November 30, 2014
What is your hope built
upon?
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts
be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord our Rock and our Redeemer. AMEN.
All of us have seen the Christmas decorations that
have invaded Wal-Mart. We now are
continuously hearing the Christmas music on the radio and television and in
less than four weeks will unmistakably want the season of Christmas to be
over. Yet, the reality is that we aren’t
in the Christmas season. The music being
played by secular stations and the marketing machines may be real Christmas
songs, but we are not in the Christmas season.
The reality is that we have lost the sacredness of the season we begin actually
begin today.
Today is the First Sunday in Advent. Advent is a season with one intent. To point to and look for the coming of the
Christ Child. In our churches heritage
we count the four weeks leading up to Christmas through an evergreen wreath
that holds four candles and signifies the season of preparation of Advent. For the next four weeks here in worship we
will light the candles at the beginning of each service and explore each of
these candles and their meanings in our daily lives with the end in mind, the
real Christmas Season, which comes the twelve days after December 24th. The first candle that we begin with today on
the First Sunday in Advent is known as the Candle of Hope.
If you have seen any of the events of the last week
from the major news and media outlets or rants or opinions on Facebook, it
would probably be about Ferguson, Missouri.
The tragic events that transpired made me think of a simple question as
I look to the Candle of Hope this the First Sunday in Advent. What
is your hope built upon?
Just last week we finished another church year
looking to the end times or the coming of Jesus Christ in Glory to judge all of
mankind. With the events in our country
and our world, some wonder if Jesus Christ return is not any closer. But the reality is that our hope is and
should be built on nothing less than Jesus Christ.
From our readings this morning, we have heard from Isaiah
the prophet to the Psalmist, David and in our Gospel we hear from Saint John,
there is one theme. Jesus Christ, the
Word made flesh is “the light that
shines in the darkness.” Jesus
Christ is the answer to any and all problems that we individually and
collectively face in our world today.
Jesus Christ is the only answer to our collective question of “What is your hope built upon?”
For us this morning, the Candle of Hope is a
poignant and purposeful reminder of just that, a hope built upon the promise of
a Messiah coming to walk this earth, heal the sick, down trodden and the poor
and ultimately for Him to die in order that we might have life. The Candle of Hope is to be a light for each
and every one of us on our individual journeys and our world of the Messiah
Jesus Christ and His entrance in a lowly manger in Bethlehem. From the time of Adam and Eve through Moses
and Elijah and Isaiah, up until the manger in Bethlehem, everyone was looking
for the Hope that was coming from a Branch of Jesse. Jesus Christ was the hope to be born in
Bethlehem that was promised and is our hope we have today in our world.
Edward Mote stated the firm belief and conviction of
the Candle of Hope in his song entitled, “My Hope is Built on Nothing Less”. In this hymn Mote clearly states that our
anchor is Jesus Christ. It is upon Jesus
Christ and the promises He makes to each of us in our baptism that we can fully
rely upon in our every day lives. This
is why the Advent season is filled not only with hope of remembering the coming
Savior, but what He will do for each of us on the Cross of Calvary thirty years
later.
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