St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, December 3, 2006

Advent 1

The Birth of Hope – Rev. David Mundy

Thessalonians 3:9-13 Luke 21:25-36

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The international AIDS conference came to Canada earlier this year and thousands of delegates came to Toronto. Luminaries such as Bill and Melinda Gates spoke, and so did former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Another group made the trip to Toronto at the same time, although none of them was famous. They were the one hundred African grandmothers who were brought to our country by the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Stephen Lewis is currently the United Nations AIDS ambassador and as part of his extensive work in Africa he has come to realize that hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of AIDS orphans survive only because their grandmothers provide care for them.

As a part of the AIDS conference an extraordinary piece of religious artwork also came to Toronto. It is an altarpiece created by the women of a small town in South Africa and it is called the Keiskamma Altarpiece, named after a river valley in that country where one in three people is infected with HIV. The altarpiece which is embroidered and appliqued and beaded, depicts the great human tragedy of the deaths of so many people of all ages.

Let me tell you how these intersecting stories touched my life. My wife Ruth and I went to St. James Anglican Cathedral in Toronto to see the altarpiece, which is extraordinary. It is six and a half metres wide and four metres high, or approximately twenty-two feet by thirteen feet. There are panels which fold out and the explanation is that local people are portrayed as examples of crucifixion and death. The last panels show three grandmothers with their grandchildren and this represents the hope of resurrection. (Go to http://www.saintjamescathedral.org/keiskamma.asp for photos.)

There were quite a few people at the front of the church and while we looked on three women, three black women, walked up to the altarpiece and began to wail, holding their heads and rocking back and forth.

The rest of us were stunned by this outburst of emotion but we realized that two of them were themselves grandmothers and when they looked at the altarpiece it was their life they saw with all its pain. Then the third woman began to pray in a loud and heavily accented voice – it was so un-Anglican, or United Church for that matter! She prayed about the sorrow they had endured, and which was almost too much to bear. But then her prayer took a hopeful turn and she expressed confidence that Jesus would bring about a new day when the suffering and sorrow would be over.

I had closed my eyes as she prayed and when she was done I lifted my head to see that there wasn’t a dry eye among us. It was a deeply moving experience for everyone there. I walked over to the women as they walked away and the Toronto grandmother who was with them explained that these two women had already lost six children and five children between them. One of them was in her eighties and was raising a granddaughter whose father and mother both died within months of her birth. She has virtually no resources – no money, no food, no medical supplies. She is aged and frail but she is also a person of great courage and faith. So she has hope for the child entrusted to her care.

Thank you for being patient. I needed to tell you all of this because we are entering into the season of Advent which is a season of light and hope leading us through these gloomy days of December in the Northern Hemisphere. As you have already discovered, this is the particular Sunday of hope amongst the four weeks in which we prepare for the birth of Christ. We could say that in these weeks we will ask God to bring to birth the hope and peace and joy and love which are necessary to truly, openly receive the baby born in Bethlehem.

Moments ago we listened to a passage which begins in a dark and ominous way with Jesus speaking to his disciples of the “signs of the times” which will cause many people to be confused and to be overcome by fear. These verses are actually a continuation of a frightening picture of war and disease and natural disasters in the earlier part of the chapter. Pregnant women are warned.

Fortunately Jesus doesn’t stop there. He doesn’t tell the disciples to run for cover, or to give up hope. Instead he says that they should stand tall and lift up their heads because “your redemption is drawing near.” And the great teller of parables speaks of a tree, a fig tree that has bare branches and yet the leafing out of summer is not far off. He says that God’s reign is like this and that whatever happens around us and to us, we can also anticipate the good things to come in this life and the next.

Are we hopeful people? Do we live with a sense of anticipation that God will do great things in our midst and fashion a peaceful and loving world?

There is plenty of evidence that things could be better – much better. In fact there are signs of our times that point to things getting worse. Certainly there are the present-day plagues such as AIDS which can devastate a continent and we wait somewhat uneasily for the influenza pandemic which, as the name suggests, could affect the entire planet.

The oceans are emptying of fish and glaciers are melting and the storms are becoming more fierce. The newspapers and the television often become our “bible” of desolation and woe.

At a personal level we go through experiences which shake us to the core. I don’t need to tell you that if we become ill or we see a friend or family member suffer our sense of security can be undermined in a hurry and we may wonder where God is in these moments.

Jesus doesn’t suggest to his followers that life with him will mean magical protection from life’s hardships and injustices. What we hear in today’s gospel passage is that wee always have a choice when we see the signs around us. We can grow indifferent or we can sink into despair because we are convinced that the prospects are hopeless. We can even nervously offer “It’s okay, it will all work out in the end because Jesus is coming,” as some Christians do. Or we can live as if Jesus is beside us asking us to lift up our heads with confidence and courage. We do this because Jesus is beside us.

Clarence Jordan was a Christian leader during the tumultuous days of the Civil Rights movement in the United States and one of the co-founders of Habitat for Humanity. He saw the worst of human prejudice and encountered the almost overwhelming difficulty of changing oppressive systems. Yet Jordan was a hopeful person. He once said that “hope is believing in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change.” Of course when he speaks of believing it is not so much a general, cerebral statement of faith as what is at our spiritual core.

The biblical way and the way of Christ always, always, always offer a way forward, no matter how bleak the picture may be in the moment. This may seem an obvious statement when we are in church, as a group of Christians, but whatever happens in our lives as individuals and a community of faith, God is with us, and if God is for us who can prevail against us? When we lose sight of God and God’s promises, our world can grow dark in a hurry.

So how can we be the midwives who assist the birth of hope? As with midwives we do the practical things which allow the little miracles to unfold.

We remember grandmothers in Africa who are raising a whole generation of children without parents and find out what we can do to help.

We drink a cup of Fair Trade coffee or tea because it benefits farmers who want a decent living wage for their labour.

We add a couple of extra items to our shopping cart for the food drive trusting that if everyone else does the same we can feed neighbours we don’t even know.

We pray for a friend who is ill and perhaps hug them as a form of prayer because we all need reassurance when the way grows uncertain.

We pray and act, and act and pray. This powerful combination opens our imagination for a different world, the world in which God’s “shalom” will be realized and the birth of Jesus is much more than sentiment.

There is a story from the eighteenth century of an eclipse of the sun which no one predicted, so it caught everyone by surprise. In the legislature of an American state many of the representatives were thrown into a state of panic, believing that the end of the world was at hand. One of them moved an adjournment – politicians don’t change much do they – so that they could attend to business. Before that could happen another stood up and said that even if it was the end of the world he would rather go doing the work he had been called to do. His request was that the pages bring candles.

As people of Christ and as people of hope our way is that of seeking light to carry on what God intends us to do rather than cower in the darkness and wait for the end. Each week of Advent we will add another candle as symbolic illumination of our world. Three hundred and sixty five days a year we will actively watch and wait and act as Christ’s people.

And every time we decide to act for the good, which is always God’s work, it is another flame which helps to illuminate another dark corner.

We don’t read much from the Old Testament book called Lamentations because, as the name suggests, it is a book of mourning and grief, but as is nearly always the case in scripture there in a turning toward hope and the constancy of God’s love which we experience in Christ. This week I came upon a reference from Lamentations as part of my devotional time and it encouraged me. I pray that it encourages you as well in the conviction that God begins with us again each new day.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,

[God’s] mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,

“therefore I will hope in [God.]