November 30, 2025 "Hope at the beginning"

First Sunday in Advent

Isaiah 2:1-5

Psalm 122

Romans 13:11-14

Matthew 24:36-44

Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ,

grace and peace to you from the one who is on the way! Amen

Happy New Year!

Yes, once again we are at the beginning of the church calendar,

 the annual cycle we use to mark time

 that guides us first through Jesus’ life

and then through considering how to live as disciples of Jesus,

and as always

we begin with a call to Wake Up! 

God is coming!

And while it is supposed to be good news,

that God is on the way,

we can be forgiven for becoming a bit alarmed

by the way the call to preparation is phrased.

Urgent!

Wake up!

The Lord is coming!

 Be prepared!

 (Even though you don’t know when the Lord is coming).

 It is the moment to wake from sleep!

Put on the armor of light!

 (as opposed to the works of darkness)

 Don’t be caught unawares

 like all the people that didn’t get on the ark!

Be good, Jesus is coming,

you don’t want to be caught with your pants down!

No really, Keep awake!

(even though it is impossible to remain awake all the time especially since the Lord is coming at an unknown hour like a thief in the night),

thieves coming in the night?

 that’s a bad thing

so is the coming of the lord a good thing?

We wonder, with uncertainty

and perhaps a bit of fear mixed in,

though the fear comes more from an outside interpretation of scripture

that is prevalent in society,

 an interpretation by those who have specifically sought

to use fear as motivation

- this is the let’s make hell so scary that you feel you have no other choice than to accept Jesus crowd-

they tend to take these Wake Up images

 and make them as alarming as possible.

But that’s not what they about,

 rather they are simply about naming the reality

 of all the ways the world is broken right now

 and how that brokenness is the cause of pervasive

conflict, hate, war, sorrow, and despair,

and yes these are fearful things

but they are not caused by God’s coming

 rather it is into the midst of all this that God is coming,

 and God “shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore.”

Now this sounds like good news,

 and this is precisely where the church year starts.

 As commentator Matthew Myer Boulton remarks: 

“You might think the year would begin with the trumpets of Easter, or the softness of Christmas Eve, or the winds of Pentecost — but on the contrary, we begin in the shadows of despair, war, sorrow, and hate. For it’s precisely there that the God of grace will arrive, and accordingly, it’s precisely there that God’s church is called to light candles of hope, peace, joy, and love. It’s worth remembering this deep poetry: as the Christian new year begins, we join hands and enter the darkness, actively waiting, singing, and praying anew for God’s light to overwhelm the world.” https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2019/11/26/be-ready-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-advent-week-one 

We begin the year

 holding reality and the promise that this reality will not last forever together,

 and this is in essence hope:

 to acknowledge the hard truth and to still believe in a good future,

and not just believe in a good future

but to start living it out right now.

That’s what the call to preparation is all about,

not avoiding a scary judgmental Jesus,

 but being so excited about God’s vision for the future,

a vision God promises to turn into reality,

 that we start living that reality now

and we see this in our scriptures for today.

The prophet Isaiah imagines

the nations flooding to the Lord to learn peace

and concludes “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”

or in other words,

“let’s start now!”

Paul says

“it is already the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone; the day is near. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light…”

in other words,

 “let’s start now!”

Jesus says

 “Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

in other words

“the timing is unknown, so start living the way of God now!”

This is how we prepare for the coming of God,

 by living the way of God right now,

not because we fear judgment

 but because our hope for God’s future is so strong

 that we cannot wait to start living the way of God,

and while we know that we on our own

 (as individuals and even as communities)

cannot transform the whole world as God will,

we also know

 that even one candle lit in a dark room

spreads light to every corner,

and the more candles lit the stronger light grows.

So today,

 at the beginning of the year,

 even as we name the truth of reality

we also name our hope for the future

that Christ is on the way to transform the world.

And our hope is so strong

that we can’t wait for Christ to arrive

 but start living it right now,

 beginning by lighting one candle,

 the candle of hope,

and watching as the light begins to spread. Amen