2 December 2012

1 Advent C
HOPE: from the prophets ... through Jesus ... for US
“Small signs of hope”
Luke 21:25-36
2 December 2012


Happy New Year! Blessed Advent!
Well, why not? Why shouldn’t we be greeting each other that way, this morning?
For Advent has begun once more … Advent, the season of hope ... here we are, surrounded by the symbols of hope this morning ... the Advent wreath, candles lit in anticipation once more ... the blue color, blue signifying hope, blue is all around us ... even on some of us.
Now, I realize, that word, HOPE, has become cheapened lately ... in political campaigns and agendas both blue and red ... and certainly, certainly, hope is over-commercialized. Especially at this time of the year. Yet, Advent hope is not the same thing as “Christmas” ... and here, I put that in quotes, meaning, not The Nativity Of Our Lord, but the publicly observed winter festival, full of Black Fridays and shopping deals, its joyful songs sung by Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond and Madonna (psst ... they’re all Jewish) ... this time and season which is forever and always full of more shallow pleasures than ... Advent hope.
Advent hope ... in contrast ... is a hope that lasts longer than two months of 24 hour a day Christmas carols on the radio ... which is deeper than staying up all night on Thanksgiving to rush into Walmart and get the biggest bargain ... that is more profound than deciding to use debit cards rather than credit cards to buy our gifts this year.
Our theme this year helps right us, and pull us back into what Advent Hope is all about:

HOPE: from the prophets ... through Jesus ... for US

This is hope which has its source in the divine, hope for deliverance, hope for restoration to what God desires for us, hope for salvation.
This is the hope we have before us in the words of the prophet Jeremiah. Now, the Old Testament prophets often get a bad reputation ... and, yes, much, many of their words can be heard as ‘gloom and doom,’ words calling Israel back to faithfulness, faithfulness to God, faithfulness to God’s Word and God’s ways, faithfulness they have abandoned in the pursuit of other gods, other ways, ways which are unjust to the poor, and unloving to God’s good creation. Their words are filled with a Word of judgment ... God is not going to stand idly by while people and land are hurting, groaning in despair, under the weight of oppression and injustice ... God is going to intervene, intervene actively for the sake of the people God loves.
So, judgment ... but it’s judgment steeped through and through ... with hope.
This is the Word of God through the prophet Jeremiah which we receive this morning.

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. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: "The LORD is our righteousness."

Justice and righteousness ... two commodities at a premium, indeed, virtually nonexistent to Jeremiah and his people, carried off into exile, taken from their home and homeland, held in a distant country against their will while their homeland was being attacked and destroyed. They thought, they saw, they believed that God’s promises for them had ended ... that they would no longer be people who would see the “goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” ... that they would never go back to the homeland of their godly heritage.
They were a people without hope, for them, in a land, a place, a time without hope.
That’s what makes these words of God through Jeremiah so profound, so abundant with HOPE.
I will fulfill the promise I made, God says. God has not forgotten them, nor God’s word to them through the ages.

I will cause a righteous branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

Someone is coming, someone of my sending, God says, even though it looks bleak and hopeless right now ... I am with you now ... and I will continue to be with you, into and through the future, when you shall be safe and well and blessed ... and home.
Home. That’s where we can best connect with this text.
We may not, no, we likely don’t, can’t understand how those Israelites felt there, in exile ... that kind of hopelessness ... but we can understand that deep longing for ‘home.’
Not necessarily a place ... but a feeling ... more than a warm fuzzy, more than the momentary satisfaction which comes from Christmas shopping or giving and receiving ... this is deep, abiding hope for us ... a knowing, part of every fibre and strand of our DNA, knowing that we are loved and safe and secure, that we have a place within God’s heart, THE heart of love and life, forever.
THAT is HOPE. THAT is the hope which each of us ... each and every one of us, in our own places and spaces of life ... each and every one of us, can connect with that sense of hope. And long for it.
And THAT is what God is promising here, in these ancient words of the prophet Jeremiah. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill ...” this promise, I make to you.
A Word of Hope. Not just for these ancient people. But for US too.

Us ... too ... we who also have that Gospel text before us this morning.
Thought I’d forgotten about it, hadn’t you?
In comparison to Jeremiah’s hopeful words, this section of Luke’s apocalypse ... words about The End ... these words seem barren of hope.
Indeed, to kick off this season of HOPE, these words seem HOPE-LESS.

