Advent 1A, 2004
Matthew 24:36-44
GOD DOES NOT GIVE UP ON US, SO WE CAN HAVE HOPE!
Today is the first Sunday in Advent.
The season of preparation.
The season of anticipation.
For recognising the presentness of God in the one called Jesus of Nazareth.
But unlike most of the northern hemisphere of our world,
where the church liturgical calendar was first shaped,
today is just a day or two away from the first day of Summer.
And Summer in Australia is a natural time for celebration.
Even in times of drought or flood or bush fire.
Even in the face of these there is new life and new growth
to be seen, ripeness and richness,
as plant and bush and tree display their many colours
against the brown of this great south land.
Nature is a gift in early Summer in Australia.
And we anticipate it’s arrival eagerly.
oo0oo
Today is the first Sunday in Advent. And immediately we have a problem.
Because the readings set down in the Lectionary for today
have nothing whatsoever to do with Advent
or the coming season called Christmas.
For instance, if we approach Matthew as a narrative,
today’s reading comes about 9/10th of the way through the book...
Closer to the end of the complete story than to the beginning.
So it comes to us totally out of context.
Second, all the readings offered paint diverse pictures
of a world quite different from ours today.
And not only that, these stories or readings
are not directed to a time thousands of years later - into our time,
as seems to be assumed by those who shaped the Lectionary.
A far better place to start would be the beginning of Matthew, the genealogy of Jesus.
Where the best can come out of the worst.
And the worst can come out of the best!
So what if anything are we to make of these stories?
Perhaps process theologian John Cobb’s suggestion can help.
He says that those who have selected these passages
“understand Advent to be the season of anticipation, of expectancy, and hope generally... (And) in all the texts the hope is grounded in
faith in God” (P&F Web site).
So continuing to listen to John Cobb for a few moments,
what can we learn from and hear in, these stories?
We can acknowledge that we human beings are not good at predicting the future.
We can appreciate that the actual course of history
is far more ambiguous than are the visions that lure us forward.
We can realise that even God does not control the future or know just what will happen.
And we can hear also that the hope which keeps us going
is far deeper and more fundamental to our faith than we realise.
“Hope has survived repeated disappointments in the past. It will survive many more in the future. It will do so as long as we believe
in the biblical God” (Cobb, P&F Web site).
But such a statement needs clarification.
Because such a statement presupposes that God’s working in history
does not displace the working of human beings.
And that can be a bit of a shock to those who believe God is all-powerful!
Or could ‘do something’ in various situations.
John Cobb explains his comment a bit more.
The quote is a bit detailed so I invite you to listen carefully.
“God works in hope for peace and justice, but the world turns to violence and oppression. Still God’s work is not futile. Here and
there it succeeds, encouraging the hope for wider and more inclusive success. That success depends on our response to God’s invitation to share in the achievement of God’s purposes. And our hope depends on the assurance that God does not give up on us” (Cobb, P&F Web site).
Despite frustration and disappointment, we are still called to be a people of hope.
For hope is what is handed down from mother to daughter to son,
not merely as a package passed from one generation to another.
But as hope which is alive in mother and daughter
and which now lives in the child of the third generation.
oo0oo
Today is the first Sunday in Advent.
It is also the closest Sunday to World AIDS Day.
We are told 6,575 people die from AIDS every day on the continent of Africa alone.
Another 1,650 die daily in the rest of the world.
People everywhere need to put aside their differences
and work together to face the challenge
of slowing down the epidemic and alleviating its impact.
No individual or country is beyond the reach of HIV and its impact.
People around the world hope for a cure,
for a vaccine,
for an end to discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS,
and for an end of denial.
People live in continuing hope.
oo0oo
Today is the first Sunday in Advent.
In the face of frustrated hopes, yet in the continuation of hope itself
let me tell you a ‘continuing hope’ story.
In Dresden, the German city that was devastated by the fire bombing at the end of the World War 2,
there was a wonderful discovery.
They found in the ruins a musical score that had survived the fire and devastation.
It was the score to Albinoni's ‘Adagio for Strings and Orchestra in B Minor’.
In the midst of this devastation of war
- the very worst that we do to each other -
there survived something of the most beautiful
that we create for each other.
So the Albinoni piece became a sign of hope.
And it has been used that way.
During the siege of Sarajevo during the Balkans War,
the city was shelled month after month, every single night.
On one of those nights a group of people
standing in line in front of a bakery were waiting to buy bread.
A mortar shell fell right in the middle of them.
Twenty-two people were killed.
Innocent people. Hungry people. Wanting to buy bread.
A few days later, at the same spot, in front of the burned out bakery,
a man named Vedian Smailovic placed a chair,
and began to play his cello.
For 22 days he played his cello, one day in memory for each one of the people
who had been killed at that spot.
Now the gesture itself was wonderful, playing music.
But what gave it deeper significance is
the music he played each day was
‘Adagio for Strings and Orchestra in B Minor’.