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 the animals and the wise men and the shepherds around the baby, who is a small center of sanity in a large and crazy world.” (1)
Isn’t that a great description of Jesus at Christmas, “a small center of sanity in a large and crazy world?” I like to remember that when things get hectic this time of year.
I read about a young woman named Elizabeth who had spent many years struggling with a drug addiction. During those years she was desperate for some words of encouragement, some signs of hope. When she got into recovery and created a new life for herself, she wanted to help others who were trapped by hopelessness. So she started writing notes of encouragement and sticking them on the windshields of cars around her city or posting them on telephone poles in local parks. She ended one note with the words, “Much love. Hope sent.” (2)
Much love. Hope sent. That’s what we celebrate at Christmas, that Jesus embodied the message of much love, hope sent. When you listen to our Bible passage for today, I want you to hear the love of God. I want you to understand that this is a message of hope that God has been preparing for thousands of years. This is the message sent through numerous prophets. And what God promised through the prophets has now been fulfilled in a Person, the person of Jesus Christ. But are we ready to hear these words? More importantly, are we ready to put them into action in our own lives?
Our Bible passage begins, “In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: ‘A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’ John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.”
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Don’t you wish my sermons were that short? The word used here for repent means “to think differently” or “to change the inner person.” John the Baptist is saying here, “Jesus has brought the kingdom of heaven to you. And you can receive his message when you think differently, when you change your inner person.”
That sounds like a message of overwhelming hope. But repentance is just the first step to receiving the kingdom of heaven. The next step is baptism with water, and then finally a baptism with the Holy Spirit. And each one of these steps is necessary for receiving new life as citizens of the kingdom of heaven.
Rabbi Ari Lamm gave a great explanation of repentance when he was interviewed on the Jane and Jesus podcast. Rabbi Lamm said that in the Jewish tradition, repentance is an example of time travel. We’re not talking science fiction here. He says that the Bible shows us that true repentance changes both your future and your past. Think about that for a second: repentance changes both your future and your past.
He says, “If you repent properly, what God promises is that He will change who you are. It’s a question of identity.” And I want to paraphrase his main point here. He says that in Judaism, “What God promises to those who sincerely repent is the opportunity to say, ‘I am no longer that person who sinned . . . I am a fundamentally different person. It’s as if I am a newborn child, and I have a new path in life.’” (3)
That’s the promise and the hope of Christmas. At Christmas, the kingdom of heaven came near in the person of Jesus Christ. And through Jesus, we have a new King, a new life, and a new purpose all promised to us when we receive the kingdom of heaven.
The first promise and hope of Christmas is that in Jesus, we have a new King. The history of humanity has been shaped by sinful, unworthy leaders. We could easily name a whole list of kings, emperors and politicians who have been greedy, power-hungry, violent. And their moral failings are responsible for unimaginable suffering all over the world.
But when God wanted to show us His love, purposes and power in action, He came in the person of Jesus Christ. In the Advent season, we realize more than ever that the priorities of this world—like greed, power and violence—are empty and contrary to God’s kingdom. That’s why Jesus came, not as a powerful military leader, but as a helpless baby born to a poor family. That’s why he didn’t seek status with the religious or political leaders of his day. He rejected wealth, power, status, success. He rejected others’ attempts to make him a religious celebrity or a king. He rejected all the things we desperately chase after because his mind was fixed on God’s will, on bringing in God’s kingdom. We can put our hope and trust fully in him because he embodies the use of power in the service of love.
During World War II, German pastor Helmut Thielicke visited a prominent church that had been bombed by the Nazis. Thielicke understood the suffering and hopelessness the people were feeling in the midst of war. He stood in the rubble of this devastated church, and he preached these words of hope: “Where Christ is King, everything is changed. Eyes see differently and the heart no longer beats the same. And in every hard and difficult place the comforting voice is there, and the hand that will not let us go upholds us.”
“Where Christ is King, everything is changed.” That’s the hope we are promised at Christmas time. In Jesus, we have a new King.
