The season of hope

In the 1986 BBC made-for-TV depiction of Francis Hodgson Burnett’s book, A Little Princess, a young lady named Sarah Crewe experiences the loss of her father. This misfortune throws her into a downward spiral and eventually leads to her removal from the classrooms of a private girls’ school into the cold dirty attic where she sleeps and the kitchen below where she works. The movie takes a rather dramatic turn, from the fine clothes of London in the 1880’s to a small black dress more suitable to her new position as a scullery maid. As the nights grow cold and Sarah settles into her new life, she begins to grow bitter and tired, unhappy and hopeless. All of that changes one day when Sarah, on her way home from the market, meets a young man in the streets who offers her a sixpence. While the sixpence could have bought her something to eat in the market, instead, Sarah strings it and hangs it around her neck, as a constant reminder that kindness does exist in the world. This sixpence, something so simple, is to Sarah a source of hope.

Hope and the act of hoping is not something foreign to our experiences of Christmas. If you take a walk through any shopping mall in Canada, you will undoubtedly find rows upon rows of waiting children, ready to climb upon Santa’s lap and unload their list of hopes for Christmas. Just weeks ago, most people were hoping for a white Christmas, when snow seemed scarce. We hope for safe travel, for time with family; we hope for that special something under the tree and we hope for a holiday void of pain and suffering. I think it is safe to say that Christmas is a season of hoping.

But the hope of Christmas is not limited to children who sit upon Santa’s lap, or families making travel arrangements. The hope of Christmas extends beyond our homes and workplaces and into all aspects of our world. The good news Christ ushered in nearly two thousand years ago is a message of hope. Christmas is not simply that Christ has come, but that in that small baby lying humbly in a manger, we can hope. Despite all that is falling apart in our lives, our communities, and the world around us, we can hope for something different.

In this good news we find at its core, love. And this love is the very source of our hope in troubled times. This good news, this message of hope has long inspired change. It has inspired people to be in mission, to love and to serve their neighbor. This very message means that we can hope despite all that may be wrong in our world. It means that we can hope as we continue to face poverty and injustice that something will change. It means that we can hope as we ponder the next steps of the federal government’s commitment to develop an ‘immediate plan to eliminate poverty in Canada for all’. It means that as we labor to create awareness of the needs of our neighbor, we can hope for something more - for something to change.

When Jesus came as a small baby, born of a virgin mother, he was not what the world was expecting. The world was waiting for a king to come and turn things upside down. The world was waiting for something to change…and the world was not disappointed. The hope of that waiting world came in the form of an infant child wrapped and laid in the feeding trough of animals. Laid humbly in a manger on a silent night so long ago, that baby brought into our midst a love the world had never known; the very love that brought and still brings about hope. This Christmas, wherever we are, whatever we are doing let us seek to identify and give thanks for the love of God that brought, and still brings about the hope of the world. And in seeing this hope, this love so pure, let us ask the question how we in our very lives may bear the message of Christ’s love and hope to others in all that we do.

May this Christmas season be for you and yours a source of love inspired hope! Amen.