When Christmas Isn't So "Merry"

(This is an adaptation of my sermon from Sunday, Dec. 12, 2010, the 3rd Sunday of Advent. It is a proclamation of the Gospel in the midst of what has been a particularly difficult period of grieving in our congregation and community recently.)

I have to be honest with you – I’m getting really sick of hearing about teenage and young adult deaths. We've had too many of them in this area and/or affecting our congregation over the last month and a half - 4 lives lost in a plane crash, one life lost because she didn't hear the train, and 3 lives lost in car accidents - plus a surviving driver struggling with unnecessary guilt.

I’ve grown weary with the frequency I’ve used the phrase, “I’m sorry to hear about your loss,” in recent weeks. It’s not that I’m not sorry, or that I don’t want to offer support and comfort. It’s that we shouldn’t have to be dealing with these things together as a community. It’s just not fair. I can’t help but think that, as much as my heart is aching over the deaths of these young people I never knew, how much heartache do you who knew them have? And how much heartache are their families feeling right now? It’s inconceivable, and it’s completely unfair. No parent should ever have to bury their own child, no matter how old or young. I don’t believe God wanted any of these things to happen, and I don’t believe that God caused them, but I do believe that our God knows our pain, weeps alongside us, and is taking care of these beloved children.

As a congregation, we have become too familiar recently with what the prophet Isaiah calls “sorrow and sighing” (Isaiah 35:10). It’s enough to put a damper on our holiday season: writing Christmas cards, decorating, shopping for gifts all seems so trivial when I think of the grief that so many families are experiencing right now. I just can’t stop thinking of the empty seats these families will have at the dinner table on Christmas, and how painful that will be. I can’t even begin to imagine the depth of pain.

Like many Old Testament prophets, Isaiah offers words of hope in the midst of despair. It may be for different reasons than our own, but the Israelites are filled with sorrow and sighing just as many of us are filled with sorrow and sighing. The merry for us right now has disappeared, and it’s simply Christmas – and a blue Christmas at that.

We’re always longing for a merry Christmas, and I sense that this year it is especially true. Even if the rest of the year is awful, we want to be happy and merry on Christmas. At least give us that one day where we can forget about the sorrow and sighing, we plead. Give us this season of cheer and happiness. But like many things of this world, when the happiness and merriment of Christmas day wears off, we’ll find ourselves in the same place we were before that day – in sorrow and sighing. It’s enough to make us believe that Woody Allen may have been right when he said, “More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

But there is a 3rd way, says the prophet Isaiah, and that way shall be called the Holy Way. It will be a highway through the desolate desert that leads us back home to God. Advent is a time when that highway is built, and that highway is then paved by the Christ child. God establishes a road to joy, where sorrow and sighing flees away. While we are out trying to find or buy happiness this Christmas, God is busy making us a Holy Way, a highway of joy.

Let me tell you something – many people would have you believe that happiness is to be pursued, that happiness can be bought, that happiness can come if only you think positively. And that may be true – we can find happiness in many things. But when what makes us happy loses its luster - and it will - we begin to realize that none of those things can solve our problems, and none of them can heal our pain. Happiness is just a brief pause, an interlude, from sorrow and sighing. Happiness doesn’t fix anything. It is good, because sometimes we need that break from the realities of life, but in the end it is just that – a break. Giving someone a good book this Christmas, or cooking the perfect turkey or ham for Christmas dinner, won’t fix or solve anything for anybody, even if it makes them happy for awhile.

You see, happiness is not what the Christian is called to pursue. No, we are called to pursue joy, and that is an entirely different and a far greater thing than happiness. Happiness is well and good, but it does not change anything in our lives. Joy, however, is transformative. Joy is not a temporary state of being, but an everlasting rest in the arms of God. And the joy that comes from God alone comes to us on Christmas, in the form of a child named Jesus, as a light to pierce the darkness of our lives, because God so loved the world that he chose to live among us, and invite us to find joy in the Christ child.

Nothing we buy or do this Christmas will make our problems go away. Nothing will bring back those who have died, nothing will fill that void in our lives. But there is help on the way. In these sorrowful times, I have no words for you that will make things happier. I cannot explain or comprehend what is going on around us. All I can do is continue to do what I've spent a lot of the last few weeks doing: sit with my head in my hands, crying out on behalf of the grieving: “O come, O come, Emmanuel. O COME, O COME, EMMANUEL."

Did you ever notice how dark some of the verses of that hymn are? It is not a festive tune to get us into the holiday spirit. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel is a hymn of deep longing for God to meet us in the darkness we find ourselves in. Listen to these verses (emphasis added):

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here,
until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, thou Key of David, come,
and open wide our heavenly home.
The captives from their prison free,
and conquer death's deep misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come thou Dayspring, come and cheer
our spirits by thy justice here;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death's dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Do you hear those words? In the midst of death and despair comes a human cry: O come, O come, Emmanuel. We cry out from the deep pain and suffering that weighs us down. We recognize that no Christmas cheer will lift us up except the coming of Christ. But, Christ is on the way. Joy is on the way. And we shall be lifted up. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to THEE, O West Newton. And when it comes, sorrow and sighing will flee away for good – because God will be with us, lifting us above our troubles. So, I do hope your Christmas will be merry, but for some of you, I know there will be very little, if anything, to be merry about. But whether we are merry or not this Christmas, we are sure to find one thing this Christmas: the overwhelming joy of a child in a manger, the beginning of the Holy Way to God, and the hope and promise that one day, all sorrow and sighing will flee away. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel – God with us – shall come to thee.