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David Orendorff        Luke 21:25-28        November 29, 2009

The economy is a disaster with the rich getting all the breaks and the poor becoming poorer and suffering as the victims of disease, hunger, and war.  The governmental and social institutions that are supposedly supposed to protect the people and bring order to society have become the instruments of repression.  Religion, the promise of God’s help for health, peace, compassion and justice, is fractured by factions murdering factions, and zealots proclaiming their divine right to kill those they believe to be unholy, even if it means killing children on their way to school.  Does this description of first century Judea sound familiar?

For first century Jews it was a mess and no reasonable person hoped for anything better.  It is to this messed up, violent and tormented world that a baby is born; a baby who was like any baby of poor parents and had little reason to hope.  But a baby that promised better times.

It is 70 CE and the Roman Empire has again invaded Judea to bring Pax Roma (peace) to a tumultuous people whose internal wars threatened the peace of the empire.  But the practical consequence of Rome’s invasion was that a people plundered by their own, are now also plundered by a great foreign power.  Their agony is compounded as they die at the hands of their neighbors and on the weapons of foreigners.

It is a hopeless time.  And the hopelessness swells as Rome destroys the limping economy, the institutions and the religious structures of the poor, making the rich richer and the powerful even more powerful.  In this time it would have been easy for Judaism and a fledging Christian church to be consumed by fear.  No one would fault them for fainting under the burden and looking downward without hope.

But in their despair Christians remember the baby, who he was and how he lived in his times of despair.  When it looked like the end Jesus found reason to hope and preached, “Standup and raise your heads because your redemption is near.”[1] Or as the Gospel of Mark reports Jesus’ first sermon, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”[2]

We might translate Jesus’ sermon of optimism in our own seemingly hopeless days this way:  “You think that life is futile because of suffering and death, but I say life is filled with promises of grace and wonder soon to be reality.  For God, the one who creates and sustains us, the one who by compassion persuades history to justice, is near, very near to us.  So in these times of terror I say turn you mind from hopelessness to a holy optimism and trust with your day and your heart that the good news of a gracious God is yours today and forever.”

A quick look at today’s Mideast would tell us that seemingly nothing much has changed except that our pessimism is not confined to the cradle of civilization but expands to the whole of the human race.  If the status of children worldwide are the thermometer of our health then the facts are, at best, sobering.  In 1995 (the best and most recent statistics I found) of 2.2 billion children:

• 143 million are orphans
• 2 million were HIV positive at the end of 2007
• 25 thousand die every day due to poverty
• 3 million have no shoes
• every 3 minutes, in a developing nation, a child dies of malnutrition
• 9.2 million who were born in 2007 died before age 5
• 1 in 7 have no access to health services
• 400 million have no access to safe water
• 1 in 3 do not have adequate shelter
• 121 million are not educated[3]

The economies of the world enslave children and women, orphans and widows, so that the few rich might enjoy vast comforts.  Half the world must live on two dollars a day while 2% of the world suffers the obscenity of too much.  Undocumented workers hide in fear of deportation to almost certain death while at the same time being the primary labor force in England’s, Germany’s and Washington State’s agriculture.  The so-called civilized world’s institutions, in their attempts to bring peace to the places of human unrest, often bring increased suffering as fear erodes the blindness of justice.  And each of the world’s faiths have their violent zealots for whom their personal understanding of God’s will becomes the excuse for murdering the compassionate, bombing those who struggle to bring food, water, shelter, education, and peace to the terrorized.  Like the early Christians we live in a time when those who are not pessimistic are called fools.  We live in a time when fear can make us faint and look down in failing hope.  It is in such times as these that a baby is born yet again and we are called by a loving God to stand up and raise our heads.

Advent is our time to prepare for Christmas and our time to stand up and a raise our heads to hear once again the words of Jesus which are the truth of life, “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.  People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.  Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.  Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

A story sent to me by a friend tells in a simple way why whenever we feel faint and are tempted to cast our eyes pessimistically downward Jesus tells us to stand up and raise our heads: “Two Babies in a Manger” - Author Unknown

In 1994, two Americans answered an invitation from the Russian Department of Education to teach morals and ethics (based on biblical principles) in the public schools.  They were invited to teach at prisons, businesses, the fire and police departments and a large orphanage.

