Morning Prayer and Lord's Prayer: tom Lyda Carol of Hope *Come, O Long-Expected Jesus* Witness of Scripture: Jeremiah 33: 14-16 & Luke 21: 25-28 Anthem *A Peaceful Midnight Clear* Patti Drennan. Chancel Choir Sermon *Essentials: Hope* David Spain
Recorded on December 1, 2024
Toward the end of my father’s almost 101 years of living, he developed a mantra that became a constant in our conversations. No matter the challenges he was recounting, he would end with a note of encouragement by saying “things are looking up.” It was an interesting perspective, for by profession as a historian he had taught and through personal experience he had known many challenging, even dark days. And yet, as the years added up and the challenges he faced grew more daunting, he continued to say “things are looking up.” One time, when he was about 96 years old, we were discussing the possibility of having Meals on Wheels provide an occasional meal for him and for my mother, just to give them a little break from the demands of daily food preparation.My father knew about Meals on Wheels, as he had delivered in the past to people who benefitted from this wonderful ministry. As we talked about the possibility of having Meals on Wheels help my parents a few times a week, I could tell he was not particularly keen on the idea. As a southern gentleman, he was always polite even when he said no. So, he thought about my logical presentation of why Meals on Wheels would be helpful to them, but after a long pause, my at the time 96 year old father responded, “Well, boy Meals on Wheels—that’s for old people.” To be 96 and not consider oneself old is a powerful statement. It might be denial, but it might also be a frame of mind, a perspective, an orientation toward life.
To be sure, my father’s mantra “things are looking up,” served him well. It kept him optimistic when he could have become dour and discouraged. For the church, when the season of Advent arrives, we may well say the same phrase—“things are looking up,” but Advent’s tone of voice goes beyond any personal optimistic perspective. When Advent proclaims, “things are looking up,” we are giving voice to hope rooted in God’s promise to be with us.
Sometimes, optimism and hope are used interchangeably, but Advent reminds us they are not the same.There is nothing wrong with optimism, and in fact given the choice between optimism and cynicism, most would settle for the former. Beggars can’t be choosers, and we’ll take whatever breathes more oxygen into the room.To be sure sometimes and amazingly many times, current situations do improve, and we are grateful. Optimism is the upside to the old phrase, “I have seen the future, and it looks a lot like the present, only longer.” Optimism is rooted in the idea that what is will get better, which is not a bad thing.And yet, cheery as optimism can be, it does not hold a candle to hope.
Hope comes from an entirely different place—hope does not spring from current circumstances. Hope comes from somewhere beyond us, born as it so often is when the shadows are deepest.Hope is rooted in the possibility of God. When Isaiah expresses that deepest of all Advent proclamations, “the people who walk in darkness have seen a great light,” he is giving voice to the power of hope—that God works for something new that cannot be generated in this world.Advent’s hope does not emerge; it comes. Advent’s hope is not fabricated by human ingenuity; it is promised by God. God is the source of hope, and we light a candle to that source.As the great Advent philosopher Yogi Berra once said, “The future ain’t what is used to be.” Advent proclaims, thanks be to God, that’s right.
Our two passages of Scripture for this first Sunday of Advent proclaim hope, not optimism. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and house of Judah…a righteous branch shall spring up.”Remember when Jeremiah voiced that promise? Israel was in exile with little prospect for the future; yet Jeremiah promised they will return to the land laid waste by those who had conquered them—justice and righteousness will once again spring up because God was not finished with our ancient ancestors and God is not finished with us, or with this world. Catherine Healy, with Jeremiah’s promise firmly in mind, spoke of the imaginative work that transformed an abandoned toxic, industrial wasteland on the south side of Chicago into a nature preserve with fields of wildflowers and sprawling spaces where birds and stargazers and families play and picnic. Healy writes, “As we enter the season of Advent, we are surrounded by literal and metaphorical wastelands…but God has a way of being present in the places that seem most hostile to survival. [In Advent], we turn our attention to the incarnation of Jesus--God’s ultimate act of presence in our hostile world. During this time of watching and waiting, we can become aware of all the ways new life is springing up from barren ground.” (christiancentury.org, Advent Year C)
It is not just Jeremiah who promises God’s presence. Luke’s gospel is making the same promise. Spoken with stark images and metaphors that for all the world sound like the end (and have sometimes been manipulated by mean-spirited religion that claims the end for anyone who does not believe correctly), Luke’s gospel proclaims that Jesus speaks of a tired, worn out world ending and a new vibrant, healing world beginning. Jesus does not moralize or exhort here—he simply says God is about earth-reorienting newness. Rather than finalizing our last wills and crawling into a bunker, Jesus says “when these things begin to happen stand up straight and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” God, proclaims Jesus in Luke’s gospel, does not come to burn down the house but to repair and to restore and to renew. It is a candle of hope not a torch of terror.
