December 3, 2007 Hope: where is our hope?

Source Scriptures and Context: Peter and John (gate Beautiful) Acts 3 Elijah (Horeb and no rain) 1 Kings 17:1, 18:18-45

Today, Sunday, December 3, those of us who are followers of Jesus begin our anticipation of the moment everything changed around 2,000 years ago, when God, the architect and ruler of the universe gave up a part of his divinity, came to earth in vulnerability, and forever altered the history of the world. As Christians, when we do serious thinking about what brings hope, what brings meaning, what brings truth and weight to our lives, this should be the focus for us. Jesus. Changed. Everything.

Our hope is found there, and because Jesus is alive and His presence resides amongst us today as his disciples, our hope is found here as I look into each of your faces, and in your eyes I am reminded of stories from your lives, stories of struggles and hopes, miracles and catastrophes, some of these experiences, positive and negative, much more fresh and raw, and together as we worship we realize the reality of what binds us together. The name of Jesus.

When the church caught on fire, I, like the rest of us today, was shocked out of my comfort zone. I stayed in that place for awhile, being able to recognize habit and patterns in my life that were unhealthy, priorities that were unhealthy, etc, and I vowed to change. But I’ve found myself in the last week slipping back into my old ways, my old patterns, letting myself be mediocre, and have been reminded of how cyclical my actions in my life often are.

Now I’m going to ask you to be honest this morning as well. Do you often see the same things in your life? Often sliding through life, doing what needs to be done, sleeping, eating: this seems to be normal life. But then something happens that shocks you out of your comfort zone; and you’re spurred to action, but after awhile, without a consistent vision and focus, your action is short-lived and you slide back into your old ways.
- democratic focus on rights of the individual, often in extended times of relative comfort and safety that citizens lose a sense of nationalism and unity, but a tragedy or war moves the focus of the citizens off themselves and onto something bigger than themselves (WTC as example…how quickly it has slid into the fog of our sub-conscious)…simple example for the sake of illustration.

But the reality about the life, the awareness we are called to cultivate as followers of Jesus is that: Hope over the long haul, the deeply meaningful, life-changing, transforming kind; comes with the consistent pursuit of God, the commitment to making relationship with God first priority
- Do you remember about a month or so ago in worship, when I had the chalkboard in the front, and we asked ourselves some questions about whether a relationship with God is something scientific, something simple and easy to grasp, like A + B= C, or whether it’s something more, whether it’s more like falling in love with someone, a process that isn’t quite so easily defined, doesn’t happen in steps we necessarily have control over, and will both complete us and change us. We agreed that this relationship with God is much more like falling in love with someone; that we commit to spend time with Him, we get to know Him, we tell Him we love Him, and let the relationship change us. But I think we often don’t think of or tend to take for granted the reality that after falling in love, there are consistent things we need to do to cultivate and deepen and maintain the relationship…and along with that comes the constant temptation to take things for granted in our relationships: we can take for granted, if we’re married, that our spouse will be there no matter what, if we’re single, we could take for granted our family, church family, jobs, life, possessions.

You see, the hard thing is that we want things to be simple. Easy to figure out. But every man in this room who has been in a deeper relationship with a woman, and every woman in this room who has been in a deeper relationship with a man, knows that the opposite gender is hopelessly complex. Sure, we understand a bit more over the years, but sometimes the more we think we know, the more we find how complex the other is. I think we should apply the same thinking to our relationship with God. We want it to be simple. Straight-forward. And some things are, but this relationship with God is meant to be an adventure, something that surprises us, challenges us…and it is in this process that we find hope.

Now I’m going to read to you two instances of ridiculous stories in the Bible, and we’ll see if you don’t see what I saw.

Peter and John (gate Beautiful) Acts 3
Elijah (Horeb and no rain) 1 Kings 17:1, 18:18-45
-did not just hear an audible voice from God on a regular basis, or experience God saving them from all circumstances (That would have been too easy)
No, they cultivated their relationship with God in order to hear his voice more consistently in their circumstances and in their gut more often; they found that there is no shortcut to this reality, no formula for quick and easy success, just commitment and pursuit, consistency
- disciples gathered in the temple courts, praying and breaking bread together
- Elijah prayed often and with intensity

E.M. Bounds

“Spiritual work is taxing work, and people hate to do it. Praying, true praying, costs a person serious attention and time, which flesh and blood do not relish doing. Few persons are of such strong fiber that they will make a costly sacrifice when surface work will pass as well in the market. We can get used to our beggarly praying until it looks good enough to us, at least it keeps up a decent form and quiets our conscience- the deadliest of all drugs. We can slight our praying, and not realize the danger until the foundations are gone. It takes good time for the full flow of God into the spirit…to pray is the greatest thing we can do: and to do it well there must be calmness, time, and deliberation…we must learn anew the worth of prayer, enter anew the school of prayer. There is nothing which takes more time to learn.”

This message, given by a man whose commitment to prayer deeply affected his generation, helps to remind us that this relationship that gives us hope is meant to define us.

Because if this birth of Jesus we anticipate and celebrate every year, this source of hope, is central for us, one thing it can NEVER be is a pleasant little add-on in our lives, a tack-on…
- and that’s why, as the sheer numbers of folks attending church and church membership become less and less prevalent in our society, the picture actually is becoming much clearer for us of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. This commitment in our lives will cause whispers in the breakroom, sideways glances at the post office, people looking at your life, sticking a goad in you to nitpick and hope you fall flat on your face, lukewarm people who have settled for just pew-sitting upset and disturbed by your comments and lifestyle that suggest church isn’t just something that takes place for an hour or two on a Sunday morning or if you’re within earshot of the pastor or a member from your church
- and they’ll find out more and more as you refuse to look down your nose at others, as you choose to forgive, and choose to love sometimes when hated, that the growing light of God within you is colliding with the darkness of broken lives and this broken world….

David Crowder Band: “When our depravity meets his divinity, it is a beautiful collision.”

And it can never be any less than these two things: beautiful and collision.

Wonderful yet painful, healing, yet will rip our former lives limb from limb, natural yet feels terribly unnatural, a warm fuzzy feeling sometimes, and an impossible, beating your head against a brick wall feeling other times.

“It is about the tension that exists in the living of life, here, where the sky meets the broken earth. It is about a tsunami in East Asia. It is about a sunrise over Hiroshima. It is about many who know intensely what pain the word “cancer” holds and the words of my friend whispered in my ear, “It’s okay. None of us are getting out of here alive you know.” It is about victory. It is about the joy that comes when blood tests return and a miracle is announced. It is the hope in a rescue that has come, the hope in a rescue that has found us, and the relentless hope in a greater rescue that is still coming- one that has not yet arrived but is no less present. This music, broken, improper, and inadequate in its response is rooted in that hope.”