What Do You Hope For?

Rev. Kristi Denham
Congregational Church of Belmont
November 29, 2009

Jeremiah hoped for a return of the Davidic Monarchy. Luke saw Jesus riding in on a cloud of glory the way Daniel described the coming of the Son of Man. What do you hope for? What motivates you to live your best life?

For me, it certainly is not the fear of the wrath to come. Rather, it is the assurance of God’s grace, meaning in a cup of water given or received in kindness, a moment out of time in which the sacred is revealed in a child’s knowing glance. Everything changes in an instant. All things shall pass away but God’s truth, God’s love, God’s sustaining presence endures forever.

Did Jesus know he was born the right man at the right time to fulfill a multitude of Hebrew prophesies? Or were those prophesies attached to his life after he had died and risen from the dead, challenging everyone who had known him to rethink their understanding of who he was. I don’t know.

I do know that the words of Luke, placed on his lips, as a prediction of his second coming in clouds of glory, any minute now, did not come true as expected. This generation did pass away. You can try to explain this away by giving “generation” a broader meaning found nowhere else in scripture (and many have done that), but the reality is, Luke and Jesus were wrong. Is all they hoped for lost in this failure? Actually, on some level, I hope so.

Because every end time scenario divides the world so absolutely into the saved and unsaved. And Luke’s story is full of warning even for the disciples: Stay awake. Be vigilant. Pray constantly. Watch for signs of the times.

And since these words were first written there have been those who saw the signs of times writ large in their days – from the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E. to the fall of the Roman Empire, to the turning of a calendar from 999 to 1000, or from 1999 to 2000, or the black plagues decimation of Europe’s population, or the terrors of world wars One and Two, the dropping of atomic bombs, the genocides across our planet. Isn’t it obviously time for the end of time?

Hebrew prophets predicted it. Isaiah and Joel and Jeremiah, Amos, Ezekial and Daniel, all used language that Luke has pulled from to make this prediction of the end of days. This was a terrifying promise, built on a culture of middle eastern warfare. Always the answer was based in our God of conquest being stronger and more absolute than yours. How do we reconcile this understanding of God with the compassionate God of love that Jesus proclaimed?

Do we simply make some general statement about the God of love also being a God of justice? Do we step back from history and say someday God will just step in and make it right? Is that what we hope for?

Well yes, but gently.

The God of compassion will nudge and encourage and challenge and inspire. If we are listening, the movement of history will draw us ever more towards integrity and kindness. Certainly there will be trials. Everywhere on our planet from time to time, too many times, there have been wars, and famines and floods and fires. Storms overpower. Volcanoes erupt. Life is fleeting, a tenuous hold.

If it were not for resurrection, the assurance of life after life, we might be fools to hold so tenaciously to hope.

Yet Advent is most assuredly a season of Hope. It is the start of a new year in the life of the church. We anticipate again the coming of the Christ child. We prepare for Christmas.

What do you hope for this year? The economic downturn has been hard this last year. But it has forced many of us to rethink our priorities. Do we hope for a flat screen TV this year, or are we thinking a bit more about simplifying our material lives in hopes of finding more meaning in this sacred season.

Why is Christ born again every year? We celebrate a story – one that more and more we have come to understand as having more value in its meaning than in its historical accuracy. We remember the Christ child born in a stable (or was he at home, as in Matthew’s version?), honored by Magi (or only the women and shepherds and angels, as in Luke?).

We remember and ask ourselves, what do we hope for this Advent season? Do we prepare our hearts for the rebirth of the Christ spirit within our hearts? Are we ready for the rebirthing of the Prince of Peace?

What do we hope for?

At Thanksgiving I gathered with my sons, their partners, my granddaughter, Audrey, and extended family from Denmark. None of them believes in God. A small thing really, for each of them lives with integrity and compassion, finding their ways as gently and lovingly as they can. But I’m used to a special Grace at the Thanksgiving meal, a time to say “Thank You” for all the abundance of blessings in our lives. It doesn’t really matter to me if we can define who we are thanking. In fact, too much definition puts God in a box and that makes me very nervous. But next year, I hope to have the courage to ask us to take time to express our gratitude before the feast.

What do you hope for?

I hope Luke’s vision of the second coming of Christ is wrong. I hope the second coming is sneaky and insidious, the Spirit of a loving God poured out on all flesh so that suddenly we all recognize the sacred in one another.  “Like a thief in the night” God comes into all our hearts and we realize suddenly…like the fingers of flame at Pentecost, yes, of course, you are a sacred being and I am a sacred being and this ground we walk on is holy ground. And the trees outside are full of God’s glory and the sun shines holiness into our hearts and we are all awakened to the simple miracle of being alive and in love with life.

I hope that someday everyday will be lived the way we lived as a species on the dawning of this new millennium. Do you remember that day? The cameras traveled to a remote Polynesian island to capture the sunrise on January 1, 2000, where islanders danced around a sacred fire in celebration. And then they followed the sun. For one full 24 hour period, continent by continent, town by town, people celebrated the simple joy of being alive in a new day. We were too busy partying to fight. For one whole day our whole world was celebrating.

That’s what I hope for. I don’t want God’s winnowing fork to divide the sheep from the goats as in Matthew’s gospel. I don’t want fire and brimstone and darkening skies, blood in the moon, stars falling from the sky. I want a new dawning of celebration in our world.

And while we’re at it, let’s make it a crime to be greedy, like the first century Christian communities did. Let’s take care of each other and patiently teach ourselves and our children how to care for our one true home, this planet.

Jesus may have gotten some things wrong but he taught his followers to believe that the Kingdom of God was meant to be lived out on earth by compassion and justice for the poor. His teachings have traversed the whole planet. Why aren’t we living them out in peaceful sharing? Whose fault is that?

I hope that each one of us takes a look in the mirror this holiday season and sees a child of God reflected there. Someone who is learning to live by the law of love, who believes in forgiveness and second chances and third and fourth and fifth chances, forgiving ourselves and others seven times seventy.

I hope that each of us begins again this first Sunday in Advent, to prepare our hearts for the coming of the Prince of Peace who renews God’s Spirit in each one of us, this day and each day ahead.

I hope we will be gentle with ourselves and others, and courageous in our sense of service as we step out to follow our calls to justice. Together we are a family of faith. I hope this day we will grow in our faith and support one another in our journeys.

Many of us have been through fire and flood. We hold our wider world’s disasters in our hearts. We will not forget the needs of others. We will do what we can to bring God’s beloved community to fulfillment. This is the dawning of a new day. May we realize our own gifts and use them in service and compassion.

At some point, so many of us will experience the world this way that everything will shift. And suddenly we will all see that we are living in the realm of God right here, right now.

This is what I hope for. What do you hope for?