The American poet Emily Dickinson compared hope to a bird in flight when she wrote,

"Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul…"

When I was a teenager, I remember watching the movies of Woody Allen, and reading one of his books, which had the intriguing title, Without Feathers. There we have, in a nutshell, the matter before us. Are we people of hope? We answer that question by asking another: "Are we people of faith?". Faith, according to the Book of Hebrews is, "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (11.1). I like the King James translation of the verse: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen".

This Advent we come to a turning point, a critical juncture in our lives. And we ask the question, are we people of hope? There is something very basic here. Faith and hope are the fundamentals of the Christian life, like blocking and tackling in football, like rebounding and passing in basketball.

We cannot have hope without faith, but we also cannot possess a strong faith without also being hopeful. They walk together, the Bible would say, faith and hope. We have faith in the power of God present in our world, sometimes visible, sometimes invisible. We have faith in people, sometimes merited, sometimes not. We have faith in ourselves, sometimes in confidence, sometimes not. Still, faith and hope are there, they are fundamentals.

And because we have faith, we are also people of hope. Despite the circumstances, we trust the future to God.

• Your 401 Ks have become 201 Ks, as a friend of mine said—still you trust the future to God.
• Your kid comes home with every letter in the alphabet on his report card—still you trust the future to God.
• Your favorite basketball team is worse than you every imagined---still you trust the future to God.

But in all seriousness, because we have faith, we are also people of hope.

• We face an uncertain future in the workplace—we trust the future to God.
• We make our way through the holidays, and someone important to us is missing—we trust the future to God.
• We stand before an open grave—we trust the future to God.

Hope is the thing with feathers. We are people of hope because we are carried through life by a power, a current, that sustains us, that strengthens us, that sets us free. And because we are people of hope we trust the future to God.

Now in this life we do encounter resistance. Some of the resistance comes from others—the human sin that affects us. Maybe you have lost some of your idealism. Maybe it is harder to have faith in other people because of your experience. Some of the resistance comes from within ourselves—there is only so much we can do. We have human limitations. We fall short, we miss the mark.

Because we encounter resistance, we live by faith and hope. Reinhold Niebuhr was a great theologian of the last century. He is noted for writing what was to become the serenity prayer, known and prayed by millions of addicts and their families. He wrote this affirmation:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime.
Therefore we must be saved by hope.
Nothing which is true and beautiful or good makes complete sense
at any moment in history.
Therefore we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore we are saved by love.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime. Therefore we must be saved by hope. We focus this morning on Jesus as our hope. He is the fulfillment of the prophet’s hope, of One who would teach us his ways, that we might walk in his paths. Jesus came to teach us a way to live. It was a path that was practical. Those who would come to the mountain of the Lord were not coming to offer gifts or to attend a festival. They were coming to learn something. And they were not just coming to learn facts, "head knowledge", someone has called it. They were coming to learn a way to live.

On a mountain, centuries later, Jesus gathered his disciples and gave them a way to life, a way to live a blessed life, a life filled with hope.

• Mourners would be comforted — that is what it means to trust the future to God.
• The meek would inherit the earth — that is what it means to trust the future to God.
• The pure in heart would see God — that is what it means to trust the future to God.
• The peacemakers would be called children of God — that is what it means to trust the future to God.
• Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness would be filled — that is what it means to trust the future to God.

When Jesus teaches us a way of life, it is about trusting the future to God. It is a word of hope. It has feathers. It takes flight. Which means, I guess, that we are not stuck in the ruts of our human sin and sloth, in our complacency and rebellion and prejudice.

One of the great hopes, of Isaiah and Jesus, was that we would live in peace. Isaiah’s words are clear and compelling:

They shall beat their swords into plowshares.
Their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation.
Neither shall they learn war any more.

In Washington, D.C., at the corner of Fourth Street and Indiana Avenue, there is a sixteen foot steel statue of a plowshare. Welded to the statue are thousands of disabled handguns, confiscated by the Police Department. The label of the sculpture reads, guns into plowshares.

They will beat their swords into plowshares. The biblical hope is that we will live in peace. Peace is where we are headed in next Sunday’s message. And yet like faith and hope, hope and peace also walk together. They are also fundamental.

When we come to the table of the Lord, we are aware that we are people of hope. In the communion liturgy we express this:

We also express our hope for peace:

One of the most vivid portraits of hope and peace comes at the end of one of my favorite movies, Places in the Heart (1984). Sally Field’s husband is murdered by a young black teenager. She struggles to keep her farm going, against great odds. We come to know a family and a community that experiences a full measure of human tragedy and sin, through her life. In this gripping film there is racism and adultery, grief and loss, anger and violence. Some of the events are premeditated, others seem random and accidental. After the death of her husband she struggles for economic and emotional survival. Yet within the film there is also courage and compassion, grace and blessing.

The film concludes with the community at worship in a small country church. The familiar words of scripture are read from I Corinthians 13; a gospel hymn is sung, and then we hear the words of the institution of the Lord’s Supper. The trays of holy communion are passed from one person to another. Seemingly everyone in the community is present, even those who have been estranged from one another.

While this is obviously a white church, we soon recognize the presence of Moze, a black servant who had been beaten by the Klan and forced to leave town. Then Edna receives the communion, and passes it to her deceased husband, who passes the elements to the black teenager who had murdered him!

Clearly, this is a vision of the kingdom of God, where barriers of race and class are removed, where sin is forgiven, where God’s will is done "on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6. 10). It is a scene that could only be made possible through the reconciling work of Jesus Christ, who said of his accusers, "Father, forgive them" (Luke 23. 34), and to the thief on the cross beside him, "Today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23. 43).

Through the cross of Jesus, God makes peace with the world. And this is our hope.