1st Sunday of Advent: Hope (Where Is It??)

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” (Jeremiah 33:14)

“There will be…on the earth distress among nations…. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Lk. 21:25-28)

Ready or not, here comes Advent. 

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. The Christmas-countdown has begun. 27 days from now will be Christmas. Twenty-seven days. Twenty-seven days to get ready. Well, 26, really.

Yikes!

I think that calls for a moment of deep breathing… [Deep breath!] But having taken that moment, and that deep breath…we can acknowledge that we’ve got time. We’ve got time to get ready. We’ve got time to prepare.

Your homes–your cookies–your annual greetings–your shopping and wrapping–all of those preparations, the external preparation,  I’m going to leave to you to do. Or not.

The internal preparations I’m hoping to help you with. I’m hoping to at least help you–help US–create space for those. Our worship services, during Advent, will have a quieter, more reflective, feel; our Shared Sabbath emails, during Advent, will return to a daily frequency–although they will not be written by me, and will be, therefore, quite brief! But still meaningful. And a new thing we’re trying, that I’ve named “Sacred Space”–on Wednesday evenings during Advent, between 5:30 and 6:30, I will be here,  and the sanctuary and the youth room will be open to you and to the community, and will be available for prayer, or meditation, or reading, or simply sitting still and breathing.

All of these things will be available in the hopes of creating spaces where we might spend some time preparing our spirits for the arrival of Christ. Which, in case you’ve forgotten, will be happening in twenty-seven days… 🙂 

So–hope. Hope is the traditional theme of this first Sunday of Advent.

To be honest, as I’ve thought about that in preparation for this sermon, I’ve been of a split mind, a little bit. On the one hand, there are so many things going on that don’t necessarily fill me with hope–things in the world…things in our country…things here at WRPC…things in my family…. I suspect each of us could name at least one thing around which we feel discouragement, at a minimum, or even, at times, despair…

On the other hand, exactly because of all those things, we need hope! We need to be reminded that there is hope! Because–there is hope. 

Hope that is coming in the form of a tiny squalling baby who was born in a barn in the middle of nowheresville in the Middle East to a teenage Jewish girl and her working class fiancé (not husband) over two thousand years ago…

For us who are people of faith, there is hope to be found in this baby, in this Christ Child. But how do we find it? And what does it mean? And how, in the face of everything that can feel so discouraging…and even hopeless, how do we hold on to it? 

Let’s look back at the scriptures for today.

The context for both the Jeremiah passage and the passage from Luke actually feels pretty hopeless–in the verses leading up to what I read from Jeremiah, there is talk of houses being torn down, and dead bodies of those among God’s people who God was going to strike down in anger; there is talk of wickedness, and streets that are desolate and devoid of people and animals, a wasteland… 

And in Luke, in the verses leading up to what I read, Jesus talks about wars and insurrections, nations rising against nations; earthquakes, famines, and plagues. He tells the disciples they will be arrested and persecuted, betrayed by relatives and friends, hated by all, and some, he tells them, will even killed. Jerusalem will be surrounded by armies and trampled on by the Gentiles, and there will be great distress on the earth…

I’d say in both of those sections of scripture there’s reason for some discouragement. I might even say there’s cause for despair. I’d actually even go so far as to say there’s a whole bunch of stuff that could lead to feelings of hopelessness…

Hmm…Covid…including a new variant… climate change…political polarization…systemic racial injustice…global poverty…healthcare inequalities…job insecurity…cancer…mental illness… grief…churches with declining attendance….

Reason for discouragement? I’d say so. Cause for despair? Can be. A whole bunch of stuff that could lead to feeling of hopelessness? Yep.

And so where is the hope??? How do we find it? And what does it mean? And how do we hold on to it? 

Back to Jeremiah, in our text for today: “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah…” (Jer. 33:14)

The days are surely coming, God assures us, when God will fulfill the promise God made to God’s people to restore them, to heal them, to save them…

And in Luke, Jesus says, “Now when these things begin to take place [meaning all those things that feel so hopeless, and that lead to “great distress on the earth”]…[when these things begin to take place], stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21:38) And then just a moment later, “When you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.” (Luke 21:31)

So when discouragement and despair is real, and things feel hopeless, where is the hope?

For us who are people of faith, hope is found in God.

That seems cliché, and almost too easy to say. But there is deep and powerful truth in it. For us who are people of faith, hope–real hope–is found in God. And in trusting in God’s promises. In claiming God’s promises to restore, to heal, to save God’s people, among whom we are! And in trusting in God’s timing, trusting in the bigger picture in terms of that restoration and healing–and I mean, the really-big bigger picture.

Restoration may not come RIGHT NOW…as we usually want it to. Healing may not happen TOMORROW…as we generally long for it to. Salvation & wholeness for God’s people & God’s creation may not happen YESTERDAY…which seems to be the preferred deadline for deliverables in our culture…right?? 

All of that will take more than a minute. It will probably take more than a few months. It will likely take more than a bunch of years. It’s conceivable–even pretty probable–that it will not even happen in our lifetimes.

But it will happen. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:5)

It will happen at the right time. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah…” (Jer. 33:14)

It will happen in the fullness of time. “When you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.” (Lk. 21:31)

It will happen in God’s time.

It has already begun to happen.

And we see that in the birth of that squalling baby who was born in a barn in the middle of nowheresville in the Middle East to a teenage Jewish girl and her working class fiancé (not husband) over two thousand years ago…

“While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son…” (Luke 2:7a)

But I’m getting ahead of myself! This is just the first Sunday of Advent. The Sunday of Hope.

Let’s take some time to find it, so that we can hold on to it. 

Amen.