Sermon, Sun 3 Dec: Advent 1 'Hope'

READINGS/ Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37

SERMON
Let’s pray: may the words of my mouth and the thoughts of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me....

Emily Dickinson’s wonderful poem on hope is a good place to start,
on this first Sunday of a new church year in the season of Advent,
for Advent is a time to remind ourselves that we are a hopeful people:
while it’s a season of waiting, Advent is also a season of hopefulness.
We wait in hope:
as we look, keep watch, for signs that God is doing, will do, a new thing
We wait in hope:
as we look out into a world filled with growing darkness,
for, in hope, we see that night will not last forever -
in hope, we see glimpses of light,
and wait and watch for God’s new morning.

What is hope?
It is a fragile, not-yet complete thing -
not the fully-formed snowdrop, nodding in delicate white and pointing to Spring:
hope is the bulb planted deep in the earth,
hidden, yet filled with promise and potential...

What is hope?
it’s the colour red.
It’s a rope, a red cord slinking down the Jericho walls, put out by Rahab to assist the spies –
remember our time thinking about the story of  Rahab several weeks’ ago?
In Joshua 2:21, the word for ‘rope’ is the same word used for ‘hope’ in Hebrew.
What is hope?
In Rahab’s story, hope is a life-line.

What is hope?
It is heard in the raw-throated, desperate cry of the prophet Isaiah,
calling on God to tear open in the heavens and come down to earth:
because things have gone horribly, dreadfully wrong.
The nation of Israel has been squashed by a stronger nation;
the people exiled...
After a time, the Persians allow the exiles to return, and those who do come home
find devastation,
and, in some cases,
that the land held by generations of their families has been claimed
by the people who’d stayed behind.
There’s tension, there’s conflict, there’s disorder:
what sort of government should be set up to help sort out the mess?
Added to the mix:
the Temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed.
The Temple: viewed as God’s dwelling place...
if the Temple’s gone,
has God disappeared too?
Has the God of Israel been defeated?
In the midst of all of this, then, what words can the prophet give to God’s people
in the face of defeat, destruction, and potential despair?

‘Oh that you would open the heavens and come down’ cries the prophet
and, after a time of remembering the kind of God Israel has,
the prophet gives the people words to help them endure:
‘Come down: make your name known...as you did before’
‘There is no God like you’
‘You seem hidden...’
but, even so:
‘yet, O Lord, you are our Father – 
we are all the work of your hand...
we are your people.’

Isaiah reminds the Israelites that hope is found in looking back –
at what God has done;
that hope is found in looking at the future –
in remembering what God has done, in remembering that God has acted in the past,
so, hope is found in the thought that God will rescue his people again;
and, ...hope is also found in looking at the present –
at who God is...
and, at who the Israelites are –
here, hope is found in the ties of relationship:
God is as a Father to them – they are his people...
God will not abandon them because God has shaped them, like a potter,
has formed them and created them to be his own:
they matter to God:
even in the present moment,
amidst chaos
and the after-effects of calamity,
they belong to God.
Hope hangs on a red cord, of past, of future, of present:
Isaiah’s words, a life-line:
an encouragement to take heart,
for this is not the end,
and they are not alone.

And in our gospel text, more destruction...
Jesus talking of signs of things to come.
Advent, where we wait for the coming of the good news of God being with us, as one of us,
doesn’t start with the most cheering of bible passages:
and yet, in both of our texts, in Isaiah, and Mark,
in the midst of seeming darkness, the message is not about the darkness itself:
it’s about what happens after...
the darkness is not the end point,
rather, the end point is that
God will indeed open the heavens, and ...come...down -
will be with his people,
will establish the kingdom of heaven on earth,
will cast out death, despair, and darkness forever.
God’s justice and compassion will be established;
God’s peace will be brought in by Jesus, Prince of Peace – and there will be an end to war.

What is hope?
A fragile yet a fearsome thing:
'hope is the thing with feathers', says Emily Dickinson...
fragile, yet it gives us the strength to get out of bed,
to put one foot in front of the other,
and to keep going even in our darkest days -
to keep going even when we feel we can’t go on;
fragile, yet, it fills the heart with courage
and has the power to move people to overthrow tyrannical powers
by the sheer force of relentless love...
or, move people to continue to do small, and great, acts of compassion
even when faced with a sea of overwhelming need.
Hope is fragile, yet strangely strong:
for it is found in the season of Advent as we look to the coming
of the all-mighty God
as a seemingly powerless, vulnerable babe in a manger –
the One who, when grown into an adult,
calls others to follow...
calls them to watch, to wait,
to look for signs of hope –
calls them to share that hope with others;
calls them in an Upper Room,
to remember,
to share,
to eat bread, and to drink wine:
bread and wine - elements that are fragile, easily broken...
like ...a body –
like Jesus,
who showed what hope looked like in his life,
and at the last, who offered his life,
so that, in his very fragility,
the hope of resurrection would be made real.

‘O, that you would open the heavens and come down’...
What we wait for,
what we watch for,
what we hope for, in Advent, is just that:
God, beyond space and time,
breaking into our space and time...
for no matter how dark it seems,
God is not defeated,
and we are not abandoned,
for we are the work of his hands.
'Hope isn't found in the absence of trouble.
It's found in the presence of God.'*

Let’s pray:
... the world is always ending somewhere.
Somewhere 
the sun has come crashing down.
Somewhere
it has gone completely dark.
Somewhere
it has ended with the gun,
the knife,
the fist.
Somewhere
it has ended with the slammed door,
the shattered hope.
Somewhere
it has ended with the utter quiet
that follows the news
from the phone,
the television,
the hospital room.
Somewhere
it has ended with a tenderness
that will break your heart.
But, listen,
this blessing means to be anything but morose.
It has not come
to cause despair.
It is simply here
because there is nothing a blessing
is better suited for than an ending,
nothing that cries out more
for a blessing
than when a world is falling apart.
This blessing
will not fix you,
will not mend you,
will not give you
false comfort;
it will not talk to you
about one door opening
when another one closes.
It will simply
sit itself beside you
among the shards
and gently turn your face
toward the direction
from which the light will come,
gathering itself about you
as the world begins again...**
                                Amen.

*Advent Unwrapped
**blessing by Jan Richardson