On Wednesday the 22nd of December 2004 The West Australian newspaper published a photograph on its front page showing a very young girl wearing a head scarf, white jacket sporting a flora motif - and a Barbie tee-shirt. As far as the eye or magnifying-glass could tell, the clothing was fresh and clean, suggesting that it had been presented to her or her surviving parents or relatives, after the devastation which caused her face to be splattered with dark, dried blood and her left eye caked shut.
The pungent heading above the photograph asked the apparently-disingenuous question: If they do this to one of their own, what hope is left?
Leaving aside the legion of questions which that photo - which screams “set-piece!” and “manipulation!” - raises, almost NO ONE gathered here could fail to answer The West’s puzzling question.
If they do this to one of their own, what hope is left?
The very fact that we ARE gathered is an answer in itself. I suspect we may not be able to articulate all our reasons for being here but that’s not a surprise. The whole issue of God and God’s dealing with humankind is beyond words, beyond thoughts, beyond the crudely empirical. We fumble with theology precisely because we cannot articulate the one thing we truly and uniquely possess – our experience of the Living God.
And that experience best reveals itself, not in learned volumes, not in creeds or anything written, not even in art or music (though art and music come much closer than words to expressing our experience) – that experience best reveals itself in actions, in that which is corporeal, made real by the will, effort and effect of human bodies. The paradox is that it is the ultra-nano-second speed of the neural transmitters firing in the human brain and beyond that, the ungraspable stimuli which trigger them, that causes the relative precision of physical activity.
Put crudely, our bodies do what they do because our brains tell them what to do. But when our brains sense the Living God even they become inarticulate and imprecise.
So it is little wonder that we might “know” why we’re here and at the same time not be able to give a sensible answer if anyone asks us.But here’s another paradox: even our most garbled responses suddenly provide their own internal eloquence when uttered in response to questions like the West Australian’s If they do this to one of their own, what hope is left?
If The West seriously wants an answer let it send its newly-embedded reporters into the churches and gatherings of the faithful this Christmass time. Most of us may fail to win essay competitions but we all come with some sense of hope and the Living God calls us collectively to BE that hope.
What hope is left? US! Living witnesses that, as I suggested a few Sundays ago, more than mayhem defines our world. The hope expresses itself through the faithful who are prepared to stand up and say, This is wrong! The hope resides in the voices and actions of faithful people, acting in response to what they read in the gospel and know from their own encounter with the Living God, who rise against injustice, intolerance, lies, oppression and manipulation and speak words and do things in the name of the Living God on behalf of those who cannot say or do them.
We celebrate the birth of Jesus precisely because deep within our beings we have heard or seen or dreamed that God’s own answer to that question, What hope is left? was, and continues to be Jesus.
Ironically, that question is clothed in shadows of despair and whispers desperately of ultimate chaos. But that is precisely the circumstance into which the Living God sends Jesus. That is precisely the circumstance WHY God sends Jesus. … Because of despair. … Because of chaos.
… Because chaos and despair strip away the flossy sentiment and confront us with things that matter most.
They say that an alcoholic – or any person self-destructing on addictive behaviour – does not realise their need for help until they “hit rock-bottom”. Rock-bottom is the place where all the soil of delusion and excuse is gone, where no more layers of deception exist, where the paradoxical effort to arrive at the worst of places suddenly offers us, despite our life-threatening exhaustion, the clarity to enable us to reach the best, most glorious of possibilities.
This was the kind of world into which God sent Jesus. This was the kind of world where God whispered into the soul of a faithful girl who responded in a spirit of faith and co-operation – as a co-worker and co-producer. She did not understand, she could not articulate why she did what she knew she had to do, and like us she would not have won any essay competitions no matter how many people asked her.
But God’s whisper led to her actions. God’s whisper triggered her neural transmitters and she went and conceived and carried and bore and suckled and nourished and nurtured the kid her yet-to-be hubby would name Yeshua and we call Jesus.
All that happened because her world, the world in which she lived, had hit rock-bottom and the embedded reporters of The West Judaean were asking, What hope is left? and the Living God had sed: YESHUA!
And now we find ourselves in a world which may well be nearer to rock-bottom than any of us care to imagine. We again encounter the desperate question but this time the Living God whispers into our souls and sez: JESUS! - and all you lot going to church this Christmass!
From the beginning, the story of Jesus involved human co-operation with God. That human co-operation remains essential. Perhaps we tend to forget.
Perhaps we are buried beneath layers of tinsel, snow-filled carols, thoughts of familial responsibility and anxieties about organising the logistics of the luncheon gathering. Fair enough. These are real things. They won’t go away and they SHOULDN’T go away. Nowhere is it written that soul-work happens without perspiration.
And Christmass is more about our souls than about babies.
But its meaning turns on how we receive a Jesus who was only ONCE a baby. Have we actually understood that Jesus grew up, became an adult, and spent his ministry showing and teaching others how to follow where he led? We assume we celebrate a birth but what rightfully excites our joy is the meaning of that birth – and the meaning speaks about our souls, not our stomachs or blood-pressure …
The meaning of the birth of Jesus is the first, most profound and timeless answer to the question What hope is left? Jesus is the hope, and if we are truly in tune with this Jesus then we too are included within that hope, both as honoured recipients and as gifted co-labourers with Jesus, wandering rock-bottom and inviting the damaged and broken to become part of God’s good news in the very act of accepting and receiving it.
We are part of the hope for that poor manipulated Iraqi girl on the front page of Wednesday’s West Australian. We are part of the hope for the homeless, despairing, unemployed, abused and beaten people of Westfield. We are part of the hope for which the world yearns and now cries for salvation from the myriad evils of injustice and oppression besetting it.
As we celebrate a birth and a baby, let us remember that this is Christmas – the Christ Mass – and that EVERY Mass is about going out into the world: Ite, sed the deacon, Missa est. Go, she sez, It is the dismissal. A Dismissal into a world hungry for love and salvation. May that world – our world – hear the answer, see it, and receive it as our own gift passed forward.
Let us remember that it can NEVER be the Christ Mass until we go out and our own lives and faith provide the answer to the question What hope is left? … Until our own words and deeds show that Jesus – in whatever form the world needs to receive, recognise and understand him – is that hope and we too journey within it.
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