On occasion, when facing a threatening situation, we will try to conjure up some courage.  Sometimes it is false bravado.  Whistling in the dark.  If I tell myself something enough times, maybe it will kick in.  I actually googled the phrase “false bravado” and got 335,000 results.  There were sports articles about teams making confident statements that belied the reality of their situations.  “We can still make the playoffs!”  There were articles about the false bravado of political candidates.  “I’m still a viable candidate for president.”  Articles about the Arab Spring and who was exhibiting more false bravado—the protesters in the streets or the besieged targets of their protests.  All of us engage in some form of false bravado at one time or another to prop us up in a difficult situation.

There’s one that comes to mind that is learned at an early age, a playground chant in the midst of a name calling argument.  “Sticks and stones may break my bones...but words will never hurt me.”  Usually deployed when we’ve run out of other verbal retorts.  “Oh yeah?  Well, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!”  But deep down we know the truth.  Words can and do hurt.

Sometimes, people can pile on with words.  The argument was over long ago, a person is defeated and weighted down, and still the hurtful words come.  In some sense, that is the case in our Scripture reading for tonight.  The context is this: Israel has been invaded and conquered by the Babylonians.  Not only that, but most of Israel’s citizen’s have been uprooted from their homes and taken into exile to Babylon.  Jerusalem is destroyed and lies in ruins.  The land has been laid bare, crops destroyed and burned.  Everywhere there is destruction and desolation.  Israel is humiliated.  But, as if that is not enough, Israel’s enemies and her neighbors are piling on with hurtful words.  In verses one through five of Isaiah, chapter 62, we read that Jerusalem is being called Deserted and the entire land Desolate.  Bad enough to have lost everything at the hands of the Babylonians—crops, homes, family members.  Those still alive have also lost their dignity as hurtful words—Deserted and Desolate—are piled on.

But, that is not always to be the case.  That is not the end of the story for the people of God.  Speaking hundreds of years before the event, the prophet Isaiah encourages the people of God with the promise that a Savior is to come—and his reward is with him, his recompense (his compensation) accompanies him.  And the name calling will change from words of derision to words of respect: “They will be called the Holy People, the Redeemed of the LORD; and you will be called Sought After, the City No Longer Deserted.  That promise began to be fulfilled with the return of the people to Israel and the rebuilding of Jerusalem under Nehemiah and Ezra.  And it was ultimately fulfilled in the coming of the Savior promised in Isaiah 62, the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem.

Christmas means that words need never hurt us again.  I don’t mean a kind of false bravado.  Hurtful words can still sting.  To have someone, especially someone significant in our lives, say disparaging and damaging things to us and about us, call us unpleasant names, such words still sting.  But they certainly do not identify who we are.  Because our Savior has come, we are a Holy People.  Whatever unholy past you bring to this night is transformed by Jesus.  We are, today, tomorrow and forever, a Holy People because of our Savior.  We are the Redeemed of the LORD.  Perhaps someone has labeled you as hopeless, beyond help, unredeemable.  Uh-uh.  Not with that baby born in Bethlehem.  Because of him, you are the Redeemed of the LORD.  And because of your relationship with him, you are Sought After.  When the goodness of the Lord is understood in the Christ Child born in Bethlehem—when his love, mercy and grace begins to be seen in the person of Jesus Christ it is something that people seek after, something that people desperately long for.  And you have that...because your Savior has come in Jesus Christ.  You are not what someone might have labeled you in a hurtful moment of angry words.  Past failures and mistakes have not placed you beyond redemption no matter what someone might be saying to you.  You are a Holy People.  You are the Redeemed of the Lord because the Savior has come.  Everything changes...because of the Christ Child born in Bethlehem.  And that is why we celebrate this night.            Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me...because my Savior has come.  His reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.  That is good news to be shouted out from the watchtowers of the city gates and in fields before frightened shepherds, from this church on the hill and in surrounding neighborhoods:  To you a Savior is born; he is Christ the Lord.