Rev.
Debbie Cato
Matthew
1:18-25 and Luke 1:46-55
Fairfield
Community Church
December
15, 2024
Holy God, the stories of
Advent are stories many of us have heard before. We’ve arranged the nativity scenes. We’ve
read the children’s books. We’ve seen the movies. We’ve sung the songs. But as
we come to your scripture this morning, we pray that you will help us begin
again. Clear the distractions from our
minds. Center us in this space. Speak to
us here and now. We are listening. We are hopeful. Amen.[1]
Hope is Worth
the Risk
This is the fourth Sunday
of Advent. Tuesday evening, we will
celebrate the birth of the baby that changed the world forever. God’s love entered the world in the form of a
vulnerable baby, born to poor parents in a humble barn. As Eugene Peterson says, “God took on
flesh and moved into the neighborhood.”
This Advent, we have
focused on beginnings. Each Sunday, I ‘ve reminded you that endings always come
before beginnings. Beginnings always
follow endings. Something ends, and God has
already put the new beginning into action. But, new beginnings always require
waiting.
We started Advent with
reminders of our belovedness. As God
told the people through the prophet Isaiah, “I have called you by name. You are mine.
You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.” You are
a blessing.
Then we were reminded that “we can’t go it alone.” We need one another. We need community. God made us to be in community. Lean on one another. Hold one another up. Be there for one another.
Last Sunday, we talked
about how we are each tasked with “doing the good that is ours to do.” As The Rev. Canon Jan Naylor Cope said,
“If you desire to know what God wants from you, then quit your bickering, your
finger pointing, your slandering of others, and offer your food to the hungry,
satisfy the needs of the afflicted – work to repair that which is broken in
your own lives and in the lives of those around you.”[2] New beginnings happen after relational and
spiritual breaches are repaired. When we repair broken relationships and broken
spirits, we can feel the hope, peace, joy, and love of Christ in our lives.
The word for today
is “hope is worth the risk.” Hope is
worth the risk. It takes courage to hope
when you can’t see a better future. It
takes courage to hope when everything feels hopeless. When everyone else is
saying it is hopeless. When you can’t
see a new beginning. But hope is worth the risk.
As Kayla Craig states in her commentary for today, “It’s vulnerable to hope. The more we hope, the more we can be disappointed. For those of us who bear scars from the hurt of this world, hope can feel scary – too risky, too unrealistic. Cynicism seems like a softer, more straightforward path. But cynicism doesn’t change the world – hope does. Hope challenges us to declare, “It can be better,” and empowers us to make it so.” [3] Hope challenges us to declare, “It can be better,” and empowers us to make it so.
When I look out and
see all the cynicism and hopelessness and despair
in the world, I also
see courageous examples of hope. One of
them
comes from an unexpected source - North Carolina’s recovery from Hurricane Helene. In an article called Advent in Western North Carolina: Waiting with Deep Hope, David LaMotte, a songwriter, speaker, and author, writes of the deep hope in the people of North Carolina as they work toward recovering from the hurricane that decimated their communities.
David writes, “In the mountain area devastated by Hurricane Helene, waiting has become a part of life. And for many, that life also entails the hard work of hope.”[4]
David goes on to write, “People in western North Carolina know a thing or two about waiting. In late September, we waited to see which way Hurricane Helene would go. When the storm moved into our already saturated mountains, my neighbors waited through the morning for the wind to ease, and then to see how far the water would rise and whether the dams would hold. After the storm, they found that Helene had changed the paths of rivers, the locations and viability of homes and businesses, and many, many lives.”
“For days, and sometimes weeks, we waited to be able to contact people we love. Many of us waited in lines for relief supplies, for access to electricity, water, cell and internet service, and for passable routes to safer places. Some roads washed away entirely; while others were covered in tons of mud. Many of us waited for rescue.”[5]
David continues, “Then came waiting on hold and in long lines to file for government disaster recovery funds. We waited for schools to open again. We waited to be able to flush our toilets, then waited longer to shower, then much longer to be able to drink the water that had finally returned to our pipes. My own family waited weeks for all of those things, but with friends who suddenly had large trees in their living rooms and bedrooms, one who swam out of his own kitchen window as the waters rose past the counter his family was standing on, and one whose entire home was swept down the river with no sign of even the foundation left, we were reminded again of the difference between problems and inconveniences.” [6]
You see, the people in North Carolina can relate to the idea of Advent as a time of waiting. To the idea of waiting for a new beginning. David writes, “For some folks here in the mountains, however, hope may be a tougher sell. Two months after the storm, there are people here who have gotten back to lives that look more or less like their lives before Helene. But for those who lost loved ones to raging rivers or whose homes washed away, sometimes with every physical thing that held meaning and memory for them, or whose businesses were destroyed, there will be no return to old lives. And of course, for many of my neighbors, these were lives of poverty and insecurity to begin with.”
“So many people have had their life trajectories altered forever. Encouraging them to put a positive spin on things might not go over well at all. Hurricane Helene was the deadliest storm in the mainland United States since Katrina, and the destruction is hard to comprehend if you haven’t seen it for yourself. It is insulting to tell people who are in the midst of great tragedy that the real issue is their attitude, and this is too often what people hear in well-intentioned messages of hope.”
