Imagine a phone ringing in the middle of the night, just at that time when you are in your deepest sleep. You jolt awake, your heart pounding, surprise and anxiety rippling through your body. You hit “Talk” hoping that it will just be the voice of an overseas telemarketer, but instead, the voice at the other end says, “Wake up! Get ready!”
That’s the spirit of the Advent readings today; the call that surprises, maybe frightens, and even perplexes us. The call to be ready because, as the Gospel hymns says, “change is a-comin’”. Perhaps it’s hard to connect with that sense of urgency, of watching for signs that something big is coming. Imagine that a huge windstorm has been forecast, and you see the trees starting to bend in the winds, and watch the clouds speed up as they cross the sky. Then you know the storm is on its way. You get out the flashlights, maybe light your wood stove or fireplace, and make sure you know where the emergency kit is.
Urgency often comes from knowing we don’t have forever to live our lives; we don’t have forever to fix our mistakes; we don’t have forever to mend our relationships. Tomorrow, we could receive a diagnosis that has us counting the days until the end. Tomorrow, we might be hit by THE BIG ONE – the earthquake they’ve been telling us could happen any day. Tomorrow, we might find ourselves facing an election that could turn our country into something we don’t recognize. Tomorrow, we might feel in our own bodies the effects of climate change, as others are feeling it around the globe. Tomorrow, our peaceful country could find itself at war.
Our lives can change in a heartbeat. Perhaps that’s the best way to capture the sense of urgency the prophets and the gospel writers are trying to convey. We don’t have forever to become true followers of Jesus. We don’t have forever to find a faithful path into the future. The time is NOW – the time is ALWAYS now to get ready, to make a change, to be the people Jesus calls us to be.
That message of urgency is paired with a message of hope. The world, or our lives, may feel very uncertain, but our hope is in the God of the heavens and the earth, and our hope will not disappoint us. We may lose track of God, but God doesn’t lose track of us. God cares so much about us that God – the holiest of all – became flesh for us, embodied in the person of Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, and of us Gentiles too.
Our relationship with Jesus is the source of our hope, and our strength. Everything we can possibly go through, Jesus has been there before. He has been faced with the loss of those he loved, with suffering in body and spirit, with broken relationships and betrayal, with the pain of abandonment and the agony of the tortured body. He walks with us through all of these things, having been there first – and he shows us the way.
He shows us that faithfulness to God brings vindication – the revelation that we were and are on the right path.
He shows us that we can vanquish hate and fear with forgiveness and love.
He shows us that healing is possible and that new life is ours.
He shows us that prayer is communion with God as well as conversation with God, not a Santa wish list we check off on Christmas morning. He shows us that prayer actually makes a difference!
He tells us that life is unpredictable, and what we are experiencing now will not last forever. He tells us that being ready for what comes next is important – ESPECIALLY in a time of chaos and suffering – because God may have a blessed surprise for us just around the corner.
Most of all, in Jesus we know that our mistakes do not condemn us to a life without God. Jesus taught us about the mercy, the forgiveness, the grace that is so overwhelming that it can cancel out the effects of our sins, our betrayals, our apathy, our indifference. All we have to do is ask for it.
In Jesus we have hope. What I want to ask you today is, how do we cooperate with the hope Jesus gives us? How do we walk into the future with him at the centre? How do we hear the call to Be Awake and Be Ready, when we live in an environment dominated by forces that want to either entertain us into apathy and slumber, or recruit us to the side of those who are acting against the compassion and mercy of God?
I ask this not just for myself and yourself, but for us as a congregation. We are facing an uncertain future, and the temptation is to let hopelessness drive us into apathy or despair. But we have hope – real hope – in the power of Jesus’ love and the promise of his resurrection. It’s that hope that allows us to persist, even when the society we live in condemns us for the sins of the past or declares us irrelevant; even when the bills are hard to pay and volunteers are few and leadership is tired. It is hope that allows us to persist even when our energy is low and our capacity seems limited. Hope isn’t just blind optimism – it’s “wildly stubborn” (as poet Jan Richardson puts it) . Hope is beyond reason, beyond “the facts as we see them”. Hope looks at the facts, sees them, and yet still yearns toward the seemingly impossible, and by doing so, makes it real.
Hope is not just a fragile thing with feathers, however beautiful Emily Dickinson’s famous poem may be. Hope is more like a terrier, getting its teeth into something and not letting go until what God envisions, actually comes to be! Get a grip on hope, my friends – and let it get a grip on you. Amen.