Rev. Keith Morgan

Back in the 70's comedian Bob Hope gave Southern Methodist University a rather large sum of money to construct a theater on campus that bears his name. Dr. Willis Tate, then president of the university, offered a few remarks upon receipt of the check. Among other things, Dr. Tate quoted a verse from Scripture. “I want to remind you,” he said, “that these three things abide: faith, hope and love; but the greatest of these is Hope.”

While I must admit that Dr. Tate got St. Paul’s statement from I Corinthians 13 a bit reversed, Paul claimed Love as the greatest, Dr Tate was very much on target with regard to a major belief of the Christian Faith. Beyond all other words in the English language, “hope” best describes the effect of God’s redemptive presence in our lives. When we seek God, we look for hope. When we find hope, we discover God. In many ways, hope is God’s other name. “...These three things abide: faith, hope and love; but the greatest of these is hope.”

I am aware that there are many who cannot find any hope in their lives today. If that is where you find yourself today I pray that you will listen to what I have to say and that in it you find a glimmer of the hope that you are searching for. The definition of hope that I will be using in this sermon is as follows. God’s hope is the promise that even in our darkest moments the Hand of Holiness embraces us and the God of Love sustains us.

This season of Advent proclaims that GOD OFFERS HOPE TO EACH OF US. However, the Christmas story itself seems to disprove such a claim.

The birth of Jesus came at the most inopportune of moments. God’s timing seemed totally in error. The hustle and bustle of a major census of the population monopolized everyone’s attention. Governmental agents were looking for adults to be counted, not for babies to be born. Innkeepers were seeking more beds in their buildings, not more space in their stables. The angels sang during the darkness of the evening when only shepherds were awake, and their song was delivered to an obscure village far removed from the highways of commerce and culture. It seems that God could have waited for a better time to incarnate holiness in the midst of humanity. It would have made more sense had God held out for more positive and hopeful circumstances.

But then, hope as offered by God never really makes sense at all. That is why so many people go through the motions of Christmas without ever encountering the message of Christmas. They think that God is only present when mortals are in the mood to look. They suspect that hope thrives only when situations look hopeful. They are the ones we hear all around us saying: “I just don’t feel like Christmas this year” (as if the incarnation of hope depended on them!). If you are one of these people, I understand how you feel, but don’t give up on Advent. God offers hope to each of us.

Never has there been a better time for this season than now. So many people today are either bored, burdened or broken...afraid of what the next day might bring. Despair rears its ugly head around every corner. In Norris West’s novel, The Clowns of God, a young woman named Katrin speaks for a large segment of society. She says to her father: “The thing is, I am afraid... Of getting married and having children and trying to make a home while the whole world could tumble round our ears in a day.” Then, in a moment of passion and eloquence, she remarks:

You older ones don’t understand. You’ve survived a war. You’ve built things. You’ve had us; we’re grown up. But look at the world you’ve left us! All along the borders there are rocket launchers and missile silos. The oil’s running out so we’re using atom power and burying the waste that will one day poison our children... you’ve given us everything except tomorrow!

I wonder how many people listening to my voice can identify with her words? Advent of 2007 seems powerless to transcend the problems you fear tomorrow might bring or those today has already brought. This maybe the first Christmas without your spouse, your parent, your child, your sister or brother. You may have lost your job or feel absolutely undone by the one you have. Your health and your optimism have both disappeared. Everywhere you turn and every party you attend there is laughter and singing, all of which you suspect will vanish as quickly after Christmas as the ornaments do before New Year’s Eve. You are in such a dreadful state of mind there seems to be nothing Christmas can do.

If those thoughts have ever haunted your heart, then Christ’s birth can deliver a re-birth to you. Advent proclaims that God offers hope to each of us. Regardless of how low you feel or how lowly you have lived, the Spirit of God can fan into flame a passion for life which is stronger than any problem in your life. This is not a momentary intrusion of shallow happiness in a dog eat dog world. Christmas reminds us that God’s presence about us gives new possibilities to us. That tiny Child in a crude manger promises that no person is ever too insignificant to encounter God’s hope or too broken for it to put you back together again.

