|
The Lights of Hope
A Sermon Given
by Betty Jo Middleton
on December 16, 2001
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
Advent-the Christian season of
preparation for the coming of Christmas-was once a somber period of
reflection and penitence. In the Middle Ages, it is said, people fasted for
"the Christmas Lent," and dancing and marriage were forbidden. For
many today, it is a time for shopping, wrapping gifts, addressing cards,
baking, decorating, preparing for visitors or planning for travel-a
bustling, busy time. It doesn't involve fasting for most of us and may
indeed be a time of overindulgence. For those who love Christmas
wholeheartedly, it may be the happiest time of the year. Others find it to
be a difficult time and can hardly wait until the holidays are over.
Our culture has fostered such
high expectations for the season that they are seldom met. As a young,
single woman, I purchased my personal vision of Christmas. It was a
long-playing record of Christmas songs by the Norman Luboff Choir, but it
wasn't the music I was after. It was the album cover. On this cover, a
beaming family of four put the finishing touches on a beautifully decorated
Christmas tree, the ornaments as carefully placed as if by a professional
designer. The lights worked. There were no evergreen needles or broken glass
on the floor. The mother wore a green velvet dress and high-heeled pumps;
the father wore suit pants, long-sleeved white shirt, and a necktie. The
little boy had on blue sleepers and the little girl a ruffled nighty. Not a
hair on any of their heads was out of place.
That was what I wanted for
Christmas. And I got it, sort of. The husband, the little boy and girl in
adorable nightclothes, and even the green velvet dress. We have loved every
Christmas tree we've ever had, and every Christmas, too-but we haven't
always been smiling, or well-groomed, or able to get all the lights to work
at the same time. Still, there have always been moments when life seemed
even better than that album cover and I thought that I heard not the Norman
Luboff Choir, but the angels sing.
There are plenty of reasons
not to take pure delight in Christmas and I have stumbled on many of them.
Some work I did in the public schools, helping teachers to be inclusive in
their celebration of winter holidays, saddened me when I learned of children
whose parents' religious convictions prohibited them from joining in any
holiday festivities and who sat in the office during parties. Parents and
some teachers responded to this work with thinly veiled prejudice against
anyone who was different. Many people have unhappy memories, personal
losses, lack of resources, or troubled lives which prevent them
from participating in the festivities. Depression affects others.
Theological barriers to celebrating a holiday so steeped in Christian
mythology play a part for some of us.
But there is a reality to be
observed and celebrated which underlies the celebrations of the season. Our
lives and the life of our planet depend on the sun. Its apparent departure
at the midnight of the year has evoked deep fear, and it is no wonder that
our pagan forbears lit bonfires on the hills to coax it back. They
celebrated with great joy and festivity when this worked, year after year
after year. I am keenly aware of my pagan roots in the days of early
darkness and no amount of disillusionment, commercialism, or cynicism can
deter me from celebrating the solstice. I have been known to succumb to the
Christmas blues, but I don't think there are any such things as the solstice
blues.
(I acknowledge that the bright
sun streaming through the windows and the generally balmy weather we have
had this year make any sense of impending doom seem a little academic this
year! Just wait until about four-fifteen this afternoon, though-you'll see
when it starts getting dark so early!)
In about 1990, I was asked to
take over a stalled curriculum project for the Unitarian Universalist
Association. I was asked to design a year long program for children in
grades one and two, celebrating Jewish and Christian holidays. After many
years without a program including any Biblical material or much about
Judaism or Christianity in our "official" curriculum, it seemed to
take an earth-centered humanistic approach to the subject to get it done. As
I worked on this project, Special Times, for several years, I was
struck over and over again by the layering of holidays of various faith
traditions over the natural changes of the seasons.
Wherever there are seasons,
people have celebrated the solstices and equinoxes, those points in the year
when the seasons turn. And the new year has been and is celebrated someplace
at each of them. Spring planting ceremonies and festivals, mid-summer
night's revelries, fall agricultural festivals, and the festivals of light
which mark the Winter Solstice.
