The Scripture Readings for this week are:
- Romans 13:11-14
- Matthew 24:36-44
The Sermon title is This Is Hope? This is Change!
Early Thoughts: We start off our journey to Christmas with the Sunday of Hope. And so of course we have a Gospel reading about the End Times paired with some Pauline injunctions about how we should live. What hope do we find in these passages?
The hope is in the change. The hope is in the fact that God is transforming the world, transforming us, when we least expect it. Of course that may also mean that the hope is in the pain, because sometimes transformative change is both painful and terrifying.
I always find it a challenge to know what to do with the apocalyptic passages in the Gospels. On the one hand they really tend to give off a "be afraid, be very afraid" vibe. On the other, I know that they are pointing to the hoped-for era when the Reign of God has broken into the world with full power and glory, when the world has been transformed and we return to the garden. There is fear but there is also promise. There is transformation and renewal and there is destruction. As we begin the season of Advent, the time when we prepare for God to break into the world as a baby in a manger, we remind ourselves that there is a continuing promise that God will break into the world in ways and times that we least expect.
That, in the end is our hope. Our hope is based on the God who continually breaks into the world and brings transformation. Sometimes the transformation is big. Most often, it seems to me, it happens in small, easily missed increments. Being awakened may be a shocking, blaring alarm. Or it may be a gentle "wake to music". Either way being awakened (being woke?) leads us to live differently in a world that is also different. Hope lies in being awake, even if being awake calls us to make changes.
What changes give you hope this year? What changes do you hope to see this year?
--Gord
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