Isaiah 9:2-4, 6-7
Psalm 96
Titus 2:11-14
LUKE 2:1-20
The True Savior
The hero did first emerge on Earth as a baby, did
come from a far distant place, and did do extraordinary, superhuman
things. But, despite being tempted to
do so, he did not leap tall buildings
in a single bound, and he was vulnerable
to human weapons – even mortally vulnerable.
The
hero did live for years without
nearly anyone being aware of his true, royal identity, of his distinguished
ancestry, or of his coming crucial role in saving all from the campaign for
world domination by The Evil One. But
the hero would not save others by
lifting up a sword (broken or otherwise), and the world for which he would put
his life on the line would not be Middle Earth.
The
hero would offer himself as a
sacrifice to save even an unappealing, undeserving, traitorous human
being. But his sacrifice would not be on a stone table, and he would
not be incarnate as a Lion – at least in this world.
Deep
in the human heart there is profound awareness of how much humanity and each of
us as individuals need saving. Deep in the human heart there is
profound awareness of how vulnerable we are to ordinary disasters and threats,
to subjugation to evil powers, and perhaps most of all to the temptation for
human beings to seek power above all else which is represented by the lure of
“the one ring to rule them all.”
We
know how much we need help, and deep in our hearts we know that we need help
from beyond ourselves, and so there
is a ready audience for stories of mysterious, heroic deliverers.
In
various ways “Superman,” The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of
Narnia all address these longings, often in wonderful, imaginative and even
poetic ways. But we put down the books
or comic books, walk out of the movies or finish watching the DVDs or
videotapes, savor the stories, remember that, alas, they are “just” stories.
And
then, we can do one of two things.
We
can go back to the ordinary thrills, sorrows and labors of our ordinary lives
glad for the diversion but sadly or cynically remembering that no Ranger of the
North, no son of Krypton and no magnificent feline is going to save us from all
perils and transform our lives.
OR,
we can let our longing for a savior
be whetted by these and other stories.
We can discover a hunger within ourselves (as C.S. Lewis might have put
it) which is itself more wonderful
than any earthly food. We can discover the Real Story, in which a Real Savior
came – and comes – for us, to us and to all people, to our world, where we are, to offer us personal
transformation, a personal relationship with Him, a community of people who
seek to follow Him and begin the transformation of the world, and ultimately, eternal life with God, life of a quality
literally beyond our imagining.
But
first, we have to be made hungry, hungry
for what some people may never have tasted, hungry for what some people never
may even have known existed, hungry in such a way that material excess tastes
like so much Styrofoam in our mouths compared to the delicious taste of what we
are truly hungry for: a deep
relationship with Jesus Christ.
I
don’t know about the author of “Superman,” but J.R.R. Tolkien (author of The
Lord of the Rings) and C.S. Lewis (author of The Chronicles of Narnia),
both devout Christians, knew exactly what they were doing. Lewis even made his mission nearly
explicit. At the end of a later Narnia
book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Aslan assures Lucy and Edmund that
in their world he has “another name.
You must learn to know me by that name.
This was the very reason that you were brought to Narnia, that by
knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”
In
the midst of the increasing materialism and secularism of American culture, I
find it literally delicious that these two book series, which once enjoyed
merely cult status, are now major cultural phenomena here, a world away from the very old-fashioned English academic
“ivory towers” in which they were conceived.
The
books – and the movies – are literally wonder-full. They are simply good stories, vividly transposed to the big
screen, and they grab us for those reasons.
But they are deeper than that. I
think we have all known someone like Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe – and perhaps many of us, at one time or another, have been Edmund. (Anyone here who has never been
a real jerk?) And while part of us may
want Edmund to “get what’s coming to him,” part of us hopes he doesn’t, because then we might “get what was coming to us,” too, a truly ominous thought.
And
to think that the hero beyond all heroes would give up his very life to save
ours – that would be too much to ask for, too much to hope for.
But
it is True. It really happened.
Not in a storybook, but in a place you or I could go to called
Jerusalem.
And
the terrible temptations that Frodo faced – to give up, to give in and join The
Other Side, and finally the temptation to take power himself even after he had
seen what that amount of power from that source could do to someone – how
could any of us resist as valiantly
as he did? And would we have been rescued at the last minute,
ironically by someone whose fatal lust for power was greater than ours?
