Sermon: Embracing the Dream

 Luke 1:57-80
Embracing the Dream
James Sledge                                                                            December 10, 2023 

By now I assume that many of you have started to receive Christmas cards. I know we have at our house. Inevitably, at least one of those cards will feature the phrase, “Peace on earth.” It’s a Christmas standard lifted straight from the nativity story in Luke’s gospel, but particularly in this year, it strikes a strange note with me.

The war in Ukraine has been dragging on for nearly two years. The bloody Hamas attack on Israel in October has been met with the wholesale slaughter of civilians on the part of Israel. The war in Sudan is replete with atrocities and massacres. China continues to hint at an invasion of Taiwan. Iranian backed militias are attacking American forces in Syria, and I could go on and on. Peace on earth feels a long way away.

I’m reminded of the Christmas carol, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. The carol borrowed some of the verses from a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem “Christmas Bells” which was written during the Civil War. It opens,

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and mild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

However, the carol left out some of the verses, those dealing explicitly with the Civil War.

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

The news of our day also mocks the song of peace on earth, and I wonder what response we in the church have. Do we have anything more than a cute baby in a manger, some warmth and nostalgia, or the promise of heaven when we die? The gospels insist that we do, that something more has happened than just the birth of a baby.

You can see that in our scripture for this morning. The story of John’s birth insists that God is up to something. God has remembered the covenant with Israel, the promises made all those years ago to Abraham and Sarah. God has looked with favor on Israel and redeemed them.

Curiously, when the story of John the Baptist begins with a visit to Zechariah by the angel Gabriel, the opening words of that story are, In the days of King Herod of Judea… In much the same way, the story of Jesus’ birth will open with, In those days a decree went out from the Emperor Augustus…

The story of God acting in history is set in the context of the cruel reign of Herod, and the power of the Roman empire, and empire that was always at war somewhere, and that subjugated Israel and would employ the worst sort of cruelty to maintain their rule. Jesus himself would feel the wrath of that cruelty.

The stories of John’s and Jesus’ births are not just a bit of warm nostalgia. They are set in the context of the often-ugly geopolitics of the day. I’m sure there were Israelites who looked out on the news and situation of their day and saw little reason to celebrate, little reason for hope, but it is in this very context that Luke has Zechariah offer his prophecy.

Speaking of hope, I once read something by Brian McLaren where he contrasted hopes and dreams with wishes.[1] It’s a bit of a semantics argument, but I think he has a point. When someone says, “I wish I could win the lottery,” they usually don’t have any real hope of doing so. It’s just a wish.

Sometimes I think we’ve turned Christmas into little more than a wish. We wish people a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, but it doesn’t have much more meaning that saying, “Have a good day.” There is no expectation that such a wish accomplishes something or that we plan on doing anything to make it happen. It’s little more than a pleasantry, a greeting.

That’s certainly not the sort of thing found in the biblical accounts associated with Jesus’ birth. When Zechariah is filled with the Spirit and begins to prophesy, there are no “I wish” statements or “Wouldn’t it be nice.” Instead it is “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David… Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant.”

Perhaps you noticed that prophets often get their tenses wrong. They speak of what is to come as though it has happened. That is because they’re not simply wishing. They have a vision of what is to be, a vivid hope and dream of what is to come.

I’ve seen something of that sort happen within my lifetime. When Martin Luther King, Jr. made his “I have a dream” speech, he was not simply wishing for things to be better. He had a vision, a vivid hope and dream of what would eventually be. And so he worked tirelessly for that vision, for that dream. The dreams of prophets work that way.

Unfortunately, Christendom domesticated Jesus and made him compatible with empire and the wealthy exploiting the poor. The radical dream of Jesus, of a world where God’s will is done, where love triumphs over hate, got pushed aside, and the dreams of prophets like Zechariah became so much pie in the sky by and by.

I wonder if what the world really needs right now isn’t for people of faith actually to take up the vision of Zechariah, to embrace the radical dream of Jesus. To recover the Christmas hope of God breaking into history in Jesus and setting something new and wonderful loose in the world, something that has the power to transform and make new.

I wonder if what the world really needs right now isn’t for people of faith boldly to proclaim something more than a cute baby in a manger, to proclaim the vision, the dream of a new day that the births of John and Jesus herald.

I wonder if what the world needs most of all isn’t for people of faith to embrace that vision, that dream of a new day, and to work tirelessly to create it, knowing that the world resists it, just as it resisted Jesus.

God has looked favorably upon us and has raised up a savior for us. So join in the dream the prophet Zechariah proclaims. “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Thanks be to God!

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[1] McLaren, Brian D., We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation (New York: Jericho Books, 2014), p. 63.