“A Higher Hope”

Jeremiah 33:14-16

Let’s sing a little Christmas song together, just to get ourselves re-energized after an exhausting Thanksgiving holiday.

We wish you a merry Christmas!

And a happy New Year!

Great! We’ll sing that again in a moment, but before we do, let’s share an ancient Advent tradition. It is customary on the first Sunday of Advent for people in church to turn to those they love and give them a nice Advent kiss. So turn to the ones you love right now – either relatives or not – and give them a big smooch, and say, “Happy Advent!”

Nice! And if you’re wondering how “ancient” this custom is – you can go all the way back to our 8 AM service this morning when I made the tradition up!

Now, let’s sing again!

We wish you a merry Christmas!

And a happy New Year!

Well, here we are in the season of Advent! And we do wish you all a merry, merry Christmas, and a very happy New Year – once it gets here.

I understand Wal-Mart is very happy as the season begins. They did $1.5 billion dollars worth of business on Friday! I know my son is happy. He was 5^th in line when Best Buy opened the doors at 6 AM the day after Thanksgiving, got everything he wanted, and has something like $250 worth of rebate checks coming. Imagine that? 250 bucks! Probably cost him $4,000 for those rebates, but hey…

And kids everywhere are excited. Christmas lists are being made, Santa Claus is being visited, and – as the poem says, “Visions of sugar plums dance in their heads.” I’m not sure exactly what that means, but it sounds pretty cool to me!

And speaking of sounds, everywhere you turn, Christmas music is playing! In fact, there’s a whole new radio format that’s been rolled out this year called, “All Christmas, All The Time!” There’s something about Christmas music that makes us feel good! It’s full of joy. And hope!

I sincerely hope for you … ALL the wonderful blessings of the holiday season.

But I also wish you a higher hope!

You see, there is another song being played this holiday season that’s a little different than all the others. Instead of wishing us holiday joy, or wonderful gifts, or good health and happiness, this song wishes us much, much more. It’s the song of God through the prophet Jeremiah, and it goes something like this (chanted):

“The days are coming when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah: In those days, and at that time, I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.”

Now I’m not sure that’s the exact tune, but it’s the lyric that I think is truly great. This is a song that hopes not for just a peaceful holiday, but for peace on earth. It hopes for an end to violence and terrorism. It sings of a day when never again will there be a suicide bombing in Jerusalem - or Baghdad, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. It envisions a time when never again will our sons and daughters have to march off to war.

This is a song that sings not about getting all the stuff we want, but of a day when the world becomes a just and righteous place – when no child ever goes hungry again, when AIDS no longer grips the lives of the 40-million people who are suffering from it today and threatens the whole next generation, when every person has the ability to earn a decent wage, and put food on the table, and dwell in a safe and warm house. This is a song that sings about old people no longer being discarded because they’re too old, and young people no longer being ignored because they’re too young, and people of color and gender and physical limitation no longer being excluded, and abused and discriminated against.

It’s not a song – I’ll grant you – that they play while you’re walking through the Mall. The tune is very ancient and not pleasing to the ear. The lyrics don’t always rhyme, and it would take more than a lifetime to understand all they mean.

And yet, in our world today, there are still small pockets of people that keep this song alive - this song of God’s highest hope. Hope for peace on earth, and good will toward all. Hope for true justice. Hope for the kingdom of God. And those small pockets of people who keep the flame burning are often found in places like this – churches and other settings where people of goodwill gather to testify to the promise God sang through the prophets.

The promise not of a better holiday, or of a happy new year– but of a new world.

So while the vast majority of folks enter the holiday season pre-occupied by preparations for family gatherings, mailing out Christmas cards, and making lists of what we want both to give and to receive, we followers of Christ do something truly unique.

We gather to keep Hope alive. We sing all the songs everyone else sings. But then we sing one more. We sing the song of God’s new world.

There will be peace one day in Jerusalem! AIDS will be conquered! Racism will be overcome. Poverty will be eradicated! The whole world will be fed! Humanity will become a family whose members love God and love one another! Our diversity will be gloriously held together by God’s inclusive grace! Cancer will be no more, and death will die! And the Bible tells us that – in that day - every human tear will be wiped away as we are reunited with our loved ones, and with our Lord!

I want to live in that world! I want my children and grandchildren to live in it too. And I want it for you, and for your kids and grandkids as well!

So today, I want to invite you to believe in something. Come and believe in God’s dream for our world – believe in peace on earth, believe in justice for all, believe in reconciliation between people and families and nations. You know, someone recently asked me what they have to believe to be considered a Christian. Good question! It’s more than believing a doctrine, you know. It’s more than believing a birth. It’s more than believing in angels and mangers and wise men from the East. To be a Christian means to believe in Jesus and why he came.

Come and believe in God’s dream for the world. Over the centuries people of faith have sung songs about it, written poetry about it, and even made mysterious symbols to express it’s grandeur. Some of those songs, poems and symbols come together today in a beautiful way as we gather around the Chrismon Tree! Let’s sing God’s song of Highest Hope together! And then let’s go into the world and live for that dream every day!

(Here follows the Chrismon service)