But
Someone else did resist the three
terrible temptations to give up, to give in or to seize power whatever the
cost. Someone did let go of all power without giving up or going over to The
Other Side. Someone did experience full, desolate
loneliness, painful death, and apparent defeat and obliteration. Not on Mount Doom, but on the Mount of
Calvary. Both mountaintop experiences
were decisive in their stories. The
story about Mount Calvary is True and, as Gandalf might have put it, “it concerns
us deeply.”
Why
am I bringing all of this up tonight (today)?
It is Christmas, after all, not Good Friday or Easter. Ah, but you see, Christmas is the beginning
of the True Story that moves ultimately to reveal its full dimensions on Good
Friday and Easter. (Christmas, of
course, is not really the beginning of the Story, which began with
the Creation, but it is the beginning of the human story of Jesus the Christ.)
And
the Christmas story has (in Luke) the charming and homely atmosphere of a
Palestinian Jewish “Shire”…or rather, the opening of The Lord of the Rings
is like the opening of The Greatest Story Ever Told. Quaint, charming, homely – and even more powerful in all its
homeliness if we know how the story develops from there. Shepherds, angels, animals, a manger, the
little town of Bethlehem, a young couple with their newborn: it’s quaint,
charming and a touch exotic. But it’s
just the beginning.
And
if all we think about is the beginning of
the story, it’s easy to come to the end of our Christmas celebrations and
think, “So what?” Someone could ask
“What meaning does this story about the birth of a baby 2,000 years ago and
thousands of miles away have for me?”
If we listen only to the noise of the engines of commerce, the only
meaning the story has is to inspire us to spend more on things we and others
don’t need, and sooner or later that meaning
will leave us feeling empty.
But
if we hear the Christmas Story as the profound, awesome prologue to the story
of Jesus Christ as an adult, and if that story
is the prologue to a transformation Jesus Christ has begun in our lives and
which we can see he has begun in the world and which we believe he will
complete when he comes again, then the
Christmas Story will bring us to tears.
Not tears of nostalgia, but tears of gratitude, joy and expectation.
For
because of the man whose birthday we celebrate at Christmas, there are people
who are sober and clean who, without a Higher Power devoted to restoring them
to sanity, would be dead.
Because
of the man whose birthday we celebrate at Christmas, there are people
experiencing profound healing of relationships. There are people experiencing healing of their bodies. There are people experiencing healing of
memories. There are people experiencing
forgiveness – and people who are forgiving others. There are people experiencing the ability to live life with a
second chance and with guidance from the greatest “life coach” of all.
Because
of the man who birthday we celebrate at Christmas, there are people being fed
by his followers, being educated, receiving medical care and being reminded
that they are first class human beings with infinite spiritual potential. Because of the man whose birth we celebrate
at Christmas, slavery and infanticide were abolished and millions work to build
bridges of understanding among people who are different in almost every way
except in their love for him.
Because
of the man whose birthday we celebrate at Christmas, there are people who
follow him all over the world who don’t give up, don’t give in to evil, and who don’t give themselves over to
the pursuit of domination over others, but seek peace and justice, and an end
to racism and all bigotry and prejudice.
Because
of the man whose birthday we celebrate at Christmas, there are communities of
people dedicated, however haltingly and imperfectly, to loving God earnestly
and to loving their neighbors as themselves, instead of seeking just their own
pleasure and power.
Because
of the man whose birthday we celebrate at Christmas, we can come to know The
True Story, not just about him but about the world and about each and all of
us. And the Truth will set us free.
Because
of the man whose birthday we celebrate at Christmas, we know that, when we see
goodness unleashed in the world, in the words of the White Witch’s dwarf in Narnia,
“This is no thaw. This is Spring.
This is Aslan’s doing!”
Because
of the man whose birthday we are celebrating in this festival, we can have hope
in times of despair, joy even if we are burdened by sorrow, love even if we are
threatened by hate or indifference, and we can know that ultimately hope, joy and love
will triumph.
The
Lord of Life has come to us. This is
the True Story for which we have all hungered all of our lives, the only story
which will truly satisfy us, the only story which is still going on and in
which we can all be included, the only story through which we can be offered salvation.
O come let us
adore him, Christ the Lord.
Christmas, 2005
The Rev. Francis A. Hubbard
St. Barnabas Episcopal
Church
Monmouth Junction, New
Jersey