Isaiah 2.1-5; Matthew 24.36-44
All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth
My two front teeth
See my two front teeth
Gee, if I could only have my two front teeth
Then I could wish you, "Merry Christmas”
Where would we be without hope?
Hope is the stuff of life … perhaps it’s nothing more than our two front teeth, though at the age of loosing teeth, it’s a big deal, for sure.
As we grow older, hope become a bit more elaborate …
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know
Where the treetops glisten and children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow
Hope grows more complex in times such as ours … the age of uncertainty … politics polarized … Christianity struggling for its identity … and for all of us, the day-to-day stuff of life, rearing our children, caring for loved ones, wondering what to cook for the evening meal, or shall we just go out to eat? … the daily stuff, working to make a living, working to make a life.
Hope is the energy of the Bible … from Genesis to Revelation, and everything in between, the power of hope …
Temporal hope - for this life, this world, here and now …
Eternal hope - that somewhere beyond this life, beyond the boundaries of time and space.
A place where God and humankind are at one with one another … where every tear is wiped away, death is no more, sorrow and lament are gone, pain and grief are no more … a place: where there is no need for lamp or sun, because the LORD God is Light for all.
A Christian writer put it this way, as I recall, “For myself,” said he, “I was content if there were no life to come … I’ve lived a good life, mostly a comfortable life … yes, I’ve had my difficulties, my setbacks, and sorrows … but for me and my family, life has been good, and when I die, and there were nothing more, I would be satisfied.
And then I travelled to the Third World … I saw children starving to death - skinny little arms and tiny legs, bloated bellies, eyes large with fear … mothers grieving … fathers crying … death, death, everywhere, and none of it right, and none of acceptable … all of it wrong!
That all of these children should perish in such a miserable state …
It was then my heart cried out for more … for an eternity where these children could find the life God intended … a fulness of life and love and kindness and contentment …
What was so cruelly denied to them here, I prayed, would be given to them on the other side of the great divide … for them, I longed for eternity … for them, a safe haven … for them, the light of life, a life of peace, forever with God.
In a world so thoroughly occupied with the here and now, our homes and hearts stuffed to the rafters with the things of life … it’s a bit strange to think about eternity … maybe we don’t need it, but it’s a part of the story … I think it has value, but it’s been misused over the centuries.
When eternal life was used to quiet the cries of distress … the rich and the powerful, the comfy and the contented, tell the poor and the oppressed, “There will be streets of gold, diamond and pearly gates, in the sweet by-and-by … here and now, there’s hardship for you, because God made it so.
God decreed that some should rule, and be privileged by the work of others.
Enslavement is for your own good.
Believe in Jesus, and when you die, you’ll be carried away on angels’ wings to everlasting joy.”
There is something wrong with that … tragically, wickedly, wretchedly, wrong.
Is it any wonder that people of good conscience and kindly ways have rejected the preachings of the church?
The colonizing churches proclaimed a message just plain wrong … even into this century, the preaching of salvation without a social conscience … telling people to wait for the “sweet bye-and-bye” … while denying them good and fair wages, while denying them their freedoms and their lives.
I say, loud and clear, there is a component of eternal hope, that has a rightful place in our faith … what we believe, those things for which we hope … the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting … this kind of hope transcends time …
What we hope for, what we pray for, takes up a lifetime and then some … others will carry on for us when we’re long gone from the scene …
Eternal hope is real hope … hope, for the here and now, needs eternal hope.
To keep it fired, to keep it hot, to keep it focused and faithful … to never give up … to accept loss and setback, as well as victory and fulfillment, because God is at work in all things for good! The greatest good of all.
Eternal hope is the strength and power of temporal hope … what do, here and now, for the sake of the kingdom of God, really counts … in ways we cannot imagine, or even begin to understand.
Because whatever good we do is taken up into the heart of God … “ … even our halting, halfhearted attempts at faithfulness are counted by God as victories.”
Today, the first Sunday of Advent … hope …
I think of all the people who’ve made an indelible mark on the world for good … were they not people of hope?
The odds were often against them .. time and circumstance can be cruel, but they held on to hope, even as hope holds on to us.
Hope is the energy of God …
God pushes ahead to the Promised Land … Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee … the Apostle Paul sets out for Spain …
Throughout the ages, women and men of good conscience and wise judgment … poets and playwrights, scientists and inventors, politicians and preachers … gifted with the power of hope - inspire us to this very day …
Isaiah’s hope in God: a time when the nations shall beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Paul the Apostle put it like this: Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
Oh little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth, the everlasting light
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
God’s Peace to all, and to all, the power of hope. Amen!
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