When Robert Browning married Elizabeth Barrett she was known as the invalid of Wimpole Street. She had no tomorrow. One morning after the wedding she slipped up behind him and placed a manuscript in his pocket, saying: “Please read this and if you do not like it, tear it up.” The poems on those pages became what we know as the Sonnets from the Portuguese. One of her most memorable lines reads: “The face of all the world is changed, I think, since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul.” Such are the words of all Christians in this season. Advent is a time when we hear the footsteps of God. And, when God is near us, the face of all the world seems changed.

Look beyond your pain to the presence of holiness. Advent proclaims that God offers hope to each of us. But that is not all. There is more.

Secondly, Advent proclaims that GOD OFFERS HOPE THROUGH EACH OF US TO ALL THE WORLD. It is no accident that this verse from Romans about hope is couched in a passage which addresses the relationship between the strong and the weak; the Jew and the Gentile; the “haves” and the “have nots.” Hope is never given exclusively to one person and withheld from another. Once we have found hope in our lives, we must spend the rest of our lives giving hope away to others. Through love for our sisters and brothers in every part of society, God’s hope becomes a reality all over the world. St. Paul realized that embodied in the Babe of Bethlehem is God’s unconditional caring for both the Jew and the Gentile... in other words, for all the world.

Only God could have been smart enough to realize that hope is not a doctrine to be accepted, but a creed to be lived. Only God could have used a human life to incarnate hope in the world. In a day of greed and torture and hopelessness, only God could have thought of placing a Child in Bethlehem. And, just as Christmas happened 2,000 years ago because of the hope offered in Jesus, so also Christmas in 2007 will take place only as hope is incarnated through each and everyone of us. God offers hope through each of us to all the world.

One of my colleagues has suggested that the church’s responsibility is to irrigate society with hope. What a helpful image! Through us, God’s presence is channeled all over the world, bringing new life and freshness and vitality to every soul on the face of the earth.

There are so many people in the city whose lives desperately need the irrigation that God’s hope can bring. These folks are like the character in one of Frederick Buechner’s novels, of whom it was said:

He knew that whatever held him together as a self could not hold much longer. The mortar was drying out and crumbling, and one by one the stones would fall until finally there would be no more wall to make the boundaries of who he was...

Have you seen someone recently whose life needs irrigating through the gift of love? The volunteers who work with CAC dispensing emergency food know some of those parched spirits. Some politicians do not think there are hungry people in our nation, but those who work in the food pantries know there are hungry people every day of the week.

And, in addition to the financially poor, there is also the emotionally poor and the spiritually poor. There are our depressed colleagues in the office, the frustrated neighbors across the street or the deflated sister or brother in Christ next to us in the pew this morning.

These people want desperately the hope that Advent brings. But such a hope must come through people of faith...like us. The gift of food to a forgotten family or the special note to a grieving friend could incarnate hope in their lives in a way that enables them to continue holding on. That squeeze of the hand of a dear brother or an impromptu visit in the home of a dear sister will irrigate their dried-out dreams and rebuild that wall which holds them together. Through our labor and love, hope becomes flesh all over society. What might we do as a church to irrigate hope? Teilhard deChardin once said: “The world will belong tomorrow to those who brought it the greatest hope.” Advent proclaims that God offers hope through each of us to all the world.

Joseph R. Sizoo’s poem is a fitting description of the hope that Advent gives to us and channels through us:

So may Christmas bring you gifts no money can buy;

A patience that endures the dark,

A courage that can face the worst,

And insight that can see all things spiritual,

A love that touches God,

And a light that no darkness can dim.

“...These three things abide: faith, hope and love; but the greatest of these is hope.