About 100 boys and girls who had been abandoned, abused, and left in the care of a government-run program were in the orphanage.  They relate the following story in their own words:

It was nearing the holiday season, 1994, time for our orphans to hear, for the first time, the traditional story of Christmas. We told them about Mary and Joseph arriving in Bethlehem. Finding no room in the inn, the couple went to a stable, where the baby Jesus was born and placed in a manger. Throughout the story, the children and orphanage staff sat in amazement as they listened.

Some sat on the edges of their stools, trying to grasp every word.  Completing the story, we gave the children three small pieces of cardboard to make a crude manger.  Each child was given a small paper square, cut from yellow napkins I had brought with me.  No colored paper was available in the city.

Following instructions, the children tore the paper and carefully laid strips in the manger for straw.  Small squares of flannel [cut from a worn-out nightgown an American lady was throwing away as she left Russia], were used for the baby’s blanket.  A doll-like baby was cut from tan felt we had brought from the United States.

The orphans were busy assembling their manger as I walked among them to see if they needed any help.  All went well until I got to one table where little Misha sat.  He looked to be about 6-years-old and had finished his project.  As I looked at the little boy’s manger, was startled to see not one, but two babies in the manger.

Quickly, I called for the translator to ask the lad why there were two babies in the manger. Crossing his arms in front of him and looking at this completed manger scene, the child began to repeat the story very seriously. For such a young boy, who had only heard the Christmas story once, he related the happenings accurately — until he came to the part where Mary put the baby Jesus in the manger.

Then Misha started to ad-lib.  He made up his own ending to the story as he said, “And when Mary laid the baby in the manger, Jesus looked at me and asked me if I had a place to stay.  I told him I have no mamma and I have no papa, so I don’t have any place to stay. Then Jesus told me I could stay with Him. But I told him I couldn’t, because I didn’t have a gift to give Him like everybody else did. But I wanted to stay with Jesus so much, so I thought about what I had that maybe I could use for a gift. I thought maybe if I kept Him warm, that would be a good gift.

“So I asked Jesus, ‘If I keep You warm, will that be a good enough gift?’  And Jesus told me, ‘If you keep Me warm, that will be the best gift anybody ever gave Me.’ So I got into the manger, and then Jesus looked at me and He told me I could stay with Him — for always.”

As little Misha finished his story, his eyes brimmed full of tears that splashed down his little cheeks.  Putting his hand over his face, his head dropped to the table and his shoulders shook as he sobbed and sobbed.  The little orphan had found someone who would never abandon nor abuse him, someone who would stay with him — for always!

Before Christmas arrives we know its presence as did Misha. In sometimes big ways like the fall of the Berlin wall the God of love reigns.  People of like us, create orphanages in the Congo and elsewhere.  Food and shelter are given as aid.  A nation’s people rise up against their own injustice and even as they bring chaos they strive for peace.  Every tyrant that has ever existed has failed.  Every corrupt institution has eventually collapsed in on itself and been replaced by people of justice.  The faiths of the world know that terrorists who murder in God’s name, who seek good with the means of evil, are not the way.  Every religious zealot practicing a way of violence has fallen to the gentle believers of faith.

But most often the baby is born among us in small and common ways.  An orphan teaches truth by rewriting Christmas Eve.  A mother cradles her crying baby and a father lifts up a fallen toddler.  Where there is little food lunches are shared.  Doctors and missionaries risk their lives for nobodies in nations we don’t know.  A neighbor brings a prayer shawl.  A job appears.  A volunteer serves Thanksgiving Dinner.  Faith awakens for no apparent reason.  The God of the compassionate heart rules history.

In Advent it is time to stand up before the pessimists and with heads high proclaim the good news that God has not forgotten the suffering world, but is near and with us always; to stand up with raised head and great joy proclaim with Jesus and the early church that Christmas is always just around the corner; to stand up with raised head, my brothers and sisters, because a baby will soon be born who is the prince of peace and the savior of the world.  Shalom and Amen.

[2] Mark 1:15

[3] from UNICEF and A World Fit for Children Project http://www.childinfo.org/world_fit.html