Reflections on "Gifts You Can't Buy in the Store: Hope" Jeremiah 33: 14-16; Romans 5: 1-5

The second week of this series.  I am still enjoying the visual illustrations that Kathy (our Program Director) creatively put together.  It gives some added energy to the sermon, and it also provides a weekly task for the "Time with the Young Disciples" that makes it clear that they are invited to the same conversation that their parents are.  In the both the chapel and sanctuary there is a visual aid(s) that will keep a running record of what gifts we have already discussed.  I think that will be a subtle, but powerful tool for tying the whole series together.

To help create the scene of the gift box front and center, I am not preaching from behind the pulpit in the sanctuary.  In a way, it is good that I have spent a lot of time preparing for this series, because it is much harder to reference easily my sermon notes when I'm not behind the pulpit.  It also means that the text provided here syncs much better with the Chapel sermon (where I am using the pulpit) than the Sanctuary sermon.  It will be interesting to see if one service seems to get better sermons!  In terms of style, the Chapel is a more intimate setting, so using the pulpit does not take away from that; in the Sanctuary, not preaching from the pulpit probably helps make it seem more intimate.

One of the challenges for any sermon is how to make in apply to our everyday life.  This is particularly challenging when preaching about tings like hope -- it's one thing to say we are people of hope; another thing to figure out what the means for each of us.  I attempt to make that connection in the second move of this sermon.  It probably is still not concrete enough, but I hope it did challenge people to think about how being people of hope matters.  The Jeremiah buying land illustration could have actually fit in move one or move two.  Late in the sermon writing process I ran across a Dietrich Bonhoeffer quote from a letter he wrote to his fiancee while imprisoned in the German concentration camp in which he describes why getting married is a statement about their hope in God in the midst of their current crisis.  I did not have time (it was just before i went to bed Saturday night) to add it to the sermon (I have a rule about not adding illustrations on the fly because i have on occasion added a story late and half way through it find myself thinking, "oops, that's not right!").  I will find a place in some other sermon to use that story.

“Gifts You Can't Buy at the Store: Hope” 2nd Sunday in Advent; FPC, Troy; Jeremiah 33: 14-16; December 9, 2012

Introduction: We continue reflecting on gifts you can't buy at the store. Last week, we talked about time. This week we think about hope.

To test my hypothesis that you can't buy hope in a store, I went to Amazon.com this week and searched for items under the topic of hope and discovered a wide assortment of gifts I could buy (it occurred to me that I could really surprise my wife this year by buying her one of those items!)

Here is a sample:

There is a certain irony that the top choice was a a novel entitled Hope: A tragedy; somehow that does not sound very hopeful

The One Year Book of Hope (One Year Books) – a different reading each day. Presumably they create more and more hope as each day progresses.

The jewelry department had a couple of options: DMM Expressively Yours Bracelet - Peace, Hope, Serenity

Sterling Silver "Live The Life You Love. Learn From Yesterday. Live For Today. Hope For Tomorrow" Reversible Necklace, 18"

Demdaco Willow Tree Figurine, Hope

Hope Springs -movie with Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep; 2003 movie with Colin Firth and Heather Graham that does not seem to have the same plot – Streep and Jones is $16.99; firth and Graham can be downloaded for $1.99 and watched immediately. Some hope costs more than others!

Hope Word Decorative Metal Wall Art

I'm pretty sure that none of those items fit with what Jeremiah had in mind as he prophesied to the Israelites God's word of hope.

Let's take a look at what that kind of hope looked like

Move 1: The hope God gives to us takes a long-term view.

a. I want to be clear that buying gifts is not a bad thing.

1. In limited doses, I even like shopping for gifts.
2. One of the great things about buying gifts is that you get to give them to someone.
3. You get to see the surprise and excitement the person shows as he or she receives the gift.
4. Remember when you watched your child's face light up as he opens the box holding the toy he'd been dreaming about discovering under the Christmas tree.
5. Or that glow on your mother's face when she opens that gift and realizes how much trouble you must have gone to to find the beautiful sweater in her favorite color.
6. Instant gratification for both the giver and receiver.

b. But how do we compare that instant gratification with the hope to which God calls us?

1. Jeremiah did not tell the Israelites that today everything will be perfect; instead, Jeremiah prophesied about Israel's future hope.
2. Jeremiah told them about the God who will rescue them; the who will save them them; about the God who will one day come in the Christ-child; about the God who will one day come again


c. To best illustrate that point, remember a story about some land that the prophet Jeremiah bought (you can go back to chapter 32 to read that story again).

1. Remember that Jeremiah is prophesying in about 588 B.C.E., during the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians.

