Advent 1- Hope

Introduction

This morning we begin our Advent series. Advent simply means “coming” in Latin. (Slide)

It is a season of preparation and expectation. We live between two comings. God-the-Son coming in the flesh and awaiting His return

It is where the church universal takes the four weeks leading up to Christmas and we focus on God coming in the flesh, Immanuel: God with us.

Christmas comes every year. As we encounter this time of year it is easy to think, “Oh, what are they going to talk about at church this year?” We can look at the narrative of Christ being born and easily lose the awe and wonder.

Lately, I have been enthralled with artist and storyteller, Scott Erickson. We will be using his artwork this advent season to help us take an honest look at advent. Scott says this in his book, Honest Advent, (Slide)

“Sacred liturgies and services are just the visible mechanics that help us to get to the invisible essence of the love of God. Often we can become too obsessed with the mechanics, substituting them for the essence, which is completely understandable. It’s comforting to be able to hold onto something tangible versus the unseen wild goose of holy mystery. This is how some faith communities become so obsessed with the style of music, certain ceremonial practices, or just anything that has a lot of nostalgia in it.

(Slide) Nostalgia is the familiar feeling rooted in patterned experience that gives comfort in the face of present mystery. It’s probably the largest influencer of the church services today. It’s easy to trade nostalgia for essence… there is nothing wrong with familiarity found in nostalgia. Familiarity is a helpful tool. But familiarity kills wonder.”

Maybe you’ve heard it and maybe you’ve experienced it. (Example of familiarity killing wonder: Toys, travel, relationships, your relationship with God, etc.)

Wonder is most accessible when we are in new situations because we don’t have a pattern or know what is happening.

Our desire this year is to look at honest advent, looking for the incarnational Christ; reflecting on those things that did take place, when they took place, the feelings and thoughts occuring to those involved, and marvel at wonder and mystery that is God.

(Slide) This week is Hope, then Love, Joy, Peace, Expectation

Our texts this morning will be from four separate passages: Genesis 3:15; Psalm 33:17-22; Isaiah 7:14; Luke 1:26-38.

If you are able and willing would you stand with me as I read our texts. I have our first three… but if on your devices or in your Bibles, feel free to turn to Luke 1.

(Slide for each)

Genesis 3:15 “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”

Psalm 33:17-22 “The horse is a false hope for safety; it provides no escape by its great power. But look, the Lord keeps his eye on those who fear him— those who depend on his faithful love to rescue them from death and to keep them alive in famine. We wait for the Lord; he is our help and shield. For our hearts rejoice in him because we trust in his holy name. May your faithful love rest on us, Lord, for we put our hope in you.”

Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel.”

Luke 1:26-38 “In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you.” But she was deeply troubled by this statement, wondering what kind of greeting this could be. Then the angel told her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Now listen: You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end.” Mary asked the angel, “How can this be, since I have not had sexual relations with a man?” The angel replied to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. And consider your relative Elizabeth— even she has conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called childless. For nothing is impossible with God.” “See I am the Lord’s servant,” said Mary. “May it happen to me as you have said.” Then the angel left her.”

This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Amen. You may be seated.

(Slide) Our message is titled “Hope” this morning. Oxford dictionary defines hope as, “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.”

Scott Erickson has an art piece titled that is an interpretation of another art piece called Mary and Eve by Sister Grace Remington.

You can see in this piece that Eve is meeting Mary. Eve is placing her hands on Mary’s pregnant belly. There’s a fruit on the ground that’s been eaten. There is a serpent around Eve’s leg but it’s head is crushed underneath Mary’s heel. It’s rife with meaning and symbolism.

The Wait (from the beginning)

(looking at their heads) (Slide)

Eve never met Mary. Mary never met Eve. Thousands of years separated the two. But arguably two of the most important women in scripture. In this piece of art, the two meet.

We really don’t know much about Eve.

She is often depicted with Adam or alone with the serpent and the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.

God placed Adam and Eve in the garden to tend it, to cultivate it, to work it. God told them that they could find provision for themselves from everything in the garden, save the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In the day that they ate of it they would die. Enter the human condition.

Mary is a type of all of us. How many of us choose for ourselves what is good, right, beautiful, and true?

God explicitly tells us what is good, what is helpful, what is life-giving, what is beautiful, and what is true. However we say to God, “Well… I got this God… I can tell what is good for me, what is my truth, and what I think is beautiful… after all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” When we say this, when we act on this, we like Eve take of that which God told us not to.

This last week I was told of two men who have been unfaithful in their marriages. One’s a former pastor and another is a well respected business man. They are two people that you think, no way, not them. But sure enough, they lost the wonder of God. They rationalized what they wanted, what they didn’t have, and if they got what they wanted they would be happy and better off (even if it was for the moment).

Eve took of the fruit that God said not too… Adam partook as well. In that sin entered into the world and they became dead in their sin and trespasses Slide (Eph 2:1 “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins” ), separated from God. Ushered out of the garden. Now having pain in child-birth along with other curses that God pronounced.

Eve recieved the promise that her offspring would crush the head of the serpent. She would never see it before she died.

