4th Sunday of Advent
December 23,
2018
Isaiah 9:6; Matthew 2:1-12
The first Star Wars movie that came out was subtitled
“Episode IV: A New Hope.” It was the middle of a story, whose beginning wasn’t
told until twenty years later. Can you imagine if George Lucas had started with
Episode I, “The Phantom Menace,” instead? The franchise probably wouldn’t have
taken off like it did. Instead, he started with Episode IV, which he called “A
New Hope.” He introduced the saga with a movie about hope. Episode IV opens with despair, as Darth Vader
and the stormtroopers board Princess Leia’s ship, kill many of her men, and
take her prisoner. The droids, C-3PO and R2D2, escape with the plans for the
Death Star and the message for Obi Wan Kenobi. In that message Leia tells Obi
Wan, “You’re our only hope,” and we learn that the hope actually lies with
Luke, not Obi Wan. In the midst of despair and everything going wrong, where do
you find hope? As Christians, our hope is also in a person, only instead of a
Jedi Knight, it’s the Savior of the universe, Jesus Christ, whose birth we will
celebrate tomorrow. Advent isn’t just a season about anticipation and
preparation, it’s also a season about hope. Hope because even “in the bleak
midwinter,” the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ, came. There is always hope.
While I’ve preached before about hope, one thing I came
across this time around was about hope’s relationship with fear. Dr. Marcia
McFee, who designed the worship series we’ve been using this Advent, included a
comment for this week that perhaps “the opposite of fear is not simply ‘calm,’
but rather it is hope. Hope serves as defiance against despair.”[1]
In the face of despair, you need hope. However, in the face of fear, you also
need hope. You need the hope that you will get through this. You need the
assurance that God has brought you this far and will not let you go now. That’s
why our hope is always in God. Yet Dr. McFee also included this comment, “If
people can’t access their hope, they live by their fear.” If you can’t access
your hope, if you forget about your hope, if you’re kept from your hope, if
you, for some reason, keep yourself from your hope, if you don’t dare to hope,
then you cannot live hopefully. Instead, you live fearfully. You let yourself
get caught up in the fear story. And there is enough fear and scarcity out
there already. We talked some about that last week. Fear of missing out. Fear
of running out. Fear of not enough. No. I heard an acronym for fear this week
that I really like. Fear, F E A R, is False Evidence Appearing Real. Fear is
something that’s not true, tricking you into thinking it is. Fear of not
enough. No, there is enough. Fear of missing out. No, there are so many
opportunities out there. Fear of dying. No. We Christians believe in the
resurrection and in eternal life. We believe that death is not the end. We put
our hope in God’s abundance. In God we trust, and will not fear. In God we
hope, and will not despair.
A wonderful sign of hope is singing. The fourth verse of
Silent Night says, “with the angels let us sing, Alleluia to our King.” This is
a sign of hope in the face of fear. While the prophet Isaiah said the child
born to us will be called the prince of peace, that was also a name given to
Caesar Augustus, the Roman Emperor when Jesus was born. The wise men,
themselves sometimes called Kings of the Orient, seek a newborn King. King
Herod hears the news and is troubled and terrified. He’s worked hard to secure
his kingdom. There can’t be another
King. Yet, “with the angels let us sing, Alleluia to our King.” We sing to our King, King Jesus. It’s a sign of
hope. The government isn’t king. The weather isn’t king. No political party is
king. No country is king. Capitalism isn’t king. Amazon isn’t king. Jesus is King.
Singing Alleluia to our King gets our priorities back in line. God is God and
we are not. Sing to God. Sing in the face of despair.
Acts 16 tells the story of one of the times the apostle
Paul was put in prison. This time it was because he commanded an evil spirit to
come out of a slave girl. Now, that spirit had enabled the enslaved girl to
predict the future and her owners made a great deal of money off her
fortune-telling. When the owners realized their hope of money making was gone,
they dragged Paul and Silas before the authorities, accusing them of advocating
customs unlawful for Romans to accept or practice. The authorities had them
flogged and thrown in prison. What did Paul and Silas do in prison? They prayed
and they sang hymns to God. I remember this because a previous pastor at my
sending church in North Carolina preached about this. Her sermon was about hymns
you can take to jail with you. In the face of despair, what hymns can you sing?
In the face of fear, can you dare to sing “Amazing Grace” or “How Great Thou
Art”? Or maybe “O come O come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel”[2]?
Here I am, God. Please come save me. God, you are great and your goodness
endures forever. What hymn is a sign of hope for you? What song could you
manage to get out in order to defy the darkness? One way to spark hope is by
singing. Try it sometime. It doesn’t matter how you sound, because that’s not
the point. The goal is to “spark hope.”[3]
What
are some other ways to spark hope? Call out fear as fear. Name is as false
evidence appearing real. Remind yourself that God is in control. Remind
yourself that you can do this. Remind
yourself that there is hope, there is
always hope, in God our Creator and Redeemer and Sustainer. “A mighty fortress
is my God, a bulwark never failing.”[4]
Or maybe it’s “Guide me, O thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren
land.”[5]
Or how about: “What have I to dread, what have I to fear, leaning on the
everlasting arms? I have blessed peace with my Lord so near, leaning on the
everlasting arms. Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms; leaning,
leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.”[6]
The hymns are full of hope in the face of fear and despair.
When
I saw this fourth Sunday was about hope and I was supposed to preach about hope,
my first thought was again? Another sermon about hope? I’ve done lots of
sermons about hope. I told my husband and he replied, “You preach about hope
all the time.” And the question changed to: How do I do a different sermon on
hope? What’s new? What do we need to hear? And, why do I seem to constantly
preach about hope?
I
preached about hope all the time at my previous appointment. One church
averaged 20 people in Sunday worship. They’d gone through many splits, many
church dramas and divisions. We had some newcomers come in, but not at the same
rate that older members moved away or moved on to heaven. They desperately
needed to hear hope.
At
the other church, we had about an even rate of newcomers and older members
moving away or moving into heaven. Church attendance was around 45 while I
served there. But there was some old church drama that hadn’t been dealt with.
The church office is in the parsonage, but it used to be in the church
building. I found the old church office. It had simply been abandoned. There
was still trash in the trash can. There was still a calendar on the wall from
the last year it had been used. It was bizarre. That happened a few pastors
back. Then the pastor immediately before me, two weeks before moving day, committed
suicide in the backyard of the parsonage and died inside the house. His mom
found him two days later. That church desperately needed hope as well. And
there I showed up 8 months pregnant and with a two year old, literally with the
new life they so desperately needed.
Y’all know your own story. Mostly. Actually, the story
you tell about yourself is important, especially whether you cast yourself as
the victim or as the heroine.[7]
What’s the story you tell yourself about what happened? If you can change the
story, what would happen? What do you want the story to be? Now, the story
isn’t over yet. What steps do you need to take to change how that story ends?
This is why I preach hope. Too many of us cast ourselves
as the victim when we could be the heroine. Too many of us think
fatalistically, as if we don’t have a choice. The truth is we do have a choice.
We have the choice of how we view things and how we move forward. That’s hope. Make
sure you’re telling yourself the right story. Make sure you’re telling yourself
the story of Jesus. “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! O what a foretaste of
glory divine! Heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of his Spirit, washed in
his blood. This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day
long; this is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long.”[8]
[1]
“Calm and Bright:200 Years of Silent Night” worship series sermon fodder
[2]
UMH 211
[4]
UMH 110
[5]
UMH 127
[6]
UMH 133
[8]
UMH 369
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