The last two years have been different from anything that we have experienced before. The entire world has encountered major disruption and disorientation due to the pandemic. This has led to major hardships globally. This is in addition to the various regional and local calamities numerous communities face around the world. Many people and communities are reaching exceptional levels of hopelessness. As we celebrate Christmas this season, what is it that we hope for and what hope can we present to others around us? What hope can we promise a suffering world at Christmas? 

A good starting point at Christmas time is to reflect on why Jesus came into this world. There are many passages in scripture that help us answer this question. To gain a good perspective, let us turn to our text in Luke four. At the beginning of the ministry of Jesus he entered the synagogue in Nazareth and read the passage from Isaiah Sixty-one, a passage that promises the coming of God’s salvation Then he starts preaching from the text. Jesus summarizes the main content of his sermon as, “today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”. But today our salvation is inaugurated in the ministry of Jesus. In this summary Jesus presents us with the hope that we are looking for, the hope of Christmas that we need to be reminded of today. 

First, we find the hope of Christmas and the knowledge that God fulfilled His promise. With Jesus the time of fulfillment had come. Have you ever waited for a long time for something? Do you remember the joy experienced and the fulfillment and realization of what has been anticipated?  Jesus’s sermon was, “today the scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”. The fact that the promises are fulfilled brings much joy and hope. But the joy and hope that we have are not only because the promise was fulfilled, but the very content of the promise also brings great hope. In this passage Jesus gives us a snapshot of his ministry, the mission that he came to this earth to fulfill. The religious leaders of Jesus day were awaiting the Messiah who will deliver them from their political foes but that was not God’s plan. That was not why Jesus was sent. However, for those looking to God for genuine hope, for those in need of God, Jesus was the answer and Jesus had the message of good news. He expressed his social concern using the words of Isaiah and this social concern relates to spiritual realities not to political ideologies. Luke does not present Jesus as a social reformer, nor as addressing the political structure of his day. Jesus however is deeply concerned with the literal, physical needs of people as he is with her spiritual needs. The words of Jesus work at both levels, he heals the blind, but he also brings light to those in darkness.

We detect a similar portrayal of the ministry of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. In chapter four, Jesus begins to preach saying “repent for the Kingdom of heaven is near”, he then unpacks the content of this Kingdom. He demonstrates it by healing the sick, then he teaches it in the sermon on the mount. The sermon starts with what we call the beatitudes. “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of God. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted”, and so on. Glen Stassen argues that we frequently missed the point Jesus was making because we interpret these beatitudes as wisdom teaching rather than prophetic teaching. Interpreting the passage as wisdom teaching means that if we mourn, are pure in heart and are peacemakers, if we are virtuous then we can enter the Kingdom of heaven. But if we think that we can live up to those ideas, then we fall into self-righteousness. This becomes a gospel of works righteousness. Wisdom teaching emphasizes human action. If we act in a way that fits how God has ordered the world, then this gets us good results. A grace based prophetic interpretation on the other hand emphasizes God’s actions – “blessed are those who mourn” not because mourning is a virtue but because God is gracious, and Jesus came to deliver us from our sorrows so that we no longer mourn. The beatitudes passage is not about high ideals, urging us to become poor prisoners, blind and victims, so that God will reward us. It is a passage celebrating God acting graciously to deliver us from our poverty and captivity, into God’s reign of justice and joy. The mission of Jesus is to inaugurate the Kingdom of heaven that brings good news to the poor, to oppress the blind and those who are mourning. Then Jesus moves on in his teaching in the sermon on the mount to include us in his mission by giving us the role of being salt, light and the city on the hill. Then he gives us a set of transformative initiatives that we can make in response to life challenges. This is what Stassen calls participative grace. The Kingdom of God is not about what God does while we possibly watch, nor is it about our effort while God passively watches. The Kingdom of God is performative, it is God’s performance in which we actively participate, we become conduits of God’s grace. This means that we are blessed because there was a time where we were mourning, and Jesus came to comfort us. And as we experience God’s grace working in our lives, it overflows so that those who are mourning, whom we encounter everyday are blessed, because God’s grace, working through us will comfort them. This is the way the Kingdom breaks into the world, this is the content of the good news. The poor and oppressed, the blind and the captive can experience the deliverance of God through an encounter with Jesus and with the followers of Jesus. This is the hope of Christmas, that God broke into our world to redeem it, to restore it, to release it and to deliver it. This is why we celebrate Christmas, because of the birth of Jesus, because of the incarnation of the son of God. In him we can be restored to God.

So, we have this strong message of hope at Christmas while the world around us is still suffering. One crisis after another, one calamity after another, one hardship after another. How do we offer this message of hope to a hungry person who has given up on the world and has fallen into total despair? How can our churches become communities of hope that can bring Kingdom healing to the hurt and comfort to the suffering? I would like to suggest a few ideas of what such a community of hope can look like.

First, as a starting point, at the root of the community of hope is independent community that purifies itself by identifying the sins of the world that have crept into our church communities and repent from them. We purify ourselves not by disengaging from the world and become isolated from it, but to remain in the world to engage it with a Kingdom agenda. A repentant community frees itself from the entanglements of the world so that it can become a moral compass for the world. A repentant community takes responsibility for its actions or lack thereof and for the way it has impacted the world.

Second, a community of hope leads differently in times of political crisis, economic crisis or in an environmental pandemic. A community of hope does not respond through fear, panic, or self-preservation. Rather it responds by acknowledging God’s sovereignty and by putting its full trust in God, and it leads by having a vision for God’s ways and by caring for others.

Third, a community of hope shepherds society. Church’s pastor not out of a position of authority but out of a position of service and care for the society, out of love for the sinners and the broken. A community of hope is a self-giving community.

Fourth, a community of hope is concerned with the public affairs of its society. It does not align itself with the political party or political system. Rather, it aligns itself with the Kingdom of Heaven.

Finally, a community of hope is an embracing community. It does not tolerate any kind of racism or prejudice. A divided and segregated community has nothing to teach the world about unity and integration or about love and acceptance. We live in a fallen and sinful world. It is not a surprise that we experience one crisis after another. It’s not a surprise that many are poor, marginalized and in despair. This is the world that we live in. However, this Christmas we have the opportunity to remember why Jesus came into the world. He inaugurated the Kingdom that brings deliverance and hope to this aching world. We also have the opportunity to become communities of hope whom God can use the change our societies. It is at the centre of God’s design that he sends his church into the world, to participate in His mission of redeeming all things. As we celebrate Christmas this year, I pray that our churches become these missional communities of “move”, that God can use to bring HOPE.

Merry Christmas.