We are called to be people of hope

The Rev. Kathi Johnson

Advent 1, Year C – 29 November 2015

Text: Luke 21:25-36

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas

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We are now in the season of Advent – the season of four Sundays leading up to Christmas. Advent is the season in which the Church watches and waits for the coming of Jesus. We are, of course, surrounded by the Christmas holiday already – it’s in the commercials, in the stores, in our own homes as we begin to transition decorations from Fall to Winter.

The Church has been crying out for Jesus to return for two thousand years, and still – we watch and wait. Advent is a time in which we consider how it is that we wait. Do we wait with patience, or do we try to rush Jesus’ timeline? (Good luck with that!) Do we wait with hope and joy, or do we allow fear to rule our lives? How do we wait?

Over the weekend, I finally got to see the movie “Inside Out” – maybe some of you have seen it, too. Without giving too much of the plot away: the main characters of this animated film are not humans, but are the very real human emotions inside one particular girl, named Riley. Throughout most of her life, Joy is in charge of Riley’s emotional state. But along with Joy are the characters Sadness, Disgust, Fear, and Anger. Each of these characters takes over Riley’s emotional state from time to time, but Joy is the leader.

I’ll add here that part of what makes Joy so joy-filled is her tendency to live in hope. She finds joy not only in what is in front of her, but in the possibilities of what could be – she lives in hope. Riley perks along really well, until one day Joy is no longer in control of Riley’s inner life. Riley loses Joy, and – through a series of circumstances, she also loses hope.

Disgust, Fear, and Anger are left in charge of Riley’s mind and heart, replacing the Joy and hope that have been so much a part of her for her entire life. With Disgust, Fear, and Anger in charge, Riley’s world begins to fall apart.

What a timely message this is for us as a society in 2015, when disgust, fear, and anger are often allowed to rule our hearts and our minds, and joy and hope are often banished.

And yet, we are called not to be ruled by disgust or fear or anger. Jesus said, “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

“Then…[pause]… they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Stand up and raise your heads, Jesus says – in other words, don’t lose hope! We are called to be people of hope!

Jesus is not so dumb as to believe that bad things won’t happen. Luke 21 is filled with all kinds of foreboding words from Jesus about persecution and destruction and betrayal but – Jesus says – be people of hope! When all these things are happening – when the world is falling apart - stand up and raise your heads and see the Son of Man coming with power and glory!

And the Son of Man is no stranger to us. The Son of Man is Jesus – the same Jesus we worship here, the same Jesus we read about in the Bible, the same Jesus who is present with us in Bread and Wine and Water, the same Jesus who is present with us in our fellowship with one another. We can stand up and raise our heads and see Jesus, who is Lord of all.

On Black Friday, we as a family went out in the afternoon to see what we could find. My mother-in-law and I went together to meet Steve and his dad at a large home improvement store so that, together, we could look at toilets. My mother-in-law and I arrived at the store a bit later than the guys did, and after we got into the store is when I realized I didn’t have my phone.

My initial reaction was to panic a little. Oh my goodness - how will we ever find these two in this store? After about two seconds of that, I realized – OK, we’ll just do what we all used to have to do in the Dark Ages before cell phones, and walk the aisles of the store looking for our husbands. Hope returned.

We began to walk, and as we got partway down the aisles, I looked, and way down on the other end, I saw familiar faces, and then there was joy.

As we watch and wait for Jesus, the temptation can be so strong not to live with hope or joy, but rather to live in fear or anger. Like I said last week, we live in a world that wants us to be fearful all the time, and when we live in that fear, we simply feed the machine that wants to consume us totally. I would say that we also live in a world in which it is very easy to live in anger.

But when we allow fear or anger to rule us, we lose sight of the One who gives us hope, the One who calls us to live in hope, the One for whom we hope. When we allow fear and anger to rule us, we lose sight of Jesus. 

This holy season of Advent helps us to watch and to wait both with patience and with hope. We don’t light all the candles on the Advent wreath at once – we add to its light week by week. We don’t rush to put out a bunch of Christmas décor here all at once – we add to the décor week by week. We allow the season of Advent to slow us down, just a bit.

And so, whether we are waiting for the Christ Child to appear once again in our mangers, or waiting for the Second Coming of Christ at the end of all the ages, may we wait with hope. We are called to be people of hope – not because we believe that everything’s going to be perfectly fine, day in, day out. We are called to be people of hope because there are going to be days and events and circumstances that demand us to be hopeful.

Our hope is in Jesus - let us be people of hope.

Amen.

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