There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

It’s words like these, to which people point and say, how utterly countercultural the Church ... the churches of the Church who abide by the Sundays and Seasons of the Church Year ... how utterly ... read, boneheadedly stubborn ... we are. The rest of the world is all happyhappy joy joy and Christmasy wonderful ... carols and cinnamon smells and Santa Claus. And yet, here we are, on the first Sunday of Advent, the same today as every year, with no Christmas tree, just our one puny Advent candle, singing “Lo, He Comes With Clouds Descending” and “The King Shall Come.”
Way to spoil Christmas, Liturgical, Cross-centered Christians.
But wait a minute. This is the way it is for us every year, the first Sunday in Advent. This first Sunday in the Christian Church year. In the churches which, who use the Lectionary series of Scripture readings, who follow the Church Year Cycle ... the season of Advent always begins with a look to the future coming of the Son of Man. Always. Because this look to the future ... contrary to what the world fears ... this look to the future ... it is all about true HOPE. HOPE ... which we need to be reminded regularly ... this future HOPE is what being a follower of Jesus the Christ ... our faith, our life as community of Christ ... this is what this is all about.
We can’t anticipate Christmas because Christ’s mass ... his birth, indeed, his life, his death, his resurrection ... those are all in the PAST. They have already happened.
THAT event ... was what the people of Jeremiah’s time looked forward to, hoped in ... a redeemer, a messiah, a rescuer to save them and bring God’s reign of justice, mercy, peace and love, to reality, for them, forever.
But all that has already been accomplished ... for us.
So what we have to look forward to, is Jesus’ coming again.
THAT is why we mark Advent.
And THAT is why Advent is the season of HOPE.
The hope in Jesus’ coming again gives us real HOPE ... for today, and for all the days to come.
Because we all need real HOPE. We all need deliverance. Deliverance from that which oppresses us ... holds us back from being the people God created us to be ... people of deep, abiding joy, and strong, faithful HOPE.
Whether it’s deliverance from a bad economy or poor health ... aging or illness ... addictions, bad relationships, greed, selfishness, or just, plain poor choices ... everyone needs deliverance from something. Don’t listen to the lie of the modern world ... “every day, in every way, we’re getting better and better” ... nor the lie of the post-modern world ... “the only deliverance you can have, is what you make for yourself.” They are just two sides of the same coin ... a coin which will ultimately disappoint you. You can’t buy happiness ... at “Christmas” or anytime else ... because that happiness is cheap and fleeting and waaay overrated ... but more, neither can you buy your own deliverance ... and ultimately, you can not make your own abiding HOPE.
That’s why Jesus is so insistent in these apocalyptic texts about keeping alert and awake, paying attention, keeping watch. Keeping watch for the small signs of hope ... for they will be small ... perhaps insignificant by media standards ... but they will most certainly be there.
And they will come through other people.
Small signs of HOPE ... HOPE formed in simple gathering of community, community called by God from many different places, through many different faces, community wet with Baptismal promise, community fed on forgiveness and strengthened for service in proclaimed Word, in bread-and-wine Word, in peace-shared and-welcoming Word of love.
HOPE ... brought forth in Kids’ Church, MAGI lunches, dramas and dinners, generosity poured forth into communities in need of hope, close by Veterans’ Housing and far away orphanages in Haiti.
HOPE ... manifest in shared prayers for our ill, our hurting and helpless and, yes, hopeless ... but more; prayer followed up with hearts and hands willing to share, hearts to listen and comfort and simply be present with and for each other.
These all are small signs of HOPE ... to be sure. But for us, people formed in HOPE, people who have heard Christ’s call to look for HOPE, to encourage and nurture HOPE, to welcome HOPE ... these will be enough ...
... enough to feed us and fill us when our hope runs low ...
... enough to send us forth as beacons of Jesus’ true HOPE ... his redemption, his deliverance, his salvation ... for, into a world chasing after false hope ... into that world, we go with true HOPE ... into that world which God loves so very much that he came as one of us, lived, suffered, died, and was raised ... raised in HOPE ... raised for HOPE ... raised for US.
So indeed ... today, as we begin again, together, it is indeed a Happy New Year! And A Blessed Advent! Happy, and truly HOPE-filled, for you and me, and for all the world.
Amen.