The Word Made Flesh: Hope

A sermon by Dr. Jim Somerville, Pastor
Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
November 29, 2009

The First Sunday of Advent

Luke 21:25-36

          A couple of weeks ago I was in Ashland, Virginia, running some errands, when I found one of our members, John Adams, decorating the Christmas tree in the window of the Old Ashland Feed Store.  He seemed a little embarrassed to be caught, since it wasn’t even Thanksgiving yet.  John’s been to seminary; he understands the importance of sequence.  But he said they had to get the tree up because the parade was coming through town that weekend, passing right in front of the store, and if they didn’t get the tree up it would look like they didn’t have the Christmas spirit. 

I can appreciate that. 

It feels a little funny to about Christmas when so many of us still have Thanksgiving leftovers in the fridge, but here we are all the same, gathered for worship on the First Sunday of Advent, as we wait and prepare for the coming of Christ in this magnificent season.  Now maybe I should remind you (especially those of you who were out shopping on “Black Friday”) that Advent is not Christmas.  No matter how many Christmas carols you heard in the stores this is a season of waiting for the coming of Christ, of getting ready to receive the newborn king.  And just like when we were children it’s hard to wait.  Someone will probably ask me after the service today, “Why didn’t we sing ‘Joy to the World’?  I love that one!”  Well, I love it, too, but that song says, “Joy to the World, the Lord is come,” and if we’re going to go strictly by the book we probably ought to wait until he comes before we start singing songs about it.    

But this season of waiting and preparing has its own kind of magic.  It can make us all feel like children again, can’t it?  Lighting the candles, counting down the days, knowing that a miracle is about to happen?  When I was a boy the waiting for Christmas was, in some ways, even better than Christmas itself because right up until the time you opened that package from your grandmother and found out it was a pair of socks you could believe that it was almost anything: a pocket knife, a baseball glove, a pony.  So, in the weeks before Christmas I would look at the packages under the tree, pick them up and shake them and try to guess what was inside, and by Christmas Eve I was so excited I could hardly sleep.  My parents used to tell us that we had to wait until six o’clock to wake them up, but I would always wake up well before that, at three or four in the morning.  I would drag my mattress to the top of the stairs where I could see the clock on the dining room wall.  And even though it seemed as if the hands had gotten stuck sometimes, each minute that passed brought me a little closer to that moment when I could run down the stairs and shout,

“It’s Christmas!”

I loved that sense of anticipation; the waiting itself was wonderful.  And that’s what Advent is all about: four weeks of focused waiting and preparing for the coming of Christ.  And let me remind you that as Christians we not only commemorate that first coming, 2,000 years ago, we also wait and prepare for his Second Coming, which is still ahead.  So, we’re not just pretending to wait—this is real.  In Advent we seek to get ourselves and our souls ready as if Christ were coming tomorrow, because who knows?  He might.  This year we have chosen as our theme, “The Word Made Flesh,” from that well-known passage in John’s Gospel that says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God…and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”  It is that miracle—the miracle of the Incarnation—that we celebrate at Christmas.  But in these Sundays leading up to Christmas we light the traditional candles of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love, and in this Advent season I’d like to consider how each of those words became flesh in the person of Jesus, beginning with hope.  But how do you preach an entire sermon on a single word? 

§        You could begin with a dictionary definition, and just to keep it simple I’ll only give you the first definition, which is “the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.” 

§        You could look it up in a Bible dictionary, and given the definition we’ve just heard you might be interested to know that the word hope is used fifteen times in the Old Testament Book of Job.  In the New Testament it is considered the essence of Christianity (1 Pet. 3:15; Heb. 10:23); it’s what causes us to look forward to eternal life (Rom. 5:2); and along with faith and love it is one of the three things that “abide” (1 Cor. 13:13).

§        You could look in a dictionary of quotations, where according to Emily Dickinson, "Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all”; where Cicero announces—“dum spiro, spero” which means, “While I breathe, I hope”; and where the Roman poet Ovid says, “Let your hook be always cast.  In the pool where you least expect it, will be fish!”

§        Or you could do a Google search, to see where hope shows up on the World Wide Web.  I did, and learned that—among other things—Hope is a college in Michigan; it’s a town in Arkansas; it’s a cable TV channel sponsored by the Seventh Day Adventists; and it’s a conference for computer geeks called “Hackers on Planet Earth.” But as I continued the search I found that the word hope was showing up in some unlikely places: cancer wards, and rehab clinics, and third world countries.  In fact, the longer I searched the more I found the word hope associated with those places and situations where you would least expect it.  Or maybe that’s the thing about hope: that it shows up not where it’s most expected, but where it is most needed.