David says, “Part of the issue may be that there is so much cheap hope being peddled in the world. Real hope — deep hope — is too often diminished into optimism. But deep hope has nothing to do with what you think is likely to happen next”. Let me repeat that: Deep hope has nothing to do with what you think is likely to happen next.
Václav Havel, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic, echoes this idea of deep hope. He wrote, “Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit. It is not about what we think is going to happen; it is about where we point our lives, sometimes in spite of the odds rather than because of them. If we take faith seriously, we point our lives toward the possibility of better communities and a better world, and we work to create them, even — and perhaps especially — when the outcomes we desire seem impossibly distant.
The opposite of cheap hope, he says, is pessimism, but the opposite of deep hope is despair, which leads to passivity. Hope, in its deeper sense, does not require a positive outlook. It requires a choice to keep moving toward a better way and a better world. So, it is entirely possible to feel pessimistic about the direction things are going yet live from deep hope. I think that may be what we are called to in these hard days.”[7] Hope is a choice to keep moving toward a better way and a better world.
David echoes this idea of deep hope. As his article continues, he says, “I have listed many ways that people waited, but I don’t want to give the impression that our waiting has been passive. People dug through mud, fallen houses and trailers half-sunk in the rivers in the slim hope of finding survivors. Church volunteers and nonprofits and government workers from all over showed up, got out their chainsaws and cleared roads. They also did the gentler, but just as essential, work of organizing donated supplies and getting them to folks who needed them. People knocked on doors, hauled water and fired up the grill to feed their neighbors when there was no electricity. Yes, we were waiting for help and supplies, but we were not still in our waiting; we were doing what we could to create the better world that we wanted to see.”[8]
David closes with this: “Perhaps deep hope is the thing with boots and gloves. Maybe it is precisely the thing that asks quite a lot of us. Jesus was not born into an easy time, nor a serene place. If Advent is a season of hope, of revelation and of expectant waiting for God to become visible, then perhaps the best way to spend this time is to reveal to each other that God is already here.”[9]
Deep hope – that’s what our faith demands. Doing what we can to create the better world that we want to see. Deep hope. The thing with boots and gloves that asks quite a lot of us. Deep hope. That is what we all need in the new year as we face all the changes ahead – political changes and changes right here in our church. Deep hope.
The kind of deep hope Joseph had when he believed his dream and moved forward into a future with Mary and the child she was carrying. Deep hope. The kind Mary had when she sang her song of praise and declared, not that God would do things, but that He already had. Mary sang: He has performed mighty deeds with his arm… He has brought down rulers from their thrones… He has filled the hungry with good things... [10]
Will you live into
the next year with deep hope? Not
because you know
how everything will
work out, but because you have faith that God has a new beginning already
planned. A future with hope. A deep hope because we know that we are
beloved by God. A deep hope because we
are in community and can hold each other up and remind each other of God’s
goodness. A deep hope because we will
focus on the good that is ours to do and not all the problems of the world. Deep hope that involves rolling up your
sleeves and being involved. Deep hope. It’s
worth the risk.
Here this
blessing: “Lies of cynicism are loud,
and so are the voices of others – but, beloved, hope is worth fighting
for. May the Spirit of God surround you
this season so that you might trust like Joseph and sing like Mary. The same hope they held is still alive today,
transforming creation into God’s will for justice and peace. As you prepare your heart for Christ’s
arrival, may you make room for God’s presence, and may your actions reflect
God’s hope for humanity.”[11] Amen.
[1]
Sanctifiedart.com. Advent Series
2024. Fourth Sunday of Advent. Prayer by Rev. Sara Speed.
[2] https://cathedral.org/meditations/called-to-be-repairers-of-the-breach/ National Cathedral. The Rev. Canon
Jan Naylor Cope. 2/17/2024.
[3]
Sanctifiedart.com. Advent Series
2024. Fourth Sunday of Advent. Commentary by Kayla Craig.
[4] LITURGICAL SEASONSADVENTMISSIONS & COMMUNITY. Advent
in western North Carolina: Waiting with deep hope. David LaMotte, Songwriter,
speaker, author and peace activist
[5] LITURGICAL
SEASONSADVENTMISSIONS & COMMUNITY. Advent in western North Carolina:
Waiting with deep hope. David LaMotte, Songwriter, speaker, author and peace
activist.
[6] LITURGICAL
SEASONSADVENTMISSIONS & COMMUNITY. Advent in western North Carolina:
Waiting with deep hope. David LaMotte, Songwriter, speaker, author and peace
activist.
[7] LITURGICAL
SEASONSADVENTMISSIONS & COMMUNITY. Advent in western North Carolina:
Waiting with deep hope. David LaMotte, Songwriter, speaker, author and peace
activist.
[8] LITURGICAL
SEASONSADVENTMISSIONS & COMMUNITY. Advent in western North Carolina:
Waiting with deep hope. David LaMotte, Songwriter, speaker, author and peace
activist.
[9] LITURGICAL
SEASONSADVENTMISSIONS & COMMUNITY. Advent in western North Carolina:
Waiting with deep hope. David LaMotte, Songwriter, speaker, author and peace
activist.
[10] Luke 1:51-53.
NIV
[11]
Sanctifiedart.com. Advent Series
2024. Fourth Sunday of Advent. Commentary by Kayla Craig.
