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December 03, 2006

"The Days are Surely Coming"

Jeremiah 33: 14-16

The question of the week for me is how do I bring word of hope for this First Sunday of Advent. As I sat down to write this sermon, I had my Christmas music playing in the background and I thought, okay, God what is the word of hope? What is the word of that will inspire us as a congregation to prepare and to await this Holy Child? What is the word that will set the tone of this Advent season for Midway Christian Church?

Johnny Mathis continued to sing about this being the most wonderful time of the year with people hurrying home with treasures to wrap and place under the tree and I realized that the Christmas music just wasn’t working. The Hope of the Season couldn’t find its way into my heart to inspire and to help me bring the Word for the beginning of Advent.

So I got up and thought well, maybe I just needed to be in the Christmas-y mood and there is one sure fire way to get me in the Christmas spirit. So I decided to watch How the Grinch stole Christmas. A heart-warming tale of redemption and the true meaning of Christmas. But still the Hope of the Season kept getting lost in the rhymes of Dr. Seuss. And even when the Grinch’s heart grew three sizes that day, I wasn’t inspired to bring a word of hope for this beginning of the Advent season.

Then on Friday morning, while I was eating breakfast and watching the Today show, the hope of the season came through to me in the form of a voice of little girl from South Africa. Matt Lauer had set up the piece, discussing that even though the time of Apartheid was over for South Africa, many of the young people have been referred to as the country’s “lost generation. He introduced a new documentary that features a school that is now telling this generation that they are indeed found. In the next segment, a young girl’s voice overlaps this picture of a beautiful sunrise in South Africa and you hear her say, “It is a relief to come to my school. All the bad things that have happened over the weeks are gone. Every time I come to my school, it is a new place. It is a new world.” Matt Lauer starts the interview by where did the name Ithuteng come from for this movie, and one of the gentlemen explains that there are 11 national languages in South Africa and Ithuteng means something just a little different in each language but the essence is the same: Never stop learning. Matt Lauer continues by asking why you were drawn to tell this story of children who have been assaulted, abused, raped, and even infected with the AIDS virus. The director of the film speaks up and shares that it really wasn’t the storyline that compelled them to tell the story. It is too dark and too violent. But when they stepped off the plane and met the children, all the children had smiles on their faces. And this group wanted to know after hearing all the stories of the children who have lost parents, been raped, and infected with the AIDS virus, how can these children smile? And one answer came to them: Hope.

Mama Jackey who runs the school for these forgotten children “goes to schools in Soweto and says, I want your bad kids. And they say, What? She says I want the kids you’ve given up on, the kids that you’ve got no hope for, the ones that you don’t even know what to do with anymore…And she sits in a room with these children, “Where do you see yourselves in five years? And they can’t answer the question. And then she proceeds to tell them, if you keep going the way you’re going, you’re either gonna end up dead or worse, you’ll end up in jail. If you come with me, I’ll show you there’s a life worth living.”

Another gentleman explains that Mama Jackey’s idea that none of these children that are labeled a lost cause or hopeless are actually hopeless gives us all a lot of hope, that no one is ever completely a lost cause and everyone’s sort of got this within them. And she just finds it.

And at the end of the interview, one gentleman shares one last experience that changed his life. He said that he was packing up equipment and was tired, and a young girl came up to him and asked why are you not smiling. He said that he was tired and sad because he had just heard her story of how she was raped. And this young girl looks him in the eye and says you don’t have the right not to smile. You are alive.

You are alive.

That is what the prophet Jeremiah is sharing with us today. There is hope because you are alive and God will remember you as a child of God. When the prophet Jeremiah was writing, “the city of Jerusalem [was] under siege by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar and the people would shortly go into exile. Jeremiah was in prison and the people were about to lose everything that had ever given meaning to their lives, the Temple, the city, their king, their priesthood, their homes, their families. God seemed silent, absent, and preoccupied with judging the people for wrongs in the past.”
And Jeremiah is offering another word of hope for the people of Jerusalem. God is not silent. God is not absent. God is continuing to work and reshape our ideas of God’s purpose. Jeremiah was writing to Jerusalem from prison and letting people know that this is not the God that you have experienced in our lives. The God we know is faithful. The God we know is loving. The God we know is a God of justice and mercy. You must never give up the hope that comes in God’s promise. God is working. God will remember. This is not God’s final word.

Jeremiah knows that there is a newness that comes with God’s promise of justice and righteousness. There will be new life. There will always be a future with God, a future that is filled with possibilities. And although there will be judgment, God show God’s love through the redemption of God’s people always. This is not the final word. God is working. God will remember.

And that is the word of hope that I bring to you this morning. That is word that I bring to you as we prepare and await the coming of the Christ child. That is the word that I bring that sets the tone of our Advent season. A word of hope. A word of newness. A word of promise.

Jeremiah reminds us that all we know is that God has promised in the days to come that God will fulfill God’s promise of a new leader who is filled with God’s justice and God’s righteousness. We just don’t know the details. Only God knows the details.

Jeremiah reminds us that we know that God will bring forth a leader who will bring justice for the forgotten, for the lost, for those who society has pushed to the sidelines and labeled as hopeless. We don’t know the details.

Jeremiah reminds us that there is always a future with God. That there is always new life. That there is a future filled with possibilities. God is not silent. God is not absent. God is still working, still reshaping our expectations and our ideas.

And that is what Advent is all about. We wait. We listen. We anticipate.
We wait for the incoming of God to come and be with us once again, but we just don’t know when or where. We wait in anticipation and surprise as God continues to work and reshape and give us hope.

And as we wait, we do not sit idly by, twiddling our thumbs, always on the look out. We have been given a call as people of God to help bring about the kingdom of God in our world today.

During the season of Advent we are reminded that we are alive, that we have hope in the promises of God, and are called to share that hope of God with the world. Advent is about remembering where God has worked in our past, embracing our commitment to our call in the present, and visioning a future where there is justice, where there is grace, where there are no more wars, where there no more children whose innocence is lost to violence, where there is peace and hope.

The days are surly coming when God will fulfill God’s promise of justice and righteous. The days are surly coming when God will once again bring forth new life to the world. The days are surly coming when God will remember.

The days are surly coming.

May we wait with surprise and action. Amen.

Rev. Heather McColl
Midway Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

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