It is important to acknowledge what might be true for any of us at any given moment along life’s way, but especially true at this time of year. There are lots of ‘shoulds’ that can attach themselves to December’s calendar. We should be merry, we should be bright, we should do this, we should do that. We can ‘should’ ourselves into a miserable December. There are simply some days when we are in a funk and 104.1 Christmas Delila can’t fix it.Sometimes it is tempting to pull the covers over the head and stay in bed, although it seems the worries and the angsts only grow stronger when we do that. Neither Jeremiah nor Jesus says, “put on a happy face.” They are both honest that life can have its discouraging moments; and yet they both pro-claim that darkness is not the last word; that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it; that God has not given up; that God still calls this world to be what God has created this world to be. God still comes and our redemption is drawing near. This is why the church lights a candle called hope—not because on any given moment we can muster hope but because in every given moment God offers hope. “Things are looking up” because thanks be to God “the future ain’t what it used to be.”
We light a candle in worship because it is good to be reminded that while God creates and initiates, God never works unilaterally. Instead, God always works invitationally. Hope has not been rescinded or recalled, which means we get to be involved in God’s hopeful work in the world. This is the way God works—from the Garden, through the desert, by the prophets, in the manger, through every Currier & Ives hamlet and every Dickens hovel, where love lives and justice restores, then healing happens.We are called to be part of God’s moving hope. We not only light a candle called hope; we carry a candle called hope; we become a candle called hope, poking holes in the darkness—that very act itself not only expressing hope but also generating hope.
If we are in the mood for something counter-cultural, a little edgy, a little turning of the world upside down, then over the next 25 days, practice Advent.Peter Gomes has written that the great activity of Christian hope is to contend with the world as it is in light of the world as it is to be. (Sermons, p. 21) To riff on St. Francis’ prayer—“where there is despair, let us bring hope; where there is vengeance, let us bring peace; where there is grievance, let us bring joy; where there is hurt, let us bring love.” We cannot do any of this forcefully, but we can do this resolutely, as quiet and resilient as a candle lighting up a room.
Advent does not ask us what we are hoping for, although that is not necessarily a bad question. Instead, Advent invites us to hope as God hopes, to act on that hope wherever and however we can. Two favorite stories always come to mind on this first Sunday of Advent. For some reason, perhaps life being what it is, it can be hard to hold on to these stories. So we need Advent to remind us of what is deeply true. The first comes from an English country church, an inscription written in the 17th century over the west door entrance to the church. Written during an English war between Royalists and Puritans, the inscription reads: “When all things sacred were throughout the nation either destroyed or profaned, Sir Robert Shirley founded this church whose singular praise is to have done the best things in the worst of times, and hoped them in the most calamitous.” While that particular brutal war has long since ended, the message over the doorway remains, heralding the courage of hope which lives to do the best of things in the worst of times. (from Peter Gomes book Strength for the Journey, p. 186). The other personal go to story comes from colonial New England when a meeting of state legislators was plunged into sudden darkness due to an unexpected eclipse.Fearing the worst, there was general panic and many moved to adjourn. As the story goes, one of the legislators, responding to the frightened mood said, “Mr. Speaker, if it is not the end of the world and we adjourn, we shall appear to be fools. If it is the end of the world, I should choose to be found doing my duty. I move you, sir, that candles be brought in.” (from Barbara Brown Taylor’s book Gospel Medicine, p. 136)
Advent proclaims ‘stand up, raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.’ Any time anywhere anyone responds to God’s invitation, we participate in the Advent essential called hope, which is even more compelling and more transforming than “things are looking up.”