2. things are tough for Israel and for Jeremiah personally as he found himself imprisoned in the royal palace of King Zedekiah of Judah.

3. He had been charged with desertion and treason and insurrection because he had been forcefully pleading for Israel to turn from their ways.
4. He saw the gathering storm of Babylon coming from the north. He spoke God's word of judgment for Israel's social injustice and idolatry.

5. In the midst of all that, Jeremiah gets an opportunity to buy some land.

6. Israel had the right of redemption when it came to property. Instead of a family member losing property, another family member can buy the property. Jeremiah's cousin, Hanamel, asks the prophet to buy the family field in Anathoth.

5. It is an absurd request. Who in their right mind picks the time of crisis, the time when exile approaches, the time when Israel is about to almost disappear from the face of the earth, who in their right mind will invest in buying property?

7. Jeremiah will because God has told him to do so as a sign that the days are surely coming, when God will rescue Israel.

8. A reminder that King Zedekiah of Israel will not have the final answer; that the Babylonians who are about to conquer do not have the final answer; that God has the final word, and it is a word of salvation, a word of hope.

(I found the summary of Jeremiah's plight very helpful at the following:  http://day1.org/2197-when_battered_and_besiegedbuy, sermon by Rev. Thomas Warren)

500. some gifts come and go rather quickly.
     1. How many times have young children opened a toy, been so excited about it, and then 15 minutes later you look over and the toy is tossed aside and your child is having more fun playing with the shiny wrapping paper.
     2. 6 or 7 years ago I received one of the coolest gifts – a hand held electronic football game just like I played with in Jr. High. I played it and played it that first few days. I saw it the other day sitting in a drawer; I haven't played it since that first week.
     3. Some gifts have a much longer life span. The clock in my mother's family room has been there since I gave it to her my first Christmas out of college. It still works!
     4. But all the gifts we can buy at the store will break, or become boring to us, or become that thing we no longer need.
     The gift of hope God gives to us will follow us into the future as long as we live and beyond because God continues to be at work saving us and saving the world.
     A hope for the future.

Move 2: Our hope for the future shapes how we live in the present.

a. Steve Earle has a song entitled “Some Dreams.”

1. If you ever saw the movie the Rookie, you have heard the song because it was the theme song.
2. The Rookie, you may recall, is based on the true story of a science teacher in small town in TX who is able to make his dream of pitching in the major leagues come true by leaving his job as a teacher and working his way to the major leagues, where he debuted as a 40 yr. old rookie relief pitcher and struck out the first batter he faced.
3. The movie shows how he acted on his dream, how his determination and desire led to his one day fulfilling his dream of pitching in the major leagues

4.The chorus of the them song reads like this:

some dreams 

they never come true

they never come true

yeah, but some dreams do

http://donteatalone.com/an-earring-of-hope/  January 18, 2012

b. Imagine the opport7unity and freedom we have to act on the hope God gives to us, a hope that will always come true.

1. You can dare to change. To take the risks and make the effort to the person you envision God desires you to be because in the end, God will take care of you.

2. You can face the difficult times in life with confidence – not because those challenges re not real, but because you know that God is with you, guiding you into the future hope.
3. We spend too much of our lives afraid of the future, fearful of what might happen, and that fear paralyzes us.

4. Sure, we may fall on our face in the moment, but our hope is not in our momentary success or failure; our hope is in the God who has claimed us and invited us into the days that are surely coming, the days when God's will reign.

We are called to act in the present based on our future hope in God.

Move 3: God gives us hope; we receive it by faith.

a. Paul reminds that Romans that we receive God's hope by faith.

1. When the world says that the gifts of today have more value than our hope in the God of tomorrow, we are called to be people of faith.

2. To put our faith in God like Jeremiah did.

b. Not just our faith, but the faith of those who have come before us.

1. The Israelites could believe Jeremiah because they knew the story of the exodus. The knew that God had acted to save Israel previously.

2. We can have faith that hopes in God because we know that God has come in Christ.
3. We can act in faith because we see signs of our hope in God as we hear others tell their stories of how God has acted in their lives.
4. We can tell our own stories about how God has acted in our own lives.
   God sends us the gift of hope wrapped in the stories of how God has acted in the past; it is up to us in faith to receive and open that gift.
   Conclusion: Amazon.com had a book called The Perfect Hope: Book Three of the Inn BoonsBoro Trilogy (The Inn Trilogy).
   
   
   Not a bad title.
   
   
   I have not read the book, but I bet it is not as good as the story we tell of our hope in the God who sends the perfect one, Jesus Christ, to be born in Bethlehem, the one who saves the world and gives us hope beyond all measure.