Living in Hope

Advent is such a special time for me. It's how I hold on to the sacred in this busy and very distracting time of year. Here are excerpts from a sermon I preached recently at Broadway UMC Chicago.

One of the reasons CWAC Movement is so very important and essential in my life is that it gives me a place to live out my hope. So this devotion is a prayer as we continue to build this great Movement. The lectionary texts for this sermon are Isaiah 40:1-11 and Mark 1:1-8.

Blessings to all of you this Advent season and may the love and hope of God, find a place in you, and in the Church Within A Church Movement, to be born again.

Living in Hope

Advent comes from the Latin word adventus which means "coming" and is defined as the coming or arrival of something extremely important.

Advent, as we observe it, is marked not only by a spirit of waiting expectantly for that arrival, but one of anticipation, which, I believe, is a combination of waiting plus hope. It is a leaning and yearning toward peace and hope and joy and love; the things we desire for our personal lives and for the world.

Advent is a journey where we await the birth of a savior who will work with us to create a just world where hope, peace, joy and love prevail. We experience that birth over and over again - each time it reminds us of God's promise - each time that birth allows us opportunity to open our hearts to new possibilities.

Our scriptures this morning help move us toward those new possibilities - toward that life altering season we call Advent. Both, our Old Testament passage as well as our Gospel lesson, speaks of the coming in hopeful terms, though they proclaim the coming with different images.

Isaiah describes the coming God as a tender, loving, comforting warrior - Who says, "Comfort, O comfort my people... speak tenderly to Jerusalem - Can we feel the love and hope as God says, "Every valley shall be lifted up, the rough places plain... My glory shall be revealed... Go to a high mountain... do not be afraid... I (says God) will bring reward... I will feed the flock... I will gather the lambs... that beautiful picture of God-those words of promise, should send hopeful chills of excitement through us all on this second Sunday in Advent.

And in our Gospel lesson John the Baptist, with an air of urgency directs us to prepare, prepare the way for the coming.

All good news this morning, right? All hopeful news, right? Then why do I feel, even in the midst of my excitement and anticipation, why do I feel frustrated and agitated? Well, I guess I forgot to say that Advent is also a time of questioning. So I've been asking myself some hard questions like, How can I live in hope in a world full of turmoil? Where is the hope in the violence and poverty and bigotry we experience all around us?

For example, this weekend all over Facebook is the news article of the Kentucky church who bans interracial couples from membership; where is the hope in that? We heard from this very pulpit a few weeks ago the story of a gifted, faithful transgender clergyman who is being ostracized by the denomination because he had the audacity to publicly claim his identity. Where is the hope in that? I recently had a conversation with another pastor who has been suspended by his bishop on trumped up charges because he believes in inclusive ministry and holds the denomination accountable to live that. He was suspended. Where is the hope in that?

And that is just one system of oppression - don't get me started on the school system, the banking system, the justice system, the government... It feels hopeless and yet this time of Advent, and today's lectionary texts makes us pause. They draw us into a time not of hopelessness but of hopefulness. They help us recall God's promise of life. Advent, the coming, encourages us to yearn for the unexpected; it supports us as we prepare ourselves for something new.

In Joan Chittister's book Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope, her last chapter is titled the "Gift of Hope" and begins like this, "Hope, the fantasy writer Margaret Weis wrote, "is the denial of reality." Joan Chittister says, "I completely disagree, reality is the only thing we have that can possibly nourish hope. Hope is not based on the ability to fabricate a better future; it is grounded in the ability to remember with new understanding an equally difficult part - either our own or someone else's. The fact is that our memories are the seedbed of our hope. They are the only things we have that prove to us that whatever it was we thought would crush us to the grave, would trample our spirits into perpetual dust, would fell us in our tracks, have actually been survived. And if that is true, then whatever we are wrestling with now can also be surmounted." She says, "Hope lies in the memory of God's previous goodness to us in a world that is both bountiful and harsh."

That, for me, is living in hope. Looking to our past and remembering that God has brought us from a mighty long way. Through hardships and grief and illness, God has a faithful history of seeing us through, persistently, continuously, unconditionally giving us strength to live in hope.

Living in hope is coming to this space each Sunday morning - naming and claiming our belovedness in spite of the bigotry of the oppressive system we call "Church."

Living in hope is speaking truth to greedy corporations and governments that support the wealthy and ignore the poor.

Living in hope is waking up each morning, and regardless of our current circumstance, acknowledging the gift of life that God has given to us with the dawn - recognizing that each new day is a new opportunity - to love our neighbor differently, to offer ourselves to the world in a way that promotes justice and rightness - to reclaim again the abundant life God has promised to us through the birth of Jesus. In that birth God has given us, even amongst the turmoil, a glimpse of eternity. That small glimpse is where hope lives.

HOPE is everywhere. Spring comes every year. Dawn comes every morning. Love happens out of hate. Birth absorbs the pain of death.

Advent season is a time when we look to a babe, born in a stable, to bring that kind of hope.

We see that babe, Jesus, as proof of God's love and desire for the world. It is true Jesus who lives in us, died but did not die. It is also true that just as Jesus was crucified and resurrected, we too have known and continue to experience many crucifixions in one way or another and yet we are raised to new life again and again. What had been bad, what had been hard and devastating, we now see as an invitation to new life. We admit that that invitation is not one we would have sought out or asked for, yet it is sometimes those very trials and tribulations, those very challenges we would wish away, that can bring us one step closer to wholeness in a world that can sometimes feel hopeless.

Joan Chittister goes on to say, "Hope is not some kind of delusional optimism to be restored to because we simply cannot face the hard facts that threaten to swamp our hearts. People do die and leave us. Friends do leave and desert us.   Disease does debilitate us. Evil does exist. But through it all, hope remains.

The Advent story is our story. Christ comes offering new life again and again, to those who seek, to those who yearn for wholeness and justice. As an Advent people we must always be about preparing for the coming, even and especially in the face of the turmoil and uncertainty of our everyday living. We must be vigilante; we must be loving and caring toward one another. We must pray unceasingly to strengthen our hearts; knowing without a doubt that God will come and that the peace of God, the love of God, the joy and the hope of God that we long for is always, always, seeking a place to be born. Let that place be in us this Advent season. Let that place be in us!

Thanks be to God. Amen.