Sanctuaries of Christmas - Days 8 & 9: HOPE & JOY

As this New Year’s day came and went, I confess, I’m having a bit of a struggle with my next sanctuaries, HOPE and JOY.  This year, they are a stretch. They feel a bit elusive to me.  These are sanctuaries I am yearning for, but not necessarily finding.  If you are blessed to be experiencing the joy of the season and looking toward hopeful possibilities for the new year…thank you, God! You’ve been given the gift of these sanctuaries.  You don’t need to read any farther today. See you tomorrow!  But, if you are a bit more like me at the moment, you may be searching for the keys to unlock their doors. 

Hope and Joy are common sanctuaries we think of at Christmas, We often acknowledge them together, sort of like a foyer and a living room.  One brings you in and the other is where all the parties are. Hope looks forward to what is not yet, but what might be and could be, envisioning it to be good.  Joy looks back at what was, and around at what is, and feels the fullness.

But, as I look back, I feel more the weight of anxiety and uncertainty than joy: six months now unemployed.  I look around, and wonder what’s here?  What do I have to offer?  (Or does anyone WANT what I have to offer?) Where am I going?   I look ahead with a bit more fear than hope: what if I can’t find a job, what if I feel more depressed than I do now?  I trusted God, but where is God now?

I don’t want to be a New Year’s humbug, but I don’t think I’m alone in this, so I’ll push forward. I believe in Hope and Joy, even if at times we feel lost to them. The truth of these sanctuaries, particularly as illustrated by the Christmas story, is that we detect them a whole lot more in hindsight, than we do in the present moment.   I doubt that in the midst of the Christmas story there was a lot of hope and joy!  Those only came years and even centuries later looking back at the event knowing all that followed. I read a lot more anguish, exhaustion, uncertainty, fear, frustration, confusion, and eventually even downright horror and tragedy!  The story only made it into TWO of the four gospels…and even those two didn’t agree on the details or timelines.

It’s only much later the Christian tradition is able to put a little cultural tinsel on the story from various corners of the world, add St. Nicholas’ embellishments, and then of course we particularly add a century or two of American sentimentality and a dusting of consumerism, and, voila! Hope and Joy!    

The Angels of scripture are most often the ones that point the way to these sanctuaries and open their doors, but we kind of forget what their “good news of great joy” might have really sounded like.  To say “For unto you, is born this night, in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. You shall find the babe wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger,” has a little different sense when you think about it from the shepherds’ point of view.  They were probably half drunk on the hillside, suddenly thinking they were hallucinating.  “Good news of great joy, guys!” says their tequila apparition. “The savior of the world has just been born tonight in Phoenix.  You can find him wrapped in a towel, laid in a bathtub, in a motel down on Van Buren Street. Glory to God in the highest, yo!”  Hmm. Right. Good news…?

So, I guess where I end up is, let’s not be too hard on ourselves if we can’t find those doors that lead to Hope and Joy…at least for now.  Whatever is happening in our lives, we may not quite be ready to see or understand the strangely mysterious dynamics God seems to present to us as Hope and Joy.  It’s only when we can step away and see it from a distance, like a great painting, that the image comes clear. Let’s give it some time.