The Rev. Noah Van Niel
Christ and St. Luke’s
December 18, 2022
Advent IV (A): Isaiah 7:10-16; Psalm 80: 1-7, 16-18; Roman 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25
To hear audio of this sermon click here.
When the 1972 movie version of the hit Broadway musical Cabaret came out, a new song had been added that wasn’t in the original stage production, but it was a song that quickly became a sensation. A literal showstopper, “Maybe This Time,” made a superstar of the film’s leading lady, Liza Minelli, who went on to win an academy award for her performance.
The song comes partway through the first act of the show. Minelli’s character, Sally Bowles, the lead singer at the seedy Kit Kat Club in 1930’s Berlin, has met, fallen in love with, and is likely pregnant with the child of an American writer named Cliff Bradshaw. Given her lifestyle, Sally decides a baby is not really something she could handle, but Cliff, convinced of their love for one another, talks her into keeping it. This moment throws Sally into reverie. And as the action on stage stops, she steps out to sing about how, against all odds, “maybe this time,” her love affair is going to last and she will have a chance to start a new life as a wife and mother, away from the poisonous atmosphere of pre-war Berlin. “Lady peaceful, Lady happy, that’s what I long to be,” she sings.
As songs go, it’s actually not much of one. The melody is meager. And what the lyrics possess in directness they lack in poetry. But its compositional shortcomings are more than made up for in emotional impact. The song starts low, and smoky, and builds, verse by verse, into a belted climax that, when delivered in Minelli’s memorable mezzo, serves as an explosion of hopefulness and possibility right at center stage. And for a moment you believe what Sally believes, that “Maybe this time,” she’ll win.
Except she won’t. And even as you cheer for her, you know it. Because in reality what she’s imagining is absurd. Even if you’re seeing the show for the first time, you have an inkling that circumstances will overcome this pair of lovers and these newborn hopes will die. This, more than the lyrics or melody or even the performance, are, what I think made this song such a hit. It’s the anthem for all those dreams you allow yourself to dream even when you know they’re impossible. And this infuses a twinge of heartbreak into an otherwise celebratory song.
I have never been able to find the right word for this feeling—this feeling of genuine hopefulness mixed with sadness brought on by reality. Bittersweet isn’t quite right. Ambivalence is too clinical. It’s like wistfulness but for the future. A yearning tinged with melancholy. A longing that one cannot help but feel, even though they know that longing will never be satisfied. A hope you cannot help but give voice to, even though you know it will fail.
But whatever the word for it is, this is the feeling I get every year as Advent closes, and we turn towards Christmas. Sure, there is happiness and joy and excitement and fun, but there is also, always, that yearning tinged with melancholy that Sally sings about. Not because I long to see Christ back in Christmas, but actually quite the opposite, because Christ is in Christmas, and I know what we’re going to do to him. And yet every year I can’t help but believe, “Maybe this time…we’ll be lucky…maybe this time he’ll stay…” which I know, is absurd, but I can’t help hoping it anyway.
It’s absurd because of our track record when it comes to how we receive and respond to God showing up in our world, looking for a relationship with us. Starting all the way back in the Old Testament people are given endless opportunities to live in right relationship with God and with each other, and yet we find endless ways to go astray. No matter what God tries—The Garden, The Exodus, The Law, The Temple, The Judges, The Kings, The Prophets—we just can’t seem to get our part right. This cycle of rejection repeats so much that, if the results weren’t so tragic, it would be a farce. The Gospel of Matthew, which our Gospel passage comes from this morning, actually starts with the Old Testament—not with Jesus’s birth story. It opens with 17 verses of genealogy, tracing Joseph’s (and thus Jesus’s) lineage all the way back to Abraham. The purpose of this extended family tree is to establish Jesus’s Davidic and Abrahamic legacy, thus setting him up to be the fulfillment of the Messianic promise. But the effect is that it ends up recalling all those failures to live in right relationship with God that have persisted across the generations. It was into this history of failure that Jesus was born. Matthew is telling us that in this Jesus event, God was jamming the spokes of the wheel that had been turning for centuries on an endless loop of disobedience, in an attempt to break through to us in a different way; to stop the cycle of failure and give us a new chance to get it right. This time it’s Emmanuel—God with us. Not an intermediary, not a messenger, not a prophet, a priest, or a King, but God’s very self, come into this world of sin. It’s all very promising. The fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy seems to be taking shape in Joseph’s life and Mary’s womb— “Look, the young woman is with child,” and he will be the one to save us from our sins. And for those people in that time and in that place the point was this: maybe this time. Maybe this time it will work. Maybe this time we’ll figure out how to live in love with one another and with God.
