Text: 1 Peter 1: 3-6, 9-15,22<\/p>\n
Keep awake! Get ready! Prepare yourselves!
\nThese are the words that fly at us from the scriptures for this first Sunday of Advent.
\nBut get ready for what?
\nGet yourself ready for the future that God has already prepared for you.
\nGet ready to embrace the life that Christ is calling you to embrace.
\nDon\u2019t just go through the motions of basic goodness, basic practices, and basic sincerity\u2026
\nPrepare yourself to truly and fully live your life for the Kingdom of God. <\/p>\n
Over these weeks of Advent, we are going to be exploring John Wesley\u2019s sermon, \u201cAlmost Christian,\u201d where he invites us to hold our lives up against the picture of all that God is inviting us to be and become.
\nAre we there yet?
\nAre we doing it perfectly?
\nOf course not.
\nBut if we never take the time to check in and evaluate our lives, we will never do what it takes to take the next step.
\nSo this year, as we get ready for Christmas, we are also getting ready and preparing to receive Christ even more fully into our hearts and our lives.
\nThis year, we will look at what it might take the get ourselves ready to become Altogether Christians, who wholeheartedly trust God and put that trust into action.
\nWill you pray with me?<\/p>\n
How many of you have ever had a bad day? What about a bad week? Or a whole year?
\nLife is downright tough sometimes. It is unfair. It is cruel.
\n We finally find the job we have been searching for, and then our spouse gets laid off.
\nA misunderstanding destroys a friendship.
\nNatural disasters wipe homes off the map.
\n Children go hungry.
\nAnd sometimes in the midst of all of the problems this world endures we might start to ask a question that my colleague, Sarah Bessey, asked: \u201cHow could we possibly enter into Advent if we are paying attention to this world?\u201d
\nShe goes on to say:
\n\u201cWhen, in response to every crisis, our communities seem splintered and divided even in how to bind up each other\u2019s wounds and careless words are flung like rocks at our own glass houses? When perhaps we are lonely or bored or tired or sick or broke or afraid? When we are grieving and sad?
\nIn these days, celebration can seem callous and uncaring, if not outright impossible.
\nBut here\u2019s the thing: we enter into Advent precisely because we are paying attention.
\nIt\u2019s because everything hurts that we prepare for Advent\u2026
\nWe don\u2019t get to have hope without having grief. Hope dares to admit that not everything is as it should be, and so if we want to be hopeful, first we have to grieve. First we have to see that something is broken and there is a reason for why we need hope to begin with.
\nAdvent matters, because it\u2019s our way of keeping our eyes and our hearts and our arms all wide open even in the midst of our grief and longing.\u201d (https:\/\/sarahbessey.substack.com\/p\/does-advent-even-matter-when-the)<\/p>\n
When I think back on the tough times that I have been through in my life\u2026
\nas I have listened to folks share their own stories\u2026
\nwhat often transforms the despair of grief into the dawning of hope is that we stop being mad and angry and frustrated and we start living into the reality that we believe is possible.
\nIt seems contrite to say that there are two ways of looking at world \u2013 either as a glass half-full or a glass half-empty\u2026 but maybe it really is as simple as that.
\nEither the world is a place of darkness or it is a place where the light of God dwells\u2026
\nEither God has abandoned us or God is working out a plan of salvation\u2026
\nEither Christ\u2019s work is done or soon and very soon the Son of Man is coming\u2026
\nCan you hear the difference in those statements?
\nAre we going to live as a people of hope?
\nOr are we going to let the grief and frustration overcome us?
\nThat is our choice.
\nThat is why the prophets and the apostles cry out \u2013 Keep Awake! Get Ready! Prepare Yourselves!<\/p>\n
Hope itself can seem na\u00efve when the world around us is falling apart.
\nBut I turn to scriptures like the one we have read today from 1 Peter, because they remind me that the trials we are experiencing are nothing new.
\nIn the midst of persecution, Peter wrote to early Jewish and Gentile Christians with advice about \u201chow to survive in the midst of a hostile world\u201d (The Rev. Sharon Ann Alexander \u2013 CEB Women\u2019s Bible Commentary)
\nIn the midst of their suffering, they are not promised that everything will be better, but they are invited to be born into a living hope.
\nThis hope is not a pie in the sky wish.
