Focus Scriptures: Mark 13:24-37 and Isaiah 64:1-9
December 3, 2023 – First Sunday of Advent
Waiting in Certain Hope
We are in that holiday period of hope. After all, we just
need to turn on the television to see advertising actors hopeful about
receiving that new white Lexus or Mercedes Benz with the red ribbon on it,
looking beautiful in the driveway of an equally beautiful home.
Hope is a foundation of our faith, the entire
Judeo-Christian tradition, going back to the beginning. As Christians, we have
entered the Advent season, a time when we prepare for the coming Christ.
Hope is a powerful motivator. When we are kids, we hope for
just the right gift under the tree on Christmas morning. And the anticipation
keeps us awake all night.
When we get a bit older, we go through years of school in
the hope of preparing for and landing a meaningful job. Then we start thinking
of owning a home, maybe getting married, and all the rest that comes with it.
In the popular series of books and movies, The Hunger
Games, the one thing that the evil President Snow cannot tolerate is hope. He
must crush it! Hope threatens his grip on power as the revolution against him
and his oppressive chokehold grows.
Victor Frankl, as he described so convincingly in Man’s
Search for Meaning, tells us that hope is the one thing that best
determined whether prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps would survive.
Those without hope, he saw, quickly perished. Those with hope, on the other
hand, could survive, and did, as he did.
Our hope as Christians rises to that level and above. No, we
are not oppressed as were Frankl and millions of others, but we are in a
life-long journey with a certain outcome. This is why certain hope is
vital and transforming.
What we hope for during Advent is two-fold. Yes, we are
focused on preparing for Christmas. After all, Christmas Eve is just four weeks
away. And it is right to do that. But on this day, the first of the Church’s
new year, there is more.
We are preparing for Christ’s coming, hopeful that Jesus
will return to make all right in the world, to restore justice, defeat evil, repair
the broken natural environment and ecosystems we have destroyed, to fulfill the
promise of the meek inheriting the Earth.
This brings us to our scripture readings in today’s
lectionary. We heard readings from Isaiah, 1 Corinthians, and Mark. Clearly,
none of them are about babies in a manger.
The Isaiah text was written when the Israelites were in
exile, more than 500 years before the birth of Jesus. They recognized that they
had done wrong by God. “We sinned…we became like one who is unclean…our
righteous deeds are like a dirty cloth” (verses 5-6). Wow! Talk about
self-awareness. Yet, at the end, there is hope. We hope that you, God, will
remember that “we are all your people.” We hope that God will free us from
captivity as God did before. Ultimately, that happened, when King Cyrus released
them and allowed them to return to rebuild Jerusalem.
The Mark text certainly does not bring us to the manger. No!
Instead, it is another reminder, like the parable of the ten bridesmaids with
the lamps of a few weeks ago. It is a warning to “keep awake.”
And here is where we have the decision to make, much like
the people Frankl saw around him in Europe in the 1940s. Do we give up hope, or
do we remain hopeful.
I think that many people today are trying to find hope in ways
that ultimately will disappoint. Sure, we can get the new car and feel good
about that, but the dream car will soon become just the way we get to work in
the morning. We can hope for the perfect spouse, the Hallmark movie version of
relationships, until the first fight shatters the fairy tale illusion.
Getting deeper than consumerism and media diet, we see
people who search for hope in the most rigorous health and wellness routines. The
mindset becomes one of imperviousness until it is shattered by illness, injury,
and infirmity. Of course, we need to take care of ourselves as stewards of the
bodies God gave us, but all the kale and power walks you can handle will not change
the ultimate outcome.
These things that placate us in the short term will never
provide hope in the long term. Instead, it all feels like the clay trying to
play the part of the potter. But the clay is fragile, prone to breakage under
just a bit of pressure. And we know it.
Some go even further, hoping for relief of pain in the form
of a drug or other addictive pathway. Again, it is an empty and death-dealing
hope.
This brings us to the one, true, certain, and eternal hope.
There is only one source of certain hope, and that is Jesus Christ. Jesus came
in the flesh – that miracle we will celebrate in four weeks – because we needed
to hear the truth directly from him.
As history shows, we were not very good at staying true to
God when God’s approach to us was less direct. Left on our own, we create false
idols. As Isaiah wrote (verse 5), “because you hid yourself, we transgressed.”
Put another way, when we thought we weren’t being watched, we did the wrong
thing, over and over again.
Jesus makes clear in today’s Mark text and in so many other
ways, that we are to remain hopeful. After all, what is the reason for staying
awake if we have no hope? We stay awake because we are expecting something: the
return of Jesus Christ. We are not awake in fear; we are awake in hope.
Staying awake, of course, is not literal. It is about
growing in faith, doing what is right in loving service to the Lord because God
loved us first. We are children of God who want to please God, not because we
think we are earning our way into heaven, but in grateful service as thanks for
the eternal reward God has already promised us. That is the certain
hope.
Jesus Christ promised this to us. He promised it to you, me,
and the entire world, every tribe and nation. So stay awake, work to
please our Savior in service to God and others. Stay awake as we wait in
certain hope for the Lord. Stay awake in certain hope of that eternal reward,
one immeasurably better than the perfect toy under the tree or fancy car in the
driveway.
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