St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, December 2, 2007

Advent 1

Patterns of Hope – Rev. David Mundy

Isaiah 2:1-5 Matthew 24:36-44

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The second pastoral charge I served after my ordination was what is called a “two point” charge. That meant that there were the two congregations which shared me as their minister. While that may sound fairly straightforward, it never is.

One of the congregations was active and vibrant with a big Sunday School and lots of people. The town it was in was growing and eventually that church went to two services to accommodate everyone. The other congregation was in a much smaller village and if anything the population was shrinking. Newcomers were a novelty and the people who were in church on Sunday morning knew just about everyone else – and all their business!

There was a bit of a “poor us” smell about the smaller congregation. They struggled to pay their bills and they grumbled that the larger church always got its way at board meeting because it’s members could outvote them on any motion.

They also had a surprising resilience and there were times when they rose above the mundane in glorious ways. I got an invitation one day to come to the home of one family from this congregation. It came from an elderly church member rather than the family itself because she wanted me to be part of what happened every Tuesday and Thursday morning in that household.

These folk had a daughter who had been born with severe physical and mental restrictions and while she was in her third year she required help as though she was a newborn. The parents had gone to the United States to learn a therapy for children with severe motor skill problems. It required moving the head and the limbs and even the fingers and toes of the child in careful patterns in the hope that the physical action would stimulate brain activity which in turn would encourage the extremities to function.

The parents quickly discovered that it was not possible to do this alone. So they had asked members of the congregation for their help. They didn’t make an announcement from the pulpit. This was a small enough group that it was all “word of mouth.” The day I went a quilt was laid out on the living room floor and the team got down on their hands and knees. The older ones joked that they might never get back up again but everyone was good-natured. Then they got down to business. They began the patterns of movement, which were really patterns of hope from what I could see. At another time I chatted with the mother who readily admitted that this was a “shot in the dark.” There were no guarantees this would work, but it was worth their effort. No doubt these same thoughts were going through the minds of the others who came to assist them, yet they persevered because they cared for this family and it was a tangible way to be with them in their struggles. Whatever the outcome, it was an expression of Christian hope.

This is the Sunday of hope in the four weeks of Advent. Hope and peace and joy and love. Just saying those four words out loud lifts the spirit, don’t you think? Each of our weeks we will light a candle and another and another and yet another which will all be “shots in the dark” and reminders that because Christ has come, the darkness cannot defeat us. All four of these themes have so much to offer about our relationship with Christ, the light of the world, but it’s good that we begin with hope.

Once again this year the passage from the gospel doesn’t seem very hopeful, as least not on the surface. If anything, what we heard a moment ago gives the impression of the opposite of hope, which is despair. It is Jesus speaking here and he paints a picture of a rather dark and ominous world which may include persecution for his followers. We do know that the Roman Empire under which they lived was ruthless when it came to the early Christians and soldiers would come to take away a member of a family, leaving the others behind.

When Jesus says “stay awake” he is asking his followers to stay alert even when they are tempted to fall into despair. That term you read “Son of Man” is Jesus’ third-person reference to himself and it does seem a bit odd that Jesus would liken his return to that of a thief who is attempting a break-in through the night.

Then again, Jesus often uses jarring images in his parables and stories to get his listeners thinking and alert to his good news. He constantly challenges the imagination of those who had ears to hear what he is saying, and of course his message was only hope for some.

Christian faith lives from hope, from the expectation of the promise of God . . . William Lynch, in Images of Hope describes the imagination as the healer of hopelessness. Hopelessness is a sense of the impossible, a feeling of being trapped without options or alternatives. By contrast, the imagination shows a way out.

Kathleen Fisher

It is so tempting to slip into hopelessness and despair in a world of so much sadness and negativity. And honestly, real life can be terribly difficult. On any given Sunday when we are gathered together someone in our midst is going through the worst time of his or her life. It may be because we are unemployed and want the dignity of meaningful work.

Relationships come to an end either because of enmity between partners or through death and the loss can be numbing. We experience financial setbacks which may be no fault of our own but we are the ones who must find our way forward.

When we are going through tough times, we are often sitting in the pew alongside people who have no idea that we are suffering through shame or depression and we wouldn’t know where to begin in explaining our circumstances or whether the person beside us would even care. We know we can’t go back, but how do we go forward?

The temptation to despair certainly extends beyond these walls. We are giving almost daily reports on the mess we have made of this planet and our reluctance and that of our leaders to do much about it. There are wars and rumours of wars. For some reason we are unable to grasp the folly of our aggression. This week Maclean’s magazine offered the cover question “Is It Time to Bomb Iraq?”

Little wonder that we become either cynical or “comfortably numb.” Little wonder that even in a prosperous and secure nation such as ours there is so much depression and sadness.

Still, there is something within us that wants to light the candle which will dispel the darkness, even when the flame flickers. We are here as a faith community because Christ has come and because his birth into the human family demonstrates God’s hope for the world. With the mind and imagination of Christ we look for and we create the signs and patterns of hope.

The late Christian activist and preacher William Sloane Coffin was the inspiration for the fiery preacher, the Rev. Sloan from the comic strip Doonesbury. Rev. Coffin never stopped believing that we are the creators of hope in Christ’s name and he made this observation: “Hope has nothing to do with optimism. Its opposite is not pessimism but despair. And if Jesus never allowed his soul to be cornered into despair, clearly we Christians shouldn’t either.”

We are people who believe that “shots in the dark” are worthwhile and what God desires of us. If we aren’t willing to be cornered into despair, we will keep our eyes and ears open and stay awake in this world. When each one of us lights our personal candle of hope, the darkness is pushed back, even against the odds.

Not long ago I spent time with someone from St. Paul’s who lost her husband to death earlier in the year. He experienced a long and sometimes painful end and it was hard on her and the family. Yet she can see that there was so much love expressed in the months of his illness and she is determined to put one foot in front of the other to honour his memory. We prayed together for the strength she would need for each day. I was so struck by her courage, as I am over and over again with the people of this congregation.

Our lives can change and our world can change. Earlier this week a one-day peace summit took place in Annapolis Maryland. No one held out much hope for any positive outcome. The broker of this meeting was a president who mocked his predecessor for spending so much time trying to bring about peace in the Middle East and who led his country into a war which has been a bottomless pit of suffering. The leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority could barely look one another in the eye, let alone agree on peace principles. Yet we saw them shake hands and agree to enter into a peace process. It is so tempting to say that this is a “shot in the dark” that is doomed to failure, yet when is the crucial moment when hope is born and change begins? The handshakes for the cameras may be the moment when

swords are beaten into ploughshares, as the passage from Isaiah told us would happen someday.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair pointed out, rightly, that peace in Northern Ireland came slowly, yet it came. I think that the BBC headline for what happened in Annapolis was appropriate: “a glimmer of hope.”

One last thought this morning. I appreciate that the gospel lesson today tells us that we are to be watchful as though we are waiting for the thief in the night. I trust that Jesus won’t mind if we take our hopeful imaginations in a different direction. Perhaps instead of waiting warily for the B&E, we can be waiting for the loved one who is travelling a long distance and doesn’t know the exact time of arrival. There is such a sense of anticipation that we decide to “wait up” until that person comes through the door to be greeted by a hug and a kiss. We doze for a while, but we come to consciousness again, until the joyful arrival. Rather than anxious or fearful waiting, we wait with expectation and hope.

Please ask yourself together where the patterns of hope are emerging in your life. We can be grateful that Christ has come and is still coming in our imaginations and in the events of each new day. Amen.