by Steve Van Winkle
Pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church, Bozeman, MT
I had a professor in seminary who draped his wrist in the ubiquitous rubber bracelet used to signify an array of causes and commitments in our society these days. That symbolism has become so commonplace and so diffused in meaning anymore that, unless told, no one really knows what inner resolution is being displayed. And since he taught a counseling course, he wasn’t afraid to share without prompting…
This professor was a man getting along in years, with gray hair and fully aware he was sailing past the sweet-spot age for marketeers who target the lively part of society, while “your” commercials are now found only on television reruns from the 80s and early morning Fox News programs. He said, when he recognized that, he also recognized he had grown more critical of things around him; of change he didn’t appreciate; of people whose innocence he found annoying.
The bracelet, he said, was a reminder not to allow himself to become a grumpy old man.
That wasn’t so long ago for me, and, in fact, I’m still younger now than he was then. But the grumpy old guy within me is stirring.
In Christmas parlance, it’s the rise of the “bah-humbug.”
I feel growing inside my soul the propensity to be disgusted with a variety of things. From politics to church to people to young people to puppies, nothing is immune from a low-grade, thinly veiled “bah, humbug.”
In the adult faces of those I once knew as children, I see those who hold my future, those who will care for me in my infirmities. I shiver sometimes (for no good reason) at the prospect of this. In the news, I see the proverbial hand-basket in which our nation seems to be traveling to a certain end. In the trends of our culture, I feel an alienation that goes beyond taste or style to confusion.
For some reason, 20 years ago I thought I’d never hear my bones snap, crackle, and pop before I make it to the kitchen in the morning (most people 20 years my younger don’t even get the “snap, crackle, and pop” reference). Like most my age, I thought rap music would pass. Like most 20 years my elder, I can now understand how life pushes people into forced retirement from relevance.
And the “bah, humbug” grows more insistent — defiant, even.
As I began work on this essay, I had Phillips Brooks’s Christmas carol, “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” on my mind. In the first stanza is a poetic and yet cryptic phrase I’ve never quite understood. You might remember it:
The stanza begins, “O little town of Bethlehem,” and ends with “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
What hopes? What fears? All the years? How are they met? Why do they need to be met?
When I was a kid in Nebraska, the hopes of my years probably pointed me to the Sear’s wishbook where my heart’s desires were circled in red like government entitlements. The fears were probably that those reddened football uniforms, trains, games, and all associated paraphernalia were going to be overlooked by the Spirit of Christmas and I’d be left with the 20th century version of coal on Christmas morning in their stead: underwear, fruit, and a jigsaw puzzle.
Simple hopes; simple fears.
As life moved forward, the hopes and fears matured. Instead of toys in a Sear’s wishbook, what I had circled in red was hopes for respite from cold realities. Realities attending people like me in broken homes in the late 70s included chronic financial shortfalls, seismic uncertainty about the future, and a general bunker mentality against an encroaching, harsh world.
I had hopes that, for a time, what couldn’t be escaped 51 weeks of the year could be forgotten for that last one near the end of December. As that spot on the calendar approached, the only fear I knew was the one that whispered: reality may be at bay, but January was where we would find it again.
Lesser hopes; living fear.
Lurching beyond childhood, my hopes turned to what could be; what I could be. Then, when I married Cheryl, what we could be. Hopes then were more the architecture of dreams and the limitless possibility of unwritten years. Framed in optimism, our hopes were everything that was good about marriage, ministry, and kids; we were building and growing and wondering.
Fear was not a word found in my vocabulary much. That was due, in part, I suppose, to the fact that life was young enough that a course correction was affordable, should one be needed.
Also, when you are young you acquire a stockpile of mulligans, so as our family grew and as my ministry was new, this knowledge served as a comfort attending every decision and even disappointment. Maybe the roads I chose at the various forks of life were wrong, but I could always fix it; I always had time.
Big hopes; lesser fears.
I find today the tide of hope hasn’t turned nor shifted so much as it’s just different. Hope has a shelf life, and as the years pile up on me, they wilt hope just a little. Many of the hopes of my years are now living, well-loved people and vibrant realities; some hopes have expired.
And, hopes are still driving me, still driving us. Yet, I feel them turning a little. The hopes of empire building have receded some, and most of my future has been set. The hopes of my years are now more on the returns of various investments we have made. Hopes are more centered in the people we have introduced to life and the legacies of our labor.
Don’t get me wrong, hope is alive and there is much building yet to do, but there’s a new dimension to hope now. It’s the hopes of seasoned people looking back on who they have been more than runaway hope of who they will be.
It’s a good hope, taking shape from many hopes of earlier days now realized.
Along with those new hopes, however, come new fears. Unlike hope, I find fear has no shelf life, no expiration date. I also, somewhat regrettably, understand how my professor felt the need to fight off the grumpy old man inside.
While still too young to be considered “old” by most standards, I can nonetheless recognize where that grumpy old man finds his strength and influence: fear. That fear, I find, is also the source of my “bah” and my “humbug.”
Instead of hope in what will be, I see where people become dominated by fear of losing what has been. Hope in whom children will become can easily be displaced by fear of who they actually are. And the hope of what can be built often dies beneath the weighty fear of what may be dismantled.
And, that’s not so far off from our familiar Ebenezer Scrooge, who was afraid of losing the business he had built and being bilked out of the fortune he amassed over the decades. The man who introduced us to the phrase “bah, humbug” was the slave of fear, once his hopes had been exhausted.
Dickens used his Ebenezer to remind people of the natural enemy of fear. He saw in Christmas an inexhaustible source of hope that vanquishes it.
Perhaps this was on Phillips Brooks’s mind when he penned the words “hopes and fears,” words I’ve mulled over for years. Perhaps he could envision, or sense himself, how life turns on the ebb and flow of both hope and fear.
He wrote of a town lost to fears birthed in darkness in a world where hope was a mockery. In Bethlehem’s streets, he may have seen an intersection where fear and hope collided at a manger in which the answer to both lay in swaddling clothes.
The harsh world and the dim hearts of fallen humanity brought innumerable fears to this cradle. Fears of tomorrow, fears of government, fears of disappointment, fears of loneliness, fears even of hope itself came to silence the cry that doomed them all.
And, they were met.
They were met by the Everlasting Light, Brooks wrote. At the intersection where Christ was found in a stable that evening, the fears of what will be were vanquished by what God was doing to save us all. And, those who had become fearful to hope were called by a baby’s cry to dream once again.
On the cusp of another Christmas, I finally believe I understand those cryptic words. I look back at the variegated hopes and fears of all my years and see how Christmas has run through them all. Not simply the season, the traditions, and the gifts, but the Child.
No matter what form, or how grave, or how bold, the fears of my life have always been tended to by the One born on this day. He has overseen my life in the way He has overseen the world, taking every fear and sustaining me through them, whether they were ever realized or not.
Most of all, He takes fear to hope — the worst fear I have ever known — and does something unexpected. He takes me back to the stable, beside the manger, and offers me, not solutions nor plans nor even rubber bracelets, but Himself.
To those fighting back the grumpy old person inside or trying to fend off the swarm of “bah, humbug,” or shriveling from the fears generated by a dark world, I echo again the beckoning words of “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” No truer, no more pertinent words were ever written about life than those of this old carol.
Bring your lilting hopes choking from fear to the streets of Bethlehem. Bring them to an intersection where a manger lay and hear again the cry of a Baby’s eternal voice.
Bring them here, because the hopes and fears of all our years are met there in Christ tonight.
Steve blogs at http://20fore20.wordpress.com.