Rev. Betsy Aldrich Garland
December 7, 2008 – 2nd Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 40:1-11
Mark 1:1-8

Hope Is the Bird That Sings to the Dawn
While It Is Still Dark

Unlike the commercial Christmas foisted upon us months in advance, Mark’s gospel comes sudden and barren, without a baby in the manger, or shepherds on a hillside, without a bright star or angels overhead, singing “glory to God.” Mark goes right to the heart of the matter and announces, without preamble, God’s salvation, almost as if it were the title of a short book, which Mark is: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” The way is being prepared. Repent. God in the person of Jesus is coming.

We read this text at the beginning of Advent while the earth is tilting toward the void: with darkness increasing and days growing shorter, before our planet will groan its slow turning back toward the sun. It is interesting, isn’t it, that the church year begins as the darkness deepens? And so we begin again the Christian story.

And a new beginning for you and me, in this three-month interim of pastor and people during your minister’s Sabbath. And for me, a homecoming of sorts, and I’m feeling quite nostalgic: I grew up in this neighborhood, on Norwood Avenue. I roller-skated on these sidewalks, walked to the Hall Library every Saturday for books, and after we moved to Governor Francis Farms when I was 11, I rode my bicycle back for piano lessons and learned to sail at the Edgewood Yacht Club.

One of my most vivid memories of this church was your fire. It was a Sunday afternoon; I remember it as cold and overcast; we had finished our dinner when someone noticed heavy black smoke and an acrid smell in the air. We followed our noses and stood and watched as your dome burned. We were members of the Washington Park UMC, now Open Table of Christ, but our Thanksgiving Eve service and Lenten observances often were here at Edgewood.

I feel at home. The deacons and the choir welcomed me warmly this week. Wendy oriented me to the office, Merry walked me through communion, and Jack showed me the lights in the sanctuary.

The theme of this week’s service is “hope.” And we’re not the only ones thinking about hope, if the billboardsalong the highway are any indication. But what is this “hope” of which we speak?

We know that the word hope is both a noun and a verb and has multiple meanings. We might say,
“I hope I remember to pick up the snow blower before the blizzard strikes.” Or, when the gas tank icon lights up on the dash, “I hope I have enough gas to make it home.” Or, “I certainly hope the deacons know what they’re doing!” Or, “Have hope that the cancer won’t return.”

But none of these are about “hope” in the Biblical sense. Hoping not to run out of gas is an expression of uncertainty and anxiety, not an expression of hope. “Hope” in a religious context has a much deeper meaning. Here, religious hope is coupled with something else – and that is expectation.

Isaiah knows, with certainty, with all his being, that what he is waiting for will come. Isaiah’s “hope” is expectant hope, about the long wait for a Messiah – that Isaiah is convinced will come – about the salvation that God is bringing, about the deep hope for peace and justice. And Isaiah knows what this Messiah will be like: “He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.”

Isaiah’s vision is the antithesis of terrorist strikes where innocent people are slaughtered in Mumbai, India, the counter-point to political oppression and greed that starves a nation in Zimbabwe, and the antidote of religious fundamentalism that stones to death in Somalia a 13-year-old for reporting she was raped.

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” We hunger with Isaiah in these dark times for a peaceable kingdom. This is the kind of world that Isaiah hopes for and that Mark announces is being prepared and made straight. This is the kind of hope that sings to the dawn while it is still dark! This is a pregnant-with-possibilities “hope”. In fact, this is a we’re-going-to-have- twins kind of hope!

Today is the second Sunday in Advent, the beginning of the Christian year. This is sacred time, this waiting-for-the-coming-of-the-Messiah time, waiting for the birth of the Christ child. But, you might well ask, didn’t we do this last year? Hasn’t the Messiah come already, over and over and over?

Well, yes – and no. We celebrate that the Christ child is coming, will be born in our midst this Christmas – as in every Christmas. “O come, o come, Emmanuel,” we sing. But as Christians, we also believe that God already is born. We wait for the Christ child who is already born and lives in you and me. This is an already -- and a not-yet-becoming -- mystery.... The expectant hope for the Messiah who will save the world and who has come and will come in Jesus is the hope that we celebrate.

When Mark announces, “The beginning of the good news,” he is introducing God’s new initiative— but not its conclusion. The divine story continues in and through us. Advent, then, is a time for the Christian to prepare for a new year, for a new age. Lutheran pastor John Stendahl, writing in The Christian Century, reminds us that, “To be at a beginning is to find that we are not prisoners of the past.” The past is washed away, and we are made clean and acceptable. All is made new in Christ.

Poet Emily Dickinson exclaims,

"Hope" is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all,...”

Hope asks nothing of you and me – except to be chosen. And when we choose hope, in the choosing, everything becomes possible! So, hold fast to hope, my friends, the expectant hope of Isaiah, the hope that invites the Christ child to be born in our midst, the hope that takes ordinary space and ordinary lives and ordinary stories like ours and makes them sacred.

Hope is the bird that sings to the dawn....

Amen.

SERMON IN A SACK: A teddy bear and comfort.