January 1, now celebrated
worldwide as the beginning of the secular year, was first designated as New
Year's Day by the Romans in 153 Before the Common Era. In the Middle Ages
Christians changed it to December 25 (which they honored as the birthday of
Jesus, who was probably born in the spring), but when the Julian Calendar
gave way to the Gregorian in the 16th Century, New Year's Day
went back to January 1. Rosh Hoshanah, the Jewish New Year (known as the
Birthday of the World), falls near the autumnal equinox.
Many faiths have festivals of
light, such as the Indian Divali, Hanukkah (a minor Jewish festival elevated
to greater importance in the past century in this country where Christmas is
so ubiquitous), and a variety of Christian observances: Advent, Saint
Lucia's Day, Christmas Eve, the Twelve Days of Christmas. The change to the
Gregorian skewed some of these a bit, making their relationship to the
natural season change seem more coincidental than they are. But at their
roots, most of these winter festivals are a celebration of the return of the
sun. How natural that we should punctuate the long dark evening of the year
with sparkling lights and shiny ornaments, and focus on a Christmas star in
the night sky.
This morning we lighted
candles in the Hanukkah menorah and the Advent ring.
The words that I use for the
four Sundays of Advent come from the work of John Westerhoff, in his book
A Pilgrim People: Learning Through the Church Year. (It's written in
Episcopalian, but I was able to translate it. Being a former Methodist may
help with that.)
Westerhoff says we are advised
during the first week of Advent to watch in anticipation, to be vigilant and
open to mystery. And "as a second flame is kindled in the Advent
wreath, we are invited to listen to the story about a voice ever crying in
the wilderness, calling us to live prepared." He recalls that the
musical Godspell, popular at the time he wrote the book, evoked
"our second Advent theme, 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord.'"
On the third Sunday, we are to
"'Get ready, wait patiently in hope.' Wait in hope...believing that we
already possess what we hope for." And "as the fourth light is
kindled, the last week in this season of pregnancy has come, and we hear the
story of an angel coming to Mary. 'The Lord is with you,' the angel
said...As you might suspect, this is a confusing and troubling
message." Would it not be for us? Acceptance is required. Acceptance of
the loss of control, or the perception of control, over our lives, and
openness. "Advent-a season of watching in anticipation, of living
prepared, of waiting in hope, of giving up control-draws to a close.
Christmas-the birth of a possibility...approaches."
In the fifties I went to
college in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, not far from the town of Hope. (Hope,
already the birthplace of a future president but not yet known as such,
enjoyed however a certain amount of local fame as "the watermelon
capital of the world." But that is a different story.) The bus from
Little Rock to Dallas, and from Dallas to Little Rock, went through both
towns. A friend of mine returning to school on the late bus once overheard
this brief comment: "It can't be far now; I see the lights of Hope up
ahead." That comment became my mantra for the season of advent. I like
to remind myself in days of darkness, the lights of Hope are up ahead. We
live in Alexandria, and when we first moved there we heard the charming
legend that Philips Brooks, the writer of "O Little Town of
Bethlehem," had written that lovely carol while teaching at the
Virginia Episcopal Seminary, having looked down from Seminary Hill onto our
beautiful little town and seen the lights of hope meeting the darkness of
the "fears of all the years." We know it to be a legend, as it was
written before Brooks came to Alexandria. Still, when the leaves fall in the
autumn, and we look out onto our town from the hill where we live, it evokes
the thought of the twinkling lights of hope meeting the "fears of all
the years." I like to think that wherever we are-in Alexandria,
Bethesda, or Bethlehem-"the hopes and fears of all the years" are
always meeting in our presence.
As we move through this
season, may we be open to possibility: to the possibility of wonder, the
possibility of love, the possibility of renewal, and the possibility of the
future.
David Bumbaugh has written:
Christmas is an invitation
To
see in the dark corners of our lives
The
light of hope;
To
discover the meanings hidden in each of us;
To
find in the ordinary
A
vision of the extraordinary;
To
be transformed, renewed, recreated;
To
create out of our own hope and expectation
A
new chance
For
ourselves and the world.
Christmas
is an invitation
To
let the scales fall from our eyes,
To
see each other as we truly are,
Each
the agent of the other's redemption.
May your holidays bring you
hope, joy, and peace for the world. Amen, so be it, blessed be.
Office@CedarLane.org
| 