(Slide) As we look at the faces of Scott’s art, we see Mary who is with care and compassion holding Eve’s face. Eve is experiencing hope and grace from a brokenness she never thought she’d see and end to.

Mary has this calm delight that a first time mother has as she dreams and thinks about all that this new life will do.

Scott Erickson writes (Slide), “Yet her face (that is Eve) could also be that of knowing mom bestowing wisdom and compassion on a new mom, as if to say, “Parenting is one of the greatest and hardest adventures of a lifetime. You’ll love your children and want to have them forever, but you may see one of them die before their time, and it’s the absolute worst.”

The Wait (in the firsts)

(looking at the hand on the belly) (Slide)

Mary takes Eve’s hand and places it on her belly. Here Eve is touching and feeling the promise of God. No longer wondering if what God said is true, but beholding the mystery at her fingertips.

Sometimes God says pretty wild things! I love how in the introduction earlier that I read from Scott Erickson, he used the term “the wild goose of holy mystery!”

The Lord would speak to Isaiah and say Isaiah 7:14 (Slide)“Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel.”

A virgin would conceive.

Our thought: “Well God said it… that’ll do”… will it?

Gentlemen, if you are dating a woman, you want to honor the Lord in your relationship so you are purposely saving sexual intimacy for your wedding night… it’s difficult but you’re doing it. The entire church is excited for you, the entire community is beaming with pride… it just makes sense. Then your spouse to be tells you they’re pregnant and it was God.

Moms and Dads… same scenario but its your daughter or future daughter in law.

It goes against anything you know and experience. And this time it’s Mary… she’s of no noble significance… she’s from Nazareth for goodness sake. It would be as if she’s from Cleveland, OH… can anything good come from Cleveland?

Scott points out (slide) that we don’t often talk about how hard it must have been to do something for the first time.

No guides. No mentors. No mommy blogs with tried and true strategies for maintaining sanity. It’s easy for us sit back and “Monday morning quarterback” those who made mistakes (like Eve).

Both of these women found themselves in the complicated time of first-situations. Whether you are a mother or not, may we have an opportunity to learn from the courage of Eve and Mary. Will we trust God? Will we take him at his word? When we wait on him and lean in when we find ourselves walking by faith?

(Slide) May you bestow on your very own first-time situations the same grace, kindness, and honor we give to them.

The Wait (in essence when substance is absent)

(looking at their feet) (Slide)

In Luke’s gospel we should read that as Gabriel revealing himself to Mary, a peasant, from an insignificant town, with very little to offer.

But God does not look on man as we do… God looks on the heart (1 Sam 16:7).

Gabriel says of Mary, “favored woman!”, “The Lord is with you.”, “found favor with God”

Mary couldn’t believe this was happening to her. Who was she? She didn’t have much of anything?

How could she have been pleasing to God… she hadn’t done anything great?

There are others that are more special than her, why would God favor her?

Have you had those thoughts:

Who am I? What have I done? I’m not as religious or as spiritual as that person, that has to be a disqualifier or at least put me on the “C” team.

I’m not married. I don’t have kids. I’m probably not doing something right.

I’m too old. I’m too young. I don’t have enough experience. Any of this sound familiar.

Have you thought about the fact that God used a unmarried young woman who had never had a child to bring Himself into the world that we might know that nothing can separate us from His love.

Though the road ahead was fraught with hardship (traveling in the third trimester, finding no place to rest but a stable, giving birth in a stable (dirty at that) and having nothing but a feeding trough to lay Jesus in, with very to little money… it did not change their position before God. She was loved. She was favored.

The surprise that happened in Mary’s day is happening every day in our lack of resources, in our overcrowded lodging, our unlit sky, our humble surroundings.

It is a wonder and mystery that life can come through barren places. Meek nobodies can partake in divine plans.

God is undoing all that sin has wrecked. (Slide)

“Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost.” - Tim Keller

Reference to a conversation that Sam Gamgee had with Gandalf the Gray in The Lord of the Rings.

In the gospel we see that God is at work. God is for us. God takes what we give him… the ashes we have made from the life we have burned down and brings beauty from the ashes scripture says (Isa 61:3)… he is the God of the resurrection… there is hope. Where sin has come, where we fall short… grace, God’s grace abounds much more (Rom 5:20).

Conclusion

(Slide) This Christmas season, as we reflect on the coming of Immanuel (“God with us”), Jesus (YHWH is salvation), let us remember and look on in wonder that at the right time, in the right place, that God fulfilled His promise to Eve, God in the flesh born of a woman… born under the law, to redeem us who are under the law, that we might be adopted as sons and daughters in Him (Gal 4:4-5).

Take this week and reflect on mystery and the beauty that is God redeeming us through His son, who comes through a young unmarried woman who simply trusts in God’s word, yielding herself the mystery of God’s word to her.

May we also find ourselves in wonder, mystery, and awe of all that God is doing still today amongst us because of the promise of His son. May that spark within us the gift of hope. Encourage someone this week. There is a lot of fear. There is a lot of despair. If you meet someone who is needing hope, share with the hope we have in Advent.

Amen.