“Man Oh Man, Do We Need Some Hope!”

Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19

December 3, 2023 – 1st Sunday of Advent

“Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.” (Psalm 80:3)

Ready or not, Christmas is coming. With today being the first Sunday of Advent, the Christmas-countdown has begun.

22 days from now, we will wake up and it will be Christmas. Twenty-two days. Which means, twenty-one days to get ready.

I think that calls for another moment of deep breathing… 🙂 [Deep breath!]

Because, let’s face it–there’s a lot to do to get ready for Christmas! There’s Christmas-light hanging and Christmas-tree decorating… There’s Christmas cookie-baking…and maybe a tiny bit of Christmas-cookie-eating…! There’s Christmas-card-sending and Christmas-gift-shopping…and Christmas-gift-wrapping… Just to name a few things that many, if not most, of us do to prepare for Christmas.

Thankfully, all of those preparations–the external preparations–well, at least your external preparations–I’m going to leave to you to do. Or not!

The internal preparations of this season, on the other hand–yours and mine–I’m hoping to help with.

In these weeks of Advent, these weeks leading up to Christmas, I hope we can create space together for the internal preparations we make, the preparations we make within our spirits.

1. Our worship services, during Advent, will create space…
2. Daily Shared Sabbath emails, during Advent, will return (***unless you opt out, which is absolutely an option–and a judgment-free option!***). And there will be 2 weekly opportunities to share our own reflections on those shared in the emails–

• Sunday mornings during the Sunday School hour, and
• Tuesdays mornings at 9:30.

***Both with a Zoom option available for those who’d like to participate 

from the comfort of their own homes***

3. Also, as has happened for the past couple of years, on Wednesday evenings there will be an opportunity to come into a “Sacred Space” and find a “Quiet place.” On those evenings during Advent, I will be here, and the sanctuary will be open to you and to the community, available for prayer, or meditation, or reading, or simply sitting still and breathing.

All of these things will be available over these next few weeks in the hopes of creating spaces where we might spend some time preparing our spirits for the arrival, again, of Christ.

The celebration of which, in case you’ve forgotten, will be happening in twenty-two days… 🙂 

So…hope.

Hope is the traditional theme of this first Sunday of Advent. And man oh man, do we need some HOPE these days…

There are so many things going on that don’t fill me with hope–Things in the world…in our country…in the lives of friends and loved ones… Things that lead me to feel discouraged on good days, and something closer to despairing on bad days!

And I suspect I’m not the only one…

Man oh man, do we need some hope…

Before we catapult ourselves too quickly to hope, however, which might make it seem cheap or superficial, we’re going to take a few moments, and write some of the things down.

Because they’re real. And we know that not talking about the messy, uncomfortable, painful things doesn’t make them go away. In fact, as a rule, it makes them even messier!

So before we try to find hope, we’re going to acknowledge that which can feel hopeless.

I invite you, if you wish, to grab a sticky note or two or three, and write a word or phrase that represents to you some situation, whether personal, local, or global, about which you are not overflowing with hope…

And then, if you wish, I invite you to come up and stick it on the cross…

When there are situations in our lives and in the world that feel hopeless, it’s okay–and can even be helpful–to name them.

[2 minutes…]

Thank you for your honesty and courage…

I think it’s clear, as we see all those things [on cross], and feel the weight of them–as well as all the things we didn’t name but hold in here [point to heart], we need hope!

We need to be reminded that there is hope!

Because–there is hope. 

Hope is coming to us and to the world…looking like complete and utter weakness and vulnerability.

Hope is coming to us and to the world…in the form of a tiny, naked, squalling baby who was born in a barn, alone except for his parents and the beasts around them…

Hope is coming to us and to the world…in the form of a beautiful and terrifying transition, happening to a teenage, unmarried Jewish girl and her working class fiancé…

Hope is coming to us and to the world…born in the darkness of the night in the middle of nowheresville in the MIddle East, over two thousand years ago…

For us who are people of faith, hope is coming…and has come!…in this baby, in this Christ Child!

But how do we find it? And what does it really mean? And how–in the face of all of this [notes on the cross] that can feel so discouraging…and disheartening…and even hopeless–how, do we hold on to it? 

Certainly–albeit sadly–these things that are causing us discouragement and despair are not new. Throughout history, including throughout our scriptures, in both the Old and the New Testament, there have been violence and destruction, greed and oppression, wickedness and war. Throughout history, including throughout our scriptures, there have been people who seek power and control, who manipulate and maim, who desire domination and pursue it relentlessly through the use of brute force, intimidation, and fear. Throughout history, including throughout our scriptures, systems have been created and maintained by people in power, so that they might stay in power…and so that those who are powerless and marginalized might remain that way as well. And throughout history, including throughout our scriptures, there have been poverty and disease, natural disasters and general distress on the earth…

Throughout history, including throughout our scriptures, I think it’s fair to say that there has been a whole bunch of stuff that could lead a whole bunch of people to a whole bunch of discouragement at best and, in the darkest of the darkness, to a whole lot of despair.

Hmm…without reading any of the notes on the cross, I can imagine that among them there may be references to invasions and hostages and killing of innocent people…racially-based hatred and mass shootings…cancer and mental and physical illness and grief… politics and political polarization… Perhaps climate change and natural disasters… Perhaps global poverty… Perhaps the decline of the Church…And likely other things.

A whole bunch of stuff that could lead a whole bunch of people to a whole bunch of discouragement and despair… 

And so where is the hope?? Is there any??

There is. There absolutely is!

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

That seems so cliché, and in light of everything we’re naming this morning, it almost feels silly to say. Or at the very least, too easy to say. 

But as with all clichés, there is a kernel of truth… But as is also true of clichés, that truth can get lost if you get there too quickly or don’t look deeply enough.

Because there is depth and power in that truth, the truth that Hope is found in God!

And the deep and powerful truth of the Hope that we can find in God can enter us, can settle into the depths of our spirits, as we, with courage and honesty, bear witness with open eyes to the pain of life, bear witness with unclenched hands to the unfairness of life, bear witness with compassionate hearts to the suffering inherent in living life!

And yet…still…even then, name and claim the hope–the real, true hope–that is there for us, as people of faith, in God. The hope that there is a Light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness DID not overcome it. The hope that there is a Love that will not be conquered, even by death. The hope that there is a God who is with us, day in and day out, year in and year out, generation after generation after generation, and who will not leave us, ever, no matter what. 

As people of faith, this profound, timeless Hope that God offers us–and promises us time and time and time again–is there for us, and we will find it as we allow our hearts to be cracked open with the heartbreaks and heartaches of our own lives and of the world around us, and as we allow, then, the truth of God’s promises to settle into our broken-open hearts. 

And as those promises settle in, they become less foreign, less faraway, less unbelievable; and they become closer, they become part of us, they become ours.

And we begin to live from within God’s promises to restore, to heal, to save God’s people, among whom we are! And trust in God’s timing, trust in the bigger picture, trust in God’s plan  for 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…

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. 

It will happen at the right time.

It will happen in the fullness of time.

It will happen in God’s time.

In fact, it has already begun to happen. And we see that in the birth of that tiny squalling baby who was born in a barn in the middle of nowheresville in the Middle East to a teenage unwed Jewish girl and her working class fiancé over two thousand years ago…

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, and open our hearts to it, so that we can hold on to it. 

Because man oh man, do we need some HOPE!

Amen.