GOD SPEAKS HOPE
Second Sunday in Advent, 2022
Readings: Isa. 55:1-13; Ps. 119:1- 16; Romans 15:4-13; Luke 21:25-33
4 December a.d. 2022
GOD SPEAKS HOPE
Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be always acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength and my redeemer. AMEN.
The world has practically stolen the Advent season from the Church, scrambling it up with Halloween and Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and Christmas, and Kwanzaa, leaving us without Advent.
What is Advent? A penitential season for preparing ourselves to meet Jesus: Preparing to meet Jesus at the day of Judgment, preparing to meet Jesus at our death, preparing to meet Jesus every day of our lives, coming to us always in grace and judgement.
Preparing means that we use the means God has provided, the Word, the Sacraments, and his church -- diligently. It means that we search the Scriptures for God’s promises of love, and we believe them and cling to them. It means we pray for grace to follow Jesus every day and to obey him. It means that we put all our faith and trust in Jesus, who will be our judge, but who also forgives our sins and loves us.
One day we will all meet Jesus. Whether that meeting with Jesus fills us with expectant joy or the deadliest dread depends on how we prepare now for then.
SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT
The Collect for this Sunday announces its theme to us:
BLESSED Lord,
who hast caused all holy Scriptures
to be written for our learning;
Grant that we may in such wise
hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,
that by patience & comfort of thy holy Word,
we may embrace, and ever hold fast,
the blessed hope of everlasting life,
which thou hast given us
in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
How are we to use the Scriptures? So that “by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ.”
Stated another way: “We must use the Scriptures so that we may embrace and forever cling to the hope of everlasting life in Jesus Christ.”
The Scriptures are the only foundation for our hope, and they found our only hope on Jesus Christ.
Hope. In today’s epistle St. Paul tells us that the Scriptures’ whole purpose is that through their patience and comfort (strengthening) we might learn to hope in Jesus Christ. Hoping is much harder than it seems, so arduous, so contrary to our nature, that we must have the Scriptures and the power of the Holy Ghost to keep hope alive.
I want y’all to consider this morning:
Hope is not natural.
Hope is not seen.
Hope is in Jesus Christ only.
Hope begets repentance.
HOPE IS NOT NATURAL
You might not think hope is that tough to hold onto, but hope does not come naturally to us. We want the cash in hand now, not the check, not the promise.
Hope may not be natural to us, but with faith and love it is one of the three essential virtues that God graciously gives every Christian. Our hope in Christ marks us out and separates from the hopeless and unhoping world. Without hope you are not a Christian, but not simply hope-in-hope or hope-in-anything, but specifically hope in everlasting life through Jesus Christ.
You say it’s easy to hold on to that hope? Then you have never seen someone you love more than your own life die in your arms and be lowered into the ground and covered with dirt. You have never been left alone with your empty grief and listened to the question ringing through your mind: Do I really believe in the hope of everlasting life? Do I really believe my beloved is in the arms of Jesus? Or is she just clean gone forever, perished beyond life or knowing or hope, and I will soon follow her into the dark nothingness.
No, hope is not natural.
HOPE IS NOT SEEN
In Romans 8:24 St. Paul tells us we are “Saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?” In other words, we don’t need to hope for things we see already, because we already have them. Hope only applies to the things we want but we cannot see.
Can you see Jesus? No, not with your eyes. Listen: we live in a materialistic age. Our age does not believe in anything that cannot be seen, measured, weighed, touched, photographed, and smelled. Our age pretends that this materialism is an intellectual virtue, the only rationalism and science, the only realistic way to approach the world, and those who believe in things or people or gods they cannot see are, well, hopeless. Stupid. Laughable. Self-deceived.
Every day this entire world and all its proud authorities are battling together with their father the devil to kill the hope of Jesus Christ in you, to plant the seed of doubt, to turn your hope into despair because you have no proof, you cannot see Jesus.
St. Paul tells us that our gracious God, who supplies all things we need before we even know to ask, has supplied for us the Scriptures so that neither the devil nor the whole materialistic, unbelieving, God-denying, Christ-hating world can destroy your hope. That is the unfailing weapon God has given you to maintain your hope against doubt and despair. And to strengthen you to patiently cling to that hope.
HOPE IS IN JESUS CHRIST ONLY
In Hebrews 11 St. Paul writes, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
In the Scriptures God presents many promises to us: He says things like:
“I have loved you with an everlasting love.’’ Jeremiah 31:3
“If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:19
“Christ died for our sins and was buried and rose again the third day.” 1 Cor 15:3-4”
“There is therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus” Romans 8:1
“For by one offering Christ hath perfected for even them that are sanctified.” Hebrews 10:14
“Wherefore [Christ] is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.” Hebrews 7:25.
These are the promises, but how do we know God means them for us? Because when we read them in the Scripture the Holy Spirit begets hope in us that God has adopted us and these promises are ours so that we cry out to him, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are God’s children. (Romans 8:15-16; Galatians 4:6).
So through the Scriptures, in the power of the Holy Ghost, we not only believe God’s promises, but also we believes he makes them to us personally. That faith becomes both the substance of what we hope for, and the evidence of what we cannot yet see.
HOPE BEGETS REPENTANCE
It is not possible that the same Scriptures that beget in us hope in Jesus Christ will not also beget in us a holy fear of Christ’s coming in judgment, as we see prophesied in today’s Gospel.
Neither is it possible that the Scriptures beget in us faith and hope without also begetting love for Jesus Christ. And if we love him, we will also obey him, and whenever we do sin – and we will surely sin in this life – we repent and confess our sins and turn from them.
So, when I say to you, “Advent is a penitential season for preparing ourselves to meet Jesus,” I mean just that. One day we will face our just Lord in judgement, and because we know not when that day will come, today or tomorrow or a hundred years, and because we love him and want to please him, we must prepare now, in this mortal life, for that day of judgment.
How do we prepare? We use the Scriptures so that we may embrace and forever cling to the hope of everlasting life in Jesus Christ.”
And because that hope is founded on Jesus Christ, it can never disappoint us. Ω
Glory be to the Father,
And to the Son,
And to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning,
Is now and ever shall be,
World without end, Amen.