The second promise and hope of Christmas is that in Jesus, we have new life. Notice that John baptized people in the Jordan River. This particular river was significant to the people of Israel. In Deuteronomy 30: 18, the Israelites had been wandering in the desert for forty years. The elders who had escaped slavery in Egypt had died off. And God planned to lead His people into Canaan, into the Promised Land. But before He did, God challenged the people to choose between death and life. The people of Israel chose life and following God. When they crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land, they crossed over into freedom and new life. It’s no accident that John baptized people in the Jordan River. Our baptism represents our crossing over from death to new life in Jesus Christ.
Pastor Ben Helmer tells of a man in his congregation who, after attending a short while, approached him and asked, “What do I have to do to be baptized?” This man was fifty-five years old. He’d spent his professional career as a counselor. But he reported that it was only in his baptism that he found the wholeness he had been seeking in life. He had always felt that something was missing; in his baptism in Jesus’ name, he found the life God made him for.
The man became a regular volunteer at the church food pantry. The following Christmas, he joined a team that cooked and served Christmas dinner at a local health clinic. His baptism marked the start of a new life of service in Jesus’ name. (4)
John Chrysostom was a leader of the early church in the Middle East about 1,600 years ago and the bishop of Constantinople. He once taught his church members that the best way to share their faith was through their actions. He wrote, “Let us astound them by our way of life. This is the unanswerable argument. Though we give 10,000 precepts in words, if we do not exhibit a far better life, we gain nothing. It is not what is said that draws their attention, but what we do. Let us win them therefore by our life.”
“Let us astound them by our way of life.” Let’s show the world what it looks like for Jesus to live through our actions, our words and our priorities. Let’s show them by our actions what it means to go from death to new life.
And finally, the promise and hope of Christmas is that in Jesus, we have a new purpose. In Matthew 6, Jesus teaches us to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matt. 6: 33) When we have been baptized into new life with Jesus, our new purpose is to prioritize the kingdom of heaven above all else. The kingdom of heaven is the rule of God in this world. It is what the world looks like when Jesus is living in us, and we are pursuing the priorities of Jesus in the world. What difference could you make in the world if your priority was to further the kingdom of heaven in your daily life?
Let me tell you about one young woman whose faith in Christ gave her a new purpose in life. At age 28, Gertrude Dyck moved to the United Arab Emirates to serve as a medical missionary at the first hospital in Abu Dhabi. Her flight to the UAE was only the second time she had ever flown. She quickly learned the language and adopted the customs of the local people. Her compassion earned her the nickname Doctura Latifa, or Doctor Mercy. (5)
When Dyck started at the hospital as a nurse and midwife, infant mortality rates were at 50% and maternal mortality rates were 35%. Half of all newborns died in childbirth or soon after, and so did 1/3 of mothers. The staff of the new hospital were determined to change this heart-breaking reality.
Over the course of her nursing career, she delivered tens of thousands of babies, including the children of the Emirati royal family. She and her colleagues introduced new medical practices that significantly reduced patient mortality rates. She served 38 years as a nurse at the hospital in Abu Dhabi; when she retired, infant and maternal mortality rates were below one percent. (6)
I’ll ask you this question again: where do you find hope in this Advent season? Is your hope that you’ll get everything done in time for the holidays? Is your hope that next year will be better than this one? Or is your hope in knowing that the pressures and priorities of this world no longer hold you down. You follow a different King, you are living a new life, and you have found a new purpose because you have received Jesus Christ, Immanuel, God with us. Do you have the kingdom of heaven in you? That’s the hope and the promise of Christmas that you can receive today.
1. Illusaurus.
2. Anne Cetas, Faith, Hope, Love: 365 Daily Devotions from Our Daily Bread, Discovery House. Kindle Edition.
3. “Pride or Penitence: Mr. Darcy’s Dilemma,” Jane and Jesus podcast hosted by Karen Swallow Prior featuring Rabbi Ari Lamm.
4. Ben Helmer, http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/stw/2013/12/31/1-epiphany-a-2014/.
5. “Doctura Latifa, beloved mother to thousands” by Tahira Yaqoob, Emirates Natural History Group, http://enhg.org/AlAin/History/GertrudeDyck.aspx.