The hopes and fears... are met in thee tonight

O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight

            I’ve had that hymn in my head all Advent-long and when something is stuck up there I suspect it is a good thing to investigate why, and when I investigated why I discovered a couple of things that were speaking to me that might also be speaking to you this Christmas.

            The first regards this town—this Bethlehem. It’s quiet. “How still we see thee lie.” And yet it’s also full of people, travelers, strangers, people required to check in with the governmental authorities. It’s a quiet town under the thumb of the empire.

“Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.”

The natural world does its thing; the stars above keep shining, things are as they always are. It might have been a night in Hallock, though perhaps we’re much too booming and trendy a metropolis nowadays to really capture it. Bethlehem was the original hipster town; it was quiet and cool before it was cool to be quiet.

But Bethlehem’s quietude betrayed the reality underneath the surface; a reality that all this was ready to burst. The role of the oppressive empire, King Herod’s decrees and his fear of the child turned the quiet night into a season of terror. This is that episode captured in a different Christmas song, the Coventry Carol, that goes,

Herod the King
In his raging
Charged he hath this day

His men of might
In his own sight
All children young to slay

Or… “Yet in thy dark streets shineth…”

You see, the darkness is real. It is heavy. The Christmas story quickly turns to running in fear from Herod. In his first days of life, Jesus ends up a refugee in Egypt. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. It’s really tempting to preach baby Jesus and then skip ahead to resurrection, but in-between the manger and the empty tomb is a lot of darkness. The “most wonderful time of the year” sugarcoats the reality so many experience this time of year. This is the heaviest time of the year. It has to be, because the baby doesn’t come apart from our suffering but in and through it. There’s no mistake that what follows Jesus’ birth, according to Matthew’s gospel, is Herod’s massacre of the children. The hand of the empire looms over everything that happens in these dark streets. The places that are the most human include the most suffering.

Our darkness is no less real. The very fact that this season is about celebrating a baby is about the most polarizing image we could possibly have. Babies symbolize joy and new life—and in Jesus’ case a good deal more. But babies also remind us of all that we’ve lost along the way. Joy and sorrow are intermingled. The Christmas story is different for those who have lost a family member this year, and how much more-so if that loss involves a child!

You see, the hopes and fears of all the years ARE met in thee tonight. It’s not one or the other. Our hopes are realized alongside our fears, which come amidst the realization that the darkness is real. Christmas does not tell us that the darkness is not real. We do not proclaim tonight that loss doesn’t hurt. Tonight is not a night to say it’s all going to be OK; it’s not a time to sugarcoat the things we feel. Instead, tonight we profess that the hopes and fears are embodied in this child, so that those of you who come tonight looking for peace and joy can find it in the Christ-child, but those of you who come here tonight feeling loss and despair and desperately in need of hope can find it there, too.

Tonight defies simple answers; it defies our desire to save ourselves; it defies the darkness by situating the birth of Jesus right in the middle of it. The dark world of the past meets the dark fears of the future. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight, because Jesus did not come to ignore your hurts, to cast them aside and say they do not matter, or to minimize your experience of loss. Jesus came so that your losses are made right in the end.

Jesus came to a sleepy, dark, cold place, bringing joy through sorrow. Babies do that. They are the most painful thing in the world and also the best. They embody our hopes and fears. They come out of darkness and into light. They are the toughest thing in the world. They will hurt, they will struggle; they are fragile. We may even lose them all together. Herod looms over every birth. And, yet, our fears are just the underside of our hopes. In Jesus, those fears are embodied in the one thing that can actually justify us in our losses. The baby Jesus is just a baby—and “just a baby” is the most astonishing of all things.