Peoples Church of Dover Sermon

Jeremiah 33:14-16; Luke 21:25-36 Not Fear but Hope
Sermon November 29, 2009: People’s United Church of Christ, Dover, DE: The Rev. Dan Griggs

Wouldn’t it be great if the whole sweep of Judaism and the entire vision of Christianity were somehow to find such unity that we could relax in the joy of a common hope! I think we catch a glimpse of just such a common hope in these two Scripture Lessons for today. The Jeremiah passage promises the advent of the Messiah; and the Luke passage calls us to prepare our lives to welcome the advent of the Kingdom of God. Both the Hebrew prophet and Jesus on the Mount of Olives seem to be talking about the fulfillment of God’s great promise, “the world to come.” When we read the two passages together we find something like a photograph containing a double-exposure. It’s like standing on a mountain top and calling out into the valley, and the echo of your voice comes back three and four times. It’s like those stereoscopes everybody used to have, called “View-Masters”—a plastic viewer: you slide a circular disk into it, and hold it up to the light; and if you look through the two eye-pieces you get a three dimensional view of the Empire State Building, or Mount Rushmore, or the state capitol building; and you know there are two pictures of it on the disk—but they come out as one, in 3-D. (I guess I just dated myself!) It’s something like that here in these two Scripture passages—the advent of the Son of Man, and the advent of the Kingdom of God.

The unifying message of these two passages is that both Judaism and Christianity look forward to the advent of God’s new age of peace and justice; and the announcement of that advent is not fear but hope. On this First Sunday of the Season of Advent we begin the year’s devotional journey by seeing both its beginning and its destination—the advent of Christ, and the advent of God’s new world.

I want to pay some attention to the word “hope.” We use this word to mean several different things. My sister, growing up, had a large cedar box called a “Hope Chest,” where she collected over her teen years items she hoped to use when she got married—an heirloom quilt, linens, a rolling-pin, a few Christmas decorations, whatever came to hand that lifted her mind’s eye to the marriage she hoped to have. That’s one use of the word “hope.” She didn’t know for sure that she would ever get married, but she “hoped” so, and she was making investments in her hope. This kind of hope is sort of like “maybe.”

We saw another use of the word “hope” in Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008: “Hope we can believe in.” Almost all his campaign speeches rang the changes on that theme. Depending on where he was speaking and to whom, the definition of “hope” emphasized specific aspects of how people want their government to make life better. Now political “hope” is not a “maybe”—it’s more like an agenda, a program, a vision (to use Bobby Kennedy’s word). We don’t have it yet, but we can describe it and we can ask for it—or reject it.

Another way we use the word “hope” refers to a person—“she is my last hope”; “my children are my hope.” We don’t know exactly what we want this person to do, we leave that up to them; but we place all our eggs in their basket in the expectation of their doing something good for us. I think soldiers in combat know the meaning of this kind of hope very well—to be under fire, buddies lying wounded or dead, no avenue of escape; and the officer calls in an artillery strike or an air strike; and that is their hope. This word means something like “rescue.”

I suspect that Christians confuse definitions of “hope” most often by using the word when we really mean “optimism.” And this is where that scary apocalyptic literature comes in. We want to be “optimistic” about going to heaven; but we can’t. There’s nothing we can do to increase our chances. Now there are some things we can do to decrease our approach to redemption; but since salvation is the gift of God, there’s nothing we can do that will give us optimism that we’ve got it. To our modern Christian “optimism” the Bible responds with apocalyptic—a mythic look at the way the world really is: its demonic powers that we can’t escape, the ravages of war, economic distress, natural disaster and bad government (the Four Horses of the Apocalypse). In modern times we’ve begun to say that the world is getting better and better, and we’re optimistic that God’s peace and justice will soon arrive; and we call that “hope.” But it isn’t: it’s the classic nineteenth century Protestant Liberal theology of “optimism,” and we’re all heir to it, even if we think of ourselves as “conservative.” What apocalyptic literature does is remind us that God is the one who is in charge, not us, not our optimistic plans: and just as God has chosen you for eternal life, so God has it in his complete power to pull it off. In other words, the Christian “hope” is not a “maybe”—it’s a promise: it’s certain. We don’t define it. We don’t achieve it. We don’t even see it coming. It’s a gift. And this “hope” is not just for Christians: as we saw in the double-vision of the two Scripture Lessons today, we share it with our Jewish neighbors.[1] Because God is in charge, our future is not one of fear but hope.

