Loading...Welcome to “Hope:” the first Sunday in the season of Advent.
When we lit the first candle in our Advent wreath today, we were reminded that there is much pain in the world. People struggling with hunger, injustice, despair, and poverty. We know there are people in our own lives who are ill, dying, or struggling with some private pain.
And fear. For many people, the uncertainty and confusion found in the world is cause for fear.
We cannot escape this reality. But as people of faith, we know our hope comes through our faith, our trust, in God. And so, we began our service today, lighting a single candle to overwhelm the world, to remind us that God’s hope is coming. We pray that the light of this candle will spark in us a light that we share, bringing hope to the hopeless.
We hope that this candle will remind us that God continues to surprise us, teach us, and love us. And because we have experienced these things in our past, we have a foundation within us that helps us to have hope for the future.
Today, we get to see hope in a baby, born in April, with bright blue eyes and a full-faced smile, curious about everything, as he is baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. He might be a baby, but he is the image of hope.
In each week of Advent, we have a theme that guides us through our preparation for the birth of another child. His birth marks the renewal of creation, a renewal of commitment to God, a renewal of a liberating life. The retelling of this birth gives us hope. Because we know that he was born to transform the world, our lives, our hearts.
And we take these four weeks, reminding us of the transformational power of hope, peace, joy, and love, as our guides through a season of reflection and preparation for when we meet the ascended Jesus again.
Sure, there’s the anticipatory preparation for the birthday party, and we may prefer to focus on that miraculous birth, but as our Gospel reminds us this morning, lots of people in the time of Jesus were wondering about the future, about what will happen when he is no longer with them. And Jesus tells them a story, based on the story Noah and the flood.
I bet many of you are familiar with the “Left Behind” series of 12 books that began to hit bookshelves three decades ago. Apocalyptic in nature, they tell the story of the people left behind when all the righteous, the “true” believers in Jesus, are called up to glory.
Those left, apparently non-believers, go through seven years of trials and tribulations, as what is left of the Earth is judged. An anti-Christ character rises to power and the people left in the world must learn how to not only survive, but for those who have found God, who have been “born again” in this chaotic time, they must help others find God before the end of time.[1]
I hadn’t really thought about the end of time in any other way myself. Though I never read them, I thought these books expressed what many believe: that the Rapture really is about calling the righteous to heaven.
Then there are those who try to predict when Jesus is coming again, pulling out charts and calendars, digging in scripture, watching for signs, and warning people that only the most faithful will be taken up. Just a few months ago, some, maybe very few, people were convinced that on a specific date Jesus was coming. So, they said, get ready! Again, their information was incorrect. The end of the world as we know it didn’t come.
The thing is, we just might have it backwards. Today’s Gospel tells the story a little differently. It appears the authors of those books may have misinterpreted what it means to be “left behind.”
Noah, who did just what was asked of he and his family, were the ones left behind. Everyone else was swept away with the water.
The righteous, the faithful, the chosen, were the ones left behind to rebuild a world that focused on the love of God.
Noah and his family probably didn’t expect that they were going to begin life again with all those pairs of animals, birds, reptiles, and insects. They likely didn’t think they were important enough for this job. Yet that is just what they did. They were chosen to stay and repopulate all of creation.
Now, I take the bible seriously, but not literally, and this is a story that helps me to acknowledge that not everything in the bible is literally true. Perhaps you, like me, find it hard to believe that one family would become the source of all humans to come.
But I take the story seriously enough to recognize that the people of the world still struggle to know in their heart of hearts that God loves them and loves all God has created. As the saying goes, “God made me, and God don’t make no junk!”
We aren’t expected to be perfect, but we are expected to respect the dignity of all, recognizing that if God made each of us, we need to see the belovedness of all God has made. Because God don’t make no junk.
If the people of God are the ones who are left behind, we all may wonder, “why?” What are we supposed to be getting ready for?
It seems to me we have work to do to create the Beloved Community many of us believe God desires. It seems that we are supposed to be intentionally living Christ-like lives, imperfect though they may be.
God’s hope is in us. That is why God sent Jesus into the world, to be born of a woman, to teach us by his example what it means to respect the dignity of all; to help us strive for justice; to serve one another with loving hearts; to lead the world to peace; and to look for the lost and help them know they, too, are loved abundantly by God.
As parents, most of us really just want our kids to grow up to be kind, loving people, accepting of the varieties of people and cultures and religions they will meet in their lifetimes. We want them to have some sort of understanding of God in their lives and to be able to go to their Holy One in times of need and in times of plenty and in anytime in between.
I think that’s what God wants for us, too.
Even Jesus said he had no idea when the day and hour will come when the Son of Man will return to judge the living and the dead.
He just knew that he came into this world, as a humble baby, to live his life showing us that we are each born, with our individual gifts, talents, and abilities, into this world to make it a more hopeful, peaceful, joyful, and loving place. He gave us the tools to get ready, to make a difference, to be a part of the preparation of creating a world centered on accepting God’s love. To help bring the light.
Which brings us right back to Mikey, who will receive the light of Christ as a part of his baptism. He may not understand it yet, but he is truly a reason for all of us to have hope.
Amen.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Behind#:~:text=Left%20Behind%20tells%20an%20apocalyptic,%2C%20Daniel%2C%20Isaiah%20and%20Ezekiel.
