Hope Begins with Loss
Matthew 24:36-44
A Sermon Delivered by Thomas J. Boone, PhD
Central Presbyterian Church, Mobile AL, December 2, 2007

They lit the advent candle. The scene slipped into his Sunday standard serenely, resurrecting a familiar whisper, “Oh yeah, it’s that time of year again.” The call to worship hearkened hope’s boundary-less horizon, but his horizon held hope hostage. Another advent adorned by a wreath of wrung hands. Those around him had no idea what ideas invaded his worship space invoking a self-erected notion of futility that had long since become his mantra: “Why can’t I get it together already?”

The lighting of the advent wreath is one of those annual rituals we do in the Presbyterian Church. We just said goodbye to families who went back home, and the bravest of us woke up early on the day after Thanksgiving to catch all those wonderful sales. It’s time for Christmas movies, Santa commercials, and the increasingly frustrating debates about the place of nativity scenes on public property. But, what about Advent? We don’t hear much about it outside church and we more often than not have to look at last year’s bulletins to remember what the candles mean.

“I think it’s a countdown to Christmas” one teenage girl said to her mother as they left the church parking lot on their way to Sunday brunch.

“I think it’s our version of Hanukkah,” one boy told his Jewish buddy in school.

“It sure does make the church look pretty at this time of year,” three women said to each other walking down the church hallway to the fellowship hall.

Each of us begins Advent much as we do on any other Sunday, and it’s not until we come to church that we’re reminded about it. “Watch” proclaims one of our banners. “Hope” reads the cover of our bulletins. “Promise” writes the prophet Isaiah. The beginning of Advent reminds us that Jesus will rescue us from death, He will shine light in our darkness, what begins with loss can result in hope for Christians.

One woman sat in the pew amidst family whom she had come to visit for “the Big Feast.” She agreed to do the “church-thing,” even though she seldom went where she lived. There was just too much baggage that came along with it. “I believe in God, and I don’t need organized religion to control my spirituality,” she would say. Her gaze kept drifting back to the lit candle, though. Kids had lit it, and the family who stood with them seemed, “Oh, I don’t know ... together” she confessed to a home-town friend later that night. “I wish I had that. But, it’s just easier to be away from the family and memories, ya’ know?”

Dust balls collecting grunge from the closet floor, where skeletons lay silent. Do you know the feeling? T.S. Eliot wrote some lines about the human condition that Christ came to wake up. “My house is a decayed house,” and “a dull head among windy spaces.” Another one goes like this: “I have lost my passion: why should I keep it since what is kept must be adulterated? I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch: How should I use them for your closer contact?” (“Gerontion,” 1920). Hope is meaningful only because we have first tasted loss and pain. Hope becomes real to us only once we’ve wandered in the wilderness of life yet come through it leaning on Christ.

Wilderness wandering in modern garb. It’ll happen while wearing L.L. Bean’s finest and driving a Hummer. It’ll cause you to drink so much booze this holiday season that you don’t have to deal with the family pain. It’ll increase your already overburdened debt so you can get those presents for Auntie May and brother George, and the list goes on, and...”oh, wait, I guess the cost of a new outfit for Christmas Eve won’t add too much.”

Wilderness wandering while working. Are all those hours really necessary, or are we avoiding something or somebody at home? Does it feel like you’re getting disconnected from the ones you’re supposed to love? Wilderness wandering in moral decisions that we know we need to change. They led us to despair before, they’re leading us to despair again, so why in the world do we keep on going there? Wilderness wandering can blind us and bind us, and in the still of the night we dream of journeys to the stars, away from it all.

And like a beacon for a ship surrounded by the impenetrable thickness of a dark, moonless night this morning we lit the candle of hope. Advent awakening. Can you hear God’s still small voice pleading with you, yearning for you? It can be so faint, so easy to miss. He’s here nonetheless. His words to his disciples said “You don’t know when the Son of Man will appear.” I get the feeling that they didn’t know he was there already, yet there He was in their midst. Unrecognized Messiah. He was with you when you walked into this sanctuary. He’s as much here as he was when his birth hearkened D-Day on Satan’s part time reign over human life. Advent isn’t here to countdown Christmas, or give a Christian counterpart to Hanukkah, or make the church look pretty for the season. It’s here to remind us that Jesus is with us now.

Gerald Manley Hopkins wrote, “I have desired to go where springs not fail, to fields where flies no sharp and sided hail and a few lilies blow. And I have asked to be where no storms come, where the green swell is in the havens dumb, and out of the swing of the sea” (“Heaven-Haven,” 1930).

Christ’s greatest gift to us was eternal life, not only for tomorrow but for today. It’s a gift that came at a cost so enormous that its truth has been hidden from us lest we corrupt so great a thing. But, to us belongs the challenge that the gift lays before anyone who claims to have received it. It’s a challenge not quite as daunting as the cost of Christ’s life. That baby in a manger eventually was stripped of his skin and suffered complete separation from God in order for us to live. So, why do we put on death when he came to give life? Why wander in the wilderness, when before us lay possibilities more valuable than platinum and more liberating than walking in big sky country?

Why? Because we’re humans, and we’re fallen. We insist on our wilderness wanderings, no matter how ludicrous those choices are. We could hear a million sermons calling us to a better path, but unless God’s reaching into us at a precise moment and calling us to change things, it’s not going to happen. The fulcrum of our spiritual lives happens when we have the humility to admit that we’re living as though dead, and it’s at that precise moment that our choice to abandon the wilderness wandering and pursue hope’s heights reaches its pinnacle of clarity.

Christ died to bring us hope, both for the glory that we’ll share with Him in the life to come, but also in the new reality we can experience right now. It’s a new reality of hope that begins with loss and pain. But as I said last week, if it weren’t for God allowing us to experience the sting of death here then we’d never treasure the gift of eternal life.

There's a story at the end of Jesus' time on earth. Two disciples were walking on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Christ had died. They had shattered hopes. Christ was busy battling for our salvation. The disciples were forlorn. Christ was walking right beside them, the Son of Man, the Son of God, the First and the Last, was in their midst. The disciples were worried about making it home before sunset.

"But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel." But we had hoped...How often have you heard a phrase like that? "I was hoping he would come back to me." "I had hoped to pass the exam." "We had hoped the surgery would get all the tumor." "I thought that job was in the bag." Words painted gray with disappointment. What we wanted didn't come. What came, we didn't want. The result? Shattered hope. The foundation of our world trembles.

We trudge up the road to Emmaus dragging our sandals in the dust, wondering what we did to deserve such a plight. "What kind of God would let me down like this?" And yet, so tear-filled are our eyes and so limited is our perspective that God could be the fellow walking next to us and we wouldn't know it. Our problem isn't so much that God doesn't give us what we hope for as it is that we don't know the right thing for which to hope. Hope isn't want you expect; it is what you would never dream. It is a wild, improbable tale with a pinch-me-I'm-dreaming ending. It's Zechariah left speechless at the sight of his wife Elizabeth, gray-headed and pregnant. It's Joseph witnessing the fetal growth of the King of the Universe in Mary's womb. Hope is not a granted wish or a favor performed; no, it is far greater than that. It is a zany, unpredictable dependence on a God who loves to surprise us out of our socks and be there in the flesh to see our reaction. (God Came Near, 88-9).

Hallelujah, then, first for the promise of our restoration with God that he bought for us. Second, for hope that even in our times of loss we can truly live. Hope amidst whatever wilderness we wander in, this is the great gift that God invites us to embrace in Advent. Amen.