Providence United Methodist Church

December 3, 2000 ~ First Sunday of Advent

Scripture ~ Jeremiah 33: 14-16

Sermon ~ Waiting At Century’s End

Preacher ~ George Thompson

 

 

 

            The year 2000 marked the passage of a good Bible scholar and theologian who happened to make his living as a cartoonist. In one of his remarkable Sunday strips, Charles Schultz depicts Lucy speaking to Linus, whose thumb is in his mouth and security blanket is tucked against his ears. “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone before,” she began. “Do you see that hill over there? Someday I’m going over that hill and find the answer to my dreams . . . I’m going . . . to find happiness and fulfillment. I think, for me, all the answers to life lie beyond those clouds and over the grassy slopes of that hill.” Linus is less than impressed. He removes his thumb long enough to respond. “Perhaps there’s another little kid on the other side of that hill who is looking this way and thinks that all the answers to life lie on this side of the hill.” Lucy ponders Linus’ sobering logic. She looks at Linus for a moment. Then she turns toward the hill and shouts, “Forget it, kid!”

 

            Each Advent we stand at year’s end before the formidable hill of our future. We cannot see what lies on the other side. But we fantasize that, over that hill, there is a future far greater than this place, these times, and these historic circumstances. At years’ end, we face unique and unanticipated issues: a disputed presidential election, the decline in internet stocks, and new violence in Israel. So, on this first Sunday of Advent, we hear the Lucy-like voice of the Old Testament prophet,  Jeremiah: “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the House of Israel and the house of Judah.”[1]

 

            This persistent prophet deposited thirty-nine chapters of poetry, glued together by a redactor’s narrative, in which he anticipated doom and gloom for Judah’s future. But in chapters thirty through thirty-three he articulates an entirely different message. Theologians have tagged this section, “The Book of Consolation.” Jeremiah’s language explodes with a surprising message of hard headed hope. The cruel Babylonians had already conducted two brutal waves of ethnic cleansing. In 597 B. C. they had sacked the city of Jerusalem, removing its valuable temple treasures. In 586 B. B. they exiled all the intellectuals and artisans, taking them to live near the rivers of Babylon as slaves. Jeremiah himself escaped into Egypt -- an exodus in reverse. These were the worst of times in the entire saga of Hebrew history. No one in their right mind would envision even a slight ray of hope penetrating over the formidable hill leading to Judah’s future. Only Jeremiah, the visionary prophet whose warnings had been ignored by monarchs for two decades, dared to  speak a word of implausible hope.  Even as he walked through the smoldering ashes of Jerusalem on his route toward servitude in Egypt, Jeremiah announced, “In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.”[2]  Before leaving, this extraordinary man of courage and vision visited the bankrupt office of a real estate agent in his hometown of Anathoth. He insisted upon paying the agent an inflated price for a useless piece of nearby land. Soon the agent would be slaughtered or made a slave. This God-forsaken, scorched earth would be abandoned even by the Babylonian conquerors. But Jeremiah invested all the money he still had on the future of the House of Judah.

 

            Jeremiah’s actions were more than expressions of optimism. Jeremiah demonstrated hope, not optimism. Biblical hope is always the enemy of optimism. It is the optimist who so believes in himself or the vitality of the human spirit that he or she trust that the future will always turn up rosy. Such optimism is the antithesis of biblical hope. All the wisdom literature written during the Babylonian exile referred to such stinking thinking as vanity, a striving after the wind.

 

            Jeremiah believed that the sons and daughters of Abraham would suffer as a result of generations of apostasy. He expected to die in Egypt, devoid of fulfillment for his own life. Like the cartoon character Lucy, Jeremiah contemplated his own fulfillment, but concluded, “Forget it, kid.” Yet, he rooted his hope in the ultimate faithfulness of God within the land of the living. No evil, no political power, no tyranny is strong enough to deter the ultimate arrival of God’s love, power, and justice!

 

            So, Jeremiah waited. And so do we. In Jeremiah-like expectation we actively wait during Advent. Now there are two forms of waiting: active and passive. Passive waiting is the posture of despair. Active waiting is the posture of biblical hope.

 

            This is the final Advent season of the Second Christian Millennium. This Advent is the season for some serious waiting. We lighted a candle of anticipation this morning at the Advent wreath. This is technically the last month of a passing Century, contrary to all the frenzy of a year ago with its bogus Y2K hysteria. The Twentieth Century ends much as it began. In the year 1900, our great-grandparents acted as if technology would bring us fulfillment. An optimistic journal took the name The Christian Century.   In 1900, with all the political alliances that had existed from the time of Bismarck, many envisioned a century of peace and prosperity. But the assassination of a noble in Sarajevo was like a match igniting ethnic hatreds and the guns of August. Two world wars and hundreds of frightful military conflicts ensued during the so-called Christian Century. The aspirations of Zionism at the century’s inception led to empty promises but no homeland for Jews nor the indigenous Palestinians, as was proposed by the Balfour Declaration. A land that is sacred to three major religions continues to be a battlefield of blood, rather then a holy shrine that gathers together the children of Abraham -- sons and daughters of both Ishmael and Isaac.

 

            As we stand before the hill and the horizon of a new millennium, century, and decade; what gives substance to our hope that the new era will be different?

 

            Frederick Buechner reminds us that “Christianity is mainly wishful thinking. Even the part about Judgment and Hell reflects the wish that somewhere the score is being kept. . . .

            Sometimes wishing is the wings the truth comes true on.

            Sometimes the truth is what sets us wishing for it.”[3]

           

            The truth is that we have no hope, except through the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ. So, these are the things for which I actively wait at century’s end.

 

            First, I actively await the emergence of an authentic church. The Christian faith is not a false religion proven to be wrong. It is true religion, too rarely practiced. The gods of materialism and greed have won our authentic allegiance. 

 

            A mature Christian disciple was playing tennis with a young admirer and novice convert to the faith. The young man asked from across the net, “If you knew right now that you were going to die today, what would you do?” The saintly and seasoned disciple motioned his tennis racquet and uttered the one word answer, “SERVE.” Let us become the authentic, servant church of Christ.

 

            Second, I actively await the coming of a church that pursues greater spiritual depth. Through Christ, the church has been given the gift of the Holy Spirit. If we do not use it, we lose it. I envision the growth of many spiritually motivated small groups in the life of Providence Church. When Helen Keller was asked if there was anything worse than being blind, she quickly replied, “To be without vision is much worse than being blind.”

 

            Third, I actively await the emergence of a faith community that imitates the way of Christ. We wait for God’s future by waiting upon the neighbor in need, as in the example of our blessed Lord.

 

            A family drove by a church with its nativity scene every day during Advent. The children were fascinated by its mystical charm. The week after Christmas, as the family drove past the church’s lawn, volunteers were packing up the crèche. The family’s preschool child observed from the back seat, “They have put Jesus away for another year.”

 

            The future bring to fruition our hard headed, biblical hopes only if we trust in the promises of our risen Christ, become open to his loving spirit among us , and seek to become authentic imitators of his self-giving way.