But did we? No! We took “God with us,” and threw him out! We took that light and we snuffed it. We took that goodness and we mocked it. We took that love and we whipped it. We took that child and we crucified him. And with him, another round of hopes and dreams for what humanity could be. The incarnation did not save us from ourselves. The powers of darkness still held sway over our world, and over our hearts and if we’re being honest, it still seems like they hold sway today. Cruelty, violence, selfishness, greed, corruption, anger, fear these are what we cling to and what we glorify. Not life and light and peace and goodwill. We were true to our pattern. We rejected God. Again. And we still do.
My boys are coming to an age where they are starting to move more and more out of the safety and sanctuary of our home and into the world. More time in school. More activities. More playdates. This is all as it should be. There is much more to this world than what we can show them, and they should go forth and discover it. But as I rejoice at their growth, I must confess, my heart also trembles with fear. Because I know that as they step out into this broken world what awaits them is not just fun and fascination, but also pain, and sorrow, and sin. I yearn for them to go forth, and yet I know that somewhere along the line they will discover that people can be mean, and greedy, and cynical and it will pierce their heart and stain their soul. It’s a world where just to be good will be a triumph, and to be loving will be an endless challenge, and to be fair and just will be their life’s work. And it can feel like their life is ruined before it even begins because you see what is all around you. You know the odds. You know people. How fallen we are, how devastated the world is. You know what Joseph and Mary knew, as they held their little boy in their arms, full of hope for what his future could be and full of fear for what it would be.
And yet somehow, every Christmas, as happens every time I hold a newborn child, every time I step back and watch my boys grab hands and walk off into school together, I cannot help but pray….maybe this time. Maybe this time they will escape the troubles of this world. Maybe this time the world won’t be so troubled. And that, to me, is the power of Christmas. Because even despite our best efforts to stomp out the light of Christ, Christmas keeps coming. Year, after year, after year, God keeps coming. That’s what it means for God to be “with us.” Not that he came once and we wasted our chance. It means that every day, every month, every year, he calls on us and says, “let’s try this again.” And again. And again. “Purify our conscience, Lord, by your daily visitation,” our collect prays this morning. And what that means, is that to the extent that we can, though the powers of this world be arrayed against us, we choose to live by light and love and goodness and peace because when Jesus came to dwell among us we didn’t just learn more about God, we learned more about ourselves: what we could be, what we should be if we were to live into the fullness of our potential as Children of God. And though it seems absurd by the standards of this world, we persevere in that hope and live by love because we believe that one morning we will wake up, and like presents that appear as if by magic under the tree, we will run downstairs to find that the Kingdom of God has arrived; that Jesus has come and he shall reign forever and ever.
But until that blessed day, that everlasting Christmas morning, we gather, year after year we gather, in numbers we don’t gather in at any other time, to tell the story—the glorious, impossible story. To be reminded of that moment, when the brilliant radiance of God’s light was so bright that all our fears were scattered and all that was not holy and honorable and just was burned away. We tell the story so that we can continue to believe that if it happened then, it can happen now. For as we bask in the light of that star above the stable, we can believe, if just for a moment, that the world is good, that people are kind, that it is possible to live by love and not selfishness or hatred or greed. And at least once a year we allow ourselves to believe that maybe, just maybe, maybe this time, we’ll be lucky, maybe this time, he’ll stay, maybe this time we won’t cast him out of our world. Maybe this time we’ll have peace on earth. Maybe this time, goodwill will finally catch on. Maybe this time we’ll get it right.
So as you go about your tasks this week—the parties and the preparations, the decorating and the baking, the singing and the shopping, let that yearning that sits in the seat of your soul, that longing you cannot shake, be born in you again. That thrill of hope for that new and glorious morn when the beautiful promises held within that baby boy will reign over all the earth, and this weary, weary world will finally rejoice. Because even though everything around us says it won’t happen, we cannot help but hope…maybe this time…