O Christmas December 24, 2018, Christmas Eve, Luke 2:1-20 Rockefeller Center in New York City is famous for its giant . This year’s tree is seventy-two feet tall. But if there’s an annual Christmas tree that should receive more attention, it’s the one that’s erected in Common in Boston, Massachusetts. You see, it’s a gift. Every year, Boston’s giant Christmas tree is sent from the Canadian province of by the people of Nova Scotia. And there’s a story behind that. On the morning of December 6, 1917, the harbor at Halifax, Nova Scotia was the site of the largest explosion in history up to that time. It would be surpassed only when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A munitions ship carrying many tons of high explosives like TNT and picric acid, heading for Europe to support the Allied effort in WWI, exploded. Hundreds were killed instantly. Thousands were wounded. Many buildings were flattened. Nearly half of Halifax’s citizens were suddenly homeless. The tragic news and a call for help was sent by telegraph in every direction. And of those who responded to the crisis in Halifax, the citizens of Boston were among the very first. A relief train sent by the citizens of Boston with food, water, and medical supplies arrived in Halifax in the early morning hours of December 8 and would have arrived sooner if not for a blizzard. Numerous personnel on the train were able to relieve the Nova Scotia medical staff, who had been working without rest since the explosion occurred. Even now after one hundred years have passed, the people of Nova Scotia have not forgotten. Every year, they send a Christmas tree to the city of Boston in grateful thanks. Don’t you think it interesting that they chose to say thank you with a Christmas tree? The Boston Christmas tree is not a symbol of sentimentality. It is instead both a reminder of the frailty of our world and a symbol of hope. But in what way? There are many who when looking upon a Christmas tree see only sentimentality or ancient religion or fairytale. They tend to go along with that ad that appeared in the New York Times a number of years ago: “The meaning of Christmas is that love will triumph and that we will be able to put together a world of unity and peace.” Yet by the time Vaclev Havel became the first president of the Czech Republic back in the early ’90’s, he had seen plenty of such sentimental optimism. He’d lived through communism and watched as the former eastern bloc countries embraced capitalism, and he was not optimistic that either would fix this world. He’d lived through the horrors of WWII and seen what science could do if not grounded in a set of moral absolutes. He did not believe that technology could save us from nuclear conflict, ethnic conflict, or the destroying of our environment. He stated, “Pursuit of the good life will not help humanity save itself, nor is democracy alone enough. A turning to and seeking of God is needed.” He was saying the world needs to look beyond itself for help, just as the citizens of Halifax had looked beyond themselves, looked to the outside for help. There is nothing sentimental or optimistic about turning to God, about looking for hope from the outside. Christmas is the most realistic way of looking at life. The Christmas Gospel from Luke chapter two does not say with sentimental optimism, “We can fix things if we try hard enough.” Try that one on the folks of Halifax the morning their town was blown up. Nor does the Christmas Gospel say that what’s coming is some desperate dystopian future. The Christmas Gospel says instead realistically, “Things are bad. Nevertheless, there is hope.” Hope from the outside. Hope from outside our world. As we read from Isaiah 9 earlier, “Nevertheless…the people walking in darkness have seen a great light.” And as we read from Luke 2, “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; He is Christ the Lord.” The hope both of those verses talk about is a hope from the outside, just as this world’s light comes from outside of it. Just as Halifax’s hope came from outside of it in the form of a relief train from Boston. Hope for this world comes from outside of it from our God and Savior Jesus Christ, born to save us from our sins and from the consequences of our sins with the promise that someday He will put everything right. That things will not continue on as they have. That folks like those in Halifax in December 1917 and in Indonesia in December 2018 will not have to keep on needlessly dying. And that hope, that hope from outside this frail world is what gives us strength to keep doing things like what the folks of Boston did for Halifax. That’s the real message of the Boston Christmas tree or of any Christmas tree: there is hope from beyond ourselves, just like the light that shines on us from beyond this world. Even in the darkness, there is a light that shines.