Another sermon with which I struggled. Not sure if the theme I chose for Advent has been problematic for me or if something else is at play. I really enjoyed the sermons the first two weeks fo Advent, but have not enjoyed the last two weeks. I particularly found the conclusion lacking in today's sermon.
“Angelic Call - Hope” SAPC, December 23, 2018; Luke 2: 26-38
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”[a] 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”[b] 35 The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born[c] will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
Introduction: Once I laid out the plans for spending Advent preaching on the angels in the birth narrative stories, I knew I would be preaching on hope (which is often an Advent theme anyway).
Suddenly, I began to notice every time I used the word hope.
“I hope your flight is on time.”
“I hope you do well on your final exam.”
“i hope you like the present I bought for you.”
“I hope you have a fun Christmas vacation.”
And I had a song you may know from “Annie Get Your Gun” running through my head. It’s a lighthearted song that goes something like this:
Who do you love I hope
Who would you kiss I hope
Who is it going to be
I hope, I hope, I hope it's me
Who do you want I hope
Who do you need I hope
Who is it going to be
I hope, I hope, I hope it's me
It was a long month!
My problem - my hopes seemed rather trivial.
I actually looked up the word hope to see if I were somehow using the word incorrectly. I discovered there is a lot of conversation about the difference between hope and wishful thinking.
Hope in something that is likely to happen. Wishful thinking is about something that is unlikely to happen.
Not very helpful. the hopes of Israelites as they face their world; the hope that can sustain us as we face the challenges in our world seem to me more than something likely to happen if we just things play out.
Christian hope. the hope that despite everything that might suggest otherwise, God is at work and will be at work until all the world is redeemed and saved.
Reflect a few moments about our Christian hope.
Move 1: Our Christian hope rests in the God who acts.
a. That is the kind of hope we discover as the angel speaks to Mary.
1. Remember, the angel is sent by God to speak to Mary. What is going to happen is at God’s initiative.
2. The angel reveals what God is going to do. mary will bear a son, who will be the son of the most high.
3. “How can this be?” she wants to know.
4. Mary’s question is the question of her ancestors who asked while in exile and as a defeated people, or even in the riches of the kingdom when they still saw their human sinfulness on display; they asked, “how can this be that God is going to save us?”
mary’s question is our question as we look at our lives and our world and see all our failings and problems, “how can this be?”
b. Much is made of Mary’s willingness to go along.
1. In fact, I would suggest that her three words, “Here I am.” reveal her as the most heroic person in the Bible.
2. But our hope is not in Mary, but in the God for whom, as the angel tells us, “nothing is impossible.”
c. Consider the town of Bethlehem
1. We hear about Bethlehem from the prophet MIcah.
2. Bethlehem will be the place where the Messiah will arrive.
3. Bethlehem - a non-descript, little town.
4. Bethlehem is only 6.2 miles, or 10 km south of Jerusalem
5. If you were going to have the Birth of Jesus fun run, you would go from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. For the half-marathon, you would add the return run.
6. It makes no sense - the long-expected Messiah should arrive n Jerusalem, the center of the Jewish religion; Jerusalem, where the Temple is.
7. But Mary and Joseph go to little ole Bethlehem to give birth to God's son.
c. the birth of Christ to the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem reminds us that we hope in the God for whom nothing is impossible.
1. Even a virgin can become pregnant and give birth.
2. Even Bethlehem can be the play where the Son of God arrives.
We can dare to hope because of what God is doing.
Move 2: Being people of hope means God intrudes into our lives and our world.
a. tom Currie, III, theologian and writer, whose best quality may be he is Margaret Plunkett’s brother, reminds us “hope is another name for God’s intrusive presence in our worlds and we fear, again rightly, that that presence will disturb us, revealing the inadequacy of all our effort to feed ourselves and creating in us a hunger we cannot satisfy. Worse, it may take us to places we had no intention of going” Tom Currie, Jr. Journal for Preachers, Vol. XLVII, Advent, 2018, “With Heads Held High: Preaching Hope in a Noisy Time,” 2)
1. Hoping in God means acknowledging that we are not there yet.
2. Hoping in God means looking at our lives and acknowledging that we need God to do a new thing with us.
3. Hope in God means looking at our world and recognizing that our best efforts to shape into the goodness God desires have fallen short, way short of that goodness.
b. the danger of hoping in God is that the God in who we hope may call us to do a new thing.
1. Think about mary and what giving herself over to the hope that God might come to earth meant for her?
2. To put our hope in God means trusting God to guide us, change us.
Move 3: In order to hope, we have to give up what holds us back.
a. Karl Barth has this image of Christians moving forward in hope toward Christ who is ever before us, but our unrighteousness and unholiness are “still behind [us] in ever new forms and with only too powerful a grasp [IV/3.2, 232]” (Fleming Rutledge, 59, “Expectation and Hope in the Writings of Karl Barth,” Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ).
1. our hope held hostage by our own failings.
2. Our hope held hostage by the part of us we will not give up, which will tighten its grip on our lives.
b. Perhaps we need to hear again Mary’s response to the angel and discover their power — “Here am I.”
1. Mary submitting herself to the hope in God to use her in ways she could never have imagined on her own.
2. Mary giving herself over to the God of hope, instead of being held back by her own fears.
Conclusion: As Advent comes to a close and Christmas day approaches, may you discover anew the hope you have in the God who is born to a virgin in Bethlehem.
The hope you have in the God for whom all things are possible.
Footnote to sermon: Daniel Migliore has a wonderful chapter on “Christian Hope” in his book Faith Seeking Understanding (Migliore, 231-251)
Richard, thank you for the word of hope that you gave yesterday.
ReplyDelete"Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost." Rom 15:13 KJV.
Jesus Christ is our Blessed Hope (Titus 2:13) Amen!