I would like to ask you a question this morning: what brings you hope this Advent season? I pray that you have a reason to hope today. And I pray that you will find this place to be a community of hope that celebrates the presence and the love of God in every season of the year. But this is the Sunday each year when we light the Hope candle on the Advent wreath. And our Bible story for today is usually read as a message of judgement, but I think it is overwhelmingly a message of hope.

I read this week an amusing quote from the autobiography of Robert McAfee Brown, who was a pastor and religion professor at Stanford University. Brown included in his autobiography an old family photo taken at Christmas time. He writes, “There we all are gathered around the crèche on Christmas Eve, putting t…