That’s been true in my experience.  When I talk with people who have been diagnosed with cancer they don’t usually sound hopeless.  They talk about having surgery and following it up with radiation, or they talk about some experimental treatment that’s been having good results.  And if their doctor tells them that the chances of survival are one to ten they cling to that “one” so hopefully you would think it was the other way around, ten to one.  In fact, this is when I hear the word hope most often: not when everything is going well but when things are not going well: that’s when people hold on to the slender thread of hope as if it were a rope that would keep them from going under.  I was explaining this to my daughter on Friday.  I told her how a jeweler will often show off a diamond against a piece of black velvet in order to create the greatest contrast between the hard, brilliant diamond, and the soft, velvety background.  It seems that way with hope: that only in our darkest moments does hope really begins to shine.   

And maybe that’s why, on this First Sunday of Advent, the lectionary readings always sound so gloomy.  Year after year it’s fire and famine, earthquake and flood, and this year is no different.  In Luke 21 we read that, "There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken” (vss. 25-26).  Usually when those passages are read people shake their heads and sigh.  “Why read that,” they wonder, “especially at this time of year?  Why not read about shepherds watching their flocks by night, and an angel of the Lord appearing, and the glory of the Lord shining round about?”  Why?  Well, only because these gloomy passages provide the backdrop against which hope shines most brilliantly.  “When all these things begin to happen,” Luke says, “then you will see the Son of Man coming with power and great glory” (21:27).

You see, it’s one thing when your doctor tells you that you have a one to ten chance of survival.  Then you can cling desperately to your hope in doctors and medicine and everyday miracles, but when the doctor sighs and says, “I’m sorry.  I’ve done all I can,” you begin to hope in a different way.  You fold your hands in prayer; you get down on your knees, you lift your eyes to heaven.  And some of the most hopeful passages in the Bible, including our Gospel reading for today, were written in moments just like those. 

§        When God’s people were about to be annihilated by the Assyrians the prophet Isaiah spoke of a time when a virgin would conceive and give birth to a child whose name was Immanuel, meaning “God is with us.” 

§        When they had been dragged off into exile, suffered for years and years, and almost given up any hope of ever hearing from the Lord again here came John the Baptist shouting, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” 

§        And for a little while in human history it was: the Word became flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth who preached and healed and spoke of the coming kingdom.  But then he began to talk about being arrested and tried and crucified, yet while his disciples were reeling from the blow he said, “And on the third day rise.”

§         And when the temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed, and the followers of Jesus were being imprisoned, tortured, and killed by the Roman empire, Luke remembered that Jesus had said, “When these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (21:28). 

That is hope beyond all earthly hope, and sometimes it is just the kind of hope we need.

I went to see Ralph Anderson at the hospital on Wednesday.  Ralph has been battling cancer, but he has come to that place where the doctor says that he has done all he can do.  So, when I saw Ralph on Wednesday he was getting ready to come home.  I thought I might find him lying in bed, feeling sorry for himself, but instead he was dressed, sitting up in a chair, waiting to go home.  We talked for a little while.  He told me what the doctor had told him.  But then I asked if I could say a prayer for him and asked what he would like me to pray for.  “Pray that I’ll be with the Lord,” he said.  “That you’ll be with the Lord?” I asked, just to make sure I was hearing him correctly.  “Yes,” he said, “Pray that I will be with the Lord,” and he said it in such a cheerful way it was hard to believe that we were talking about his death, and about what would come after it.  He seemed almost relieved, like someone who didn’t have to hold onto earthly hope any longer, who could finally lay down that heavy load and lift up his head to see his redemption drawing near. 

I would have been surprised if I hadn’t seen it so many times before in people who have given up all earthly hope, and whose only hope is in the Lord.  It’s as if—as long as their doctors, or lawyers, or stockbrokers, or marriage counselors are telling them there is reason to hope—they put their hope there, in the hands of the professionals.  But once that hope is gone they are free to put it somewhere else, in the hands of the Lord, and once they do they often feel a tremendous sense of relief.  Some of them will say, “Well, why didn’t I put it there in the first place?  Why did I ever trust in mortals?”  One of the definitions of hope is, “a person or thing in which expectations are centered,” as in, “the medicine was her last hope.”  But medicine is never our last hope.  Our expectations can be centered in a person as well as a thing.  They can be centered in Christ.

And so Luke reminds us of what Jesus once said to people who would someday face a situation that seemed hopeless: “When you see these things happening—when you see signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.  When people faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, and when the powers of the heavens are shaken—then you will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.  So, when these things begin to take place stand up and raise your heads: your redemption is drawing near.” 

Because Jesus is drawing near,

and that’s all the hope we need.

—Jim Somerville © 2009