope that can transform our world.  It’s the hope for peace... the hope of joy.

That Christmas in Green Valley was a wonderful one.  Almost the whole family was together around the table at breakfast that morning.  Only my kid brother was missing.  As we all settled back down to finish our breakfast following “Santa’s” telephone call, the doorbell rang.  My mother got up and went to the door to see who it was.  When she opened the door, there, standing on the steps with the snow falling all around him, stood my younger brother, John, in his Air Force dress blues.  I will never forget the look on my mother’s face when she saw him.  It must have had some semblance of the look on Simeon’s face when he saw the baby Jesus… a look of unbridled joy and a sense of completeness.

Arise… shine… for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.  Our Savior has come.  His kingdom is at hand.  The hope for our future – and the future of our world – is in the tiny hands of this baby in the manger.  For they are God’s hands – the hands of our Savior and King, Jesus Christ.  It is His coming that we celebrate – not just at Christmas, but every Sunday when we gather in worship.  For those who have no hope… for those in pain… for those who are alone during the holidays… for those far from home… for those who are tired and burdened with care… for those…  without hope.  For it is He who brings food to the hungry, sight to the blind, strength to the weary, freedom to the captive, and hope – hope to the hopeless.  Amen.

Matthew 2:1-12; Isaiah 60:1-6