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Longing for Immanuel, 12-14-2004 |
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Written by scott
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Thursday, 06 January 2005 |
LONGING FOR IMMANUEL Isaiah 9:2, 6-7; Isaiah 11:1-9; Luke 2:1-20 December 24, 2004 1861 was a terrible year for Henry, a year that turned his deep joy in life into persistent sadness and despair. In April, his nation went to war, to war against itself, a nation split and now bleeding over practices of slavery that he opposed. But war, war was not the answer, he believed. And yet, there it was, the bombing, the flag hauled down, the challenge answered, a nation engaged in the most bitterly divisive war it had ever known. It was a season of heavy hearts for Henry and his colleagues, a season of wishing and laboring for a peace that was not to be. Still, even with the nation at war, he could find peace and joy at home. He lived with his beloved wife Fanny and the younger of their five children in Cambridge Massachusetts. The summer that followed the beginning of the Civil War was a hot and breathless one. On July 9, Fanny wrote in her diary, “We are all sighing for a good sea breeze instead of this stifling land one filled with dust. Poor Allegra [the youngest] is very droopy with heat, and Edie has to get her hair in a net to free her neck from the weight.” The next day, Fanny decided to relieve Edith’s distress as best she could. She gathered up the seven-year-old’s long curls to trim them off and then, in the kind of sweet sentimentality that so marks mothers of young children, decided to save those curly locks in a little packet, melting wax to seal the packet from the depredations of insect and mildew. Here was as sweet a memory of childhood as could be saved, a daughter’s golden curls. She took a candle near a window to send the heat outside as she melted the wax to seal the packet. The longed for breeze sprung up, drops of molten wax fell on her gauzy summer dress, flames followed. In a moment, Fanny was engulfed. She ran from the room to spare her children, was caught in the arms of her loving husband, who tried to smother the flames with a small rug, with his body, throwing his arms and hands around her, holding her flaming body close, to no avail. She died the next morning. Henry was too burned and grieved to attend her funeral and was forever after disfigured by the flames. He could cover the scars on his face with a full beard: there was no such cover for the wounding of his heart. When Christmas came in 1861, he wrote in his journal, “How inexpressively sad are all holidays.” A year later, on December 25, 1862, his journal recorded continuing sadness. "A merry Christmas, the children say, but that is no more for me.” How could he be merry, beloved wife dead, beloved nation still at war, and now, even more disturbing, his eldest son Charles now an officer in that war. There was no more innocence, no more gaiety, no more lightness in life. A year later, shortly before Christmas of 1863, Henry Longfellow received word that Charles had been severely wounded in battle. And then Henry fell silent. The poet, writer of Hiawatha, of Evangeline, of so many beautiful and cherished poems and stories of faithful and sturdy hearts, the poet Henry Longfellow fell silent. There was no more to say in the face of evil, in the face of grief. When Christmas came that year, he did not note it in his journal. Hope lay dead in the manger in 1863. He had come to the place of helplessness and despair that can no longer even protest. Voiceless and hopeless, he still lived on. What happened in the next year, we do not know. Oh, we know that, in the bitter election of 1864, Abraham Lincoln was re-elected with a firm promise to bring the war to an end in ways that would allow the nation to re-unite. We know that Charles did not die from his wounds. But something else happened as well, something that spurred Henry Longfellow to pen a poem on Christmas Day of 1864. Most of the words are probably familiar to you: I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet,
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men. I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men. Till ringing, singing, on it's way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth good will to men. Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the south
And with the sound
The carols drowned Of peace on earth good will to men. It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearthstones of a continent
and made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth good will to men. And in despair I bowed my head
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong
and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men." Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail,
the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men." Notwithstanding all of our longing for the quiet and peace of days gone by, the world was not a peaceful place in 1864, nor was it a place of justice and peace long years ago, when Luke tells us that the heavens opened and angels sang of God’s glory and God’s wish of peace for humankind. The gospel story, bringing good news to the dispossessed and to the poor, is not about a bay being born on a quiet beautiful night, nor is it a setting of talking animals and magical gifts. Oh, those stories have grown up, as people tried to appropriate the wonder and gift of God, come to live among us. But the essential message is this: we are not alone. We are not alone. We may be grieving; we may be caught in the web of addiction or the grindingstone of global economics; we may have made bad choices; we may be clinging with all we have to avoid falling into a well of despair; we may be scared and heartsick about a war that drags on, about killing and death and poverty and hate and wrong so seemingly strong. But we are not alone. Not only is God still alive; God has chosen to enter into human history, to live in our lives with us. I’d like to tell you a little story, about a young woman from Indiana who decided to give a year of her life to travel to Honduras in the 1980s and work in a camp for refugees from the military oppression in El Salvador, the violence and oppression that had killed Archbishop Oscar Romero and so many more. She was committed; she was determined; in her grief about the continuing violence, she gave every waking moment to the struggle of the refugees. She was startled, therefore, when one of the women challenged her, saying that she wasn’t really one of them. “No,” her challenger claimed, “only people who expect to go back to North America in a year work the way you do. You cannot be serious about our struggle unless you play and celebrate and do those things that make it possible to give a lifetime to it.” And then she realized: every time the refugees were moved to a new location they formed three committees, committees for construction, for education and for alegria, joy. Latrines and shelters were vitally important and so was educating their children. But hope was just as important, and hope is nurtured when we refuse to suspend our belief that God lives in history, in our times, in our celebrations and in our grief, right now, with us. God is here, born again tonight, born into our lives in the face of violence, fear and despair, born vulnerable and little, born persistent and strong, born to the everlasting joy of angels singing, “Glory to God, peace on earth. Rejoice!” May we, happy or sad, hopeful or despairing, alone or surrounded by friends and family, may we each find our way to the manger tonight, may we know once more that God lives in our lives and will not, will not ever leave us, and may we be renewed by the story of a baby born in a stable in Bethlehem, long, long ago. Amen and amen and amen.
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