\nIt is a hope grounded in the reality that the one we put our faith and trust in has already overcome the reality of execution and death.
\nAnd we do not embrace this hope haphazardly.
\nWe place our hope on Christ with minds that are fully sober and thinking clearly.
\nOr as the Message translation puts it: \u201cRoll up your sleeves, put your mind in gear, be totally ready to receive the gift that is coming when Jesus arrives.\u201d <\/p>\n
And we do that by embracing God\u2019s will, God\u2019s holiness, God\u2019s truth in everything we do.
\nWe do that by putting our faith and trust and hope into action. <\/p>\n
The first step, Peter reminds us is to stop living in grief, despair, and the patterns of our lives before Christ.
\nWe need to let go off everything that bogs us down and drains us.
\nOr as the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 13: we can\u2019t afford to waste a minute, we must not squander these precious hours of daylight in frivolity and indulgence, in sleeping around, in bickering and grabbing everything in sight. Get out of bed and get dressed!
\nThink about one thing that you can do differently this Advent season as you prepare for Christmas.
\nWhat is something that you can do that will renew your hope and your faith\u2026 instead of depleting your energy and your faith?
\nIn our Advent study, \u201cAltogether Christmas,\u201d Ingrid McIntyre reminds us of the difference between almost hope and altogether hope.
\n\u201cOne stands at a distance while the other relentlessly pursues; one offers platitudes while the other dives deep into the hopelessness of a situation and offers light in the darkness \u2013 light that grows and grows and grows.\u201d (p. 42)
\nInstead of spending hours shopping for perfect present, could you go to someone who is struggling and spend that time with them, offering hope and light into their life? <\/p>\n
The next step is to keep God in the center of all we do.
\nSometimes, in our frustrating times, in the days that seem without hope, we turn our backs on God.
\nWe look for salvation in all the wrong places.
\nWe look for things that will make us feel better, self-medicating with alcohol or shopping sprees or social media.
\nWe turn towards the darkness and yell at it for being so dark.
\nAnd we continue to feel alone, and empty, and lost.
\nBut instead, when we reconnect with the very one who gave us new birth as a living hope\u2026 when we love and trust and believe and rejoice in this God even on the tough days\u2026 then the very same power that raised Christ from the dead fills up our lives and gives us the strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
\nSo find some time this Advent to spend in devotion and prayer. Take some time to reflect on those questions from the sermon \u201cAlmost Christian.\u201d Let the Spirit of Christ fill your heart. <\/p>\n
Finally, we need to embrace the truth that hope is not just a sentiment, but an action we are called to embrace with every fiber of our being.
\nIn her article, Sarah Bessey writes that \u201cAdvent holds the truth of what is right now up to the truth of what was and what will be.\u201d
\nAs our Advent study, \u201cAlmost Christmas,\u201d reminds us:
\n\u201cJohn Wesley saw and experienced the same society problems as others, but instead of accepting them, he raised hell about them so that just maybe a few neglected others could experience hope\u2026 the Church of England wasn\u2019t living up to the church Wesley saw described in the scriptures. [so] Wesley became prophetic hope for the church.\u201d
\n\u201cHope came when a group of people were unwilling to stay silent, who weren\u2019t afraid to stand up and say, \u2018We just can\u2019t do this anymore.\u2019\u2026 \u201cInstead of just saying the words, \u2018thy kingdom come,\u2019 Wesley let God embody the hope of those words through his flesh.\u201d (p50-51)
\nThis Advent, find ways to let the hope of God come alive in your flesh.
\nSponsor a family for Christmas.
\nSpeak out against immigration policies that are hurting families.
\nMarch for the climate crisis.
\nVisit our homeless neighbors.
\nFill the food pantry with donations\u2026
\nWhatever it is that is breaking your heart\u2026 whatever it is that you are grieving\u2026 find a way to hold it up to the truth of what God desires for that situation and get ready to do something about it.
\nMake hope real with your arms and legs and feet.
\nThen, maybe God\u2019s altogether hope will be born into this world once again. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Text: 1 Peter 1: 3-6, 9-15,22 Keep awake! Get ready! Prepare yourselves! These are the words that fly at us from the scriptures for this first Sunday of Advent. But get ready for what? Get yourself ready for the future that God has already prepared for you. Get ready to embrace the life that Christ…<\/span><\/p>\n