In the Gospel Lesson, when Jesus speaks about what we are supposed to be doing, he says, “Pay attention to yourselves”[2]—that is, to the way you’re living your life: live well, live large, live out the meaning of the good news. How does a person live a life of “hope”? this kind of “hope” that is “promise”?

I grew up thinking that a life worthy of the gospel is a life attempting personal perfection. What a heavy burden perfectionist religion places on the shoulders of people who know we can’t achieve perfection! I’ve come to believe that living a life worthy of the gospel is a lot more like laughter than strictness, a lot more like play than rules, a lot more like music and dancing than heavy-handed censoriousness. One of Martin Luther’s famous sayings was “Sin boldly.”[3] He was really talking about the breadth of God’s grace; and since our hope is entrusted to a trustworthy God, Luther enjoins us not to be afraid of life but to live it with hearty courage and a little bit of flare. If I make a mistake, God will forgive if my heart is right. But God wants his angels to dance and sing, and Christ wants his disciples to “live, love, laugh and be happy.”[4] I can’t enjoy the beauty of God’s world if I spend all my time being so careful that I keep all the little rules. Oh, they count; but not as much as grace. I’m talking about Christian “hope.” It’s already promised!

If you’re really living out of this kind of lusty “hope,” then you will naturally share the hope. You’ll translate “hope” into right relationships with your spouse, your family, your neighbor, your checkbook, your property, your resources, your wisdom and your love. And this is how a Christian “prepares” for the advent “of our Lord, and of his Christ,”[5] and of his reign of peace and justice. This Christianity thing is not about fear but hope.

One of the influences in my life was a Kentuckian who had the good sense to leave Kentucky and move to Nashville. His name was Jim Bill McInteer. He stood about five feet ten, and had a muscular frame, reddish hair thinning on top, and the face of Santa Claus smile and all. He was a preacher, but not like any preacher I’ve ever heard before or since. He spoke with that broad, upper-class Kentucky drawl, and he could form a sentence of poetic grandeur, a sentence so flowery that it was spell-binding. He hypnotized us with twenty-minute sermons of sentences woven together like a floral basket overflowing with beauty. Going to church to hear Jim Bill McInteer preach was like eating candy. Sometimes I had to go to some other church just to stop eating candy for a Sunday. Jim Bill was one of two ministers who conducted our wedding. Since he was wealthy, being the manager of five family farms, he graciously accepted the honorarium we paid him, and then gave it back as his gift to the bride and groom.

Jim Bill brought to his perfectionist, sectarian denomination a wise and healthy hearing of the gospel of grace, which was good news to our ears. The Christianity he affirmed was full of common sense, and he served for decades as the editor of a magazine for the generation that grew up in the 1940’s—a practical generation, willing to work hard, save much and think for themselves. The vision of God that he preached was full of hope like I’m talking about this morning—hope that is promise, not a “maybe.”

And then one Monday evening I got a chance to see another side of Jim Bill McInteer, the leader behind the scenes. I was in college. I had something I wanted to talk to the lay leaders of the church about, so I was invited to the meeting. I sat off to the side as they sat around a long table, Jim Bill at one end. He brought one issue after another to their attention, and then he let them discuss it, ask questions, work on it and come up with a resolution. He left his flowery language in his study, but the grace was still there. Respected nationwide, he submitted his ego to the discipline of a shared fellowship, and he was content to be a partner with every person sitting at the table. By the time it was my turn to speak I was so impressed by the atmosphere of the meeting that I felt like my issue was petty, crimped and ungenerous. It was a lesson in humanity, which is Christianity, which is love, which is the practical living out of “the hope that does not disappoint us.”[6] The advent of God’s new gift is not fear but hope.

So here we are, the First Sunday of Advent Season, beginning a new devotional cycle with the predictions that point to the birth of Jesus and to the eternal glory, two prophecies with one vision—not fear but hope. Can the spirit of hope so imbue this Advent Season for us, that the lusty faith, the dancing joy of God’s very archangels will prepare our hearts and our behavior to welcome the new-born King?

AMEN

PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER