“The Hope of Salvation”                                                             December 3 and 4, 2011
Romans 13:11-14                                                                     The Rev. Mary A. Pullen

The traditional themes of Advent are hope, love, joy, and peace. These themes of Advent are eternal, as is our salvation. More than any other season of the Christian year, except for Lent, Advent calls us to seriously examine our commitment as Christians. We do this in light of the anticipation of Christmas. In the text from Romans for today, we find Paul urging first-century Christians to do exactly that! Don’t sleep, says Paul, but be awake.

Through the living room windows of our house the early morning sun pours in, bathing the Christmas tree, the plants and the entire room in soft, golden light. It is the most peaceful time of the day for me. This is when I pray my daily personal prayers, a time for me to be centered before the busyness of the day begins. I hope that all of you have some time in your day for personal prayer and refection. In our small group studies as well as our committees, session and other business meetings, we always begin with prayer. I love that early time in mornings, I always have. Years of having to get up at 5:00 a.m. in my active duty days conditioned me to the point where I truly cannot sleep late anymore. My daughter Amy is very different. She likes to stay up late and sleep late, and right now, she has a job which allows her to do so—she bartends. Since she was laid off from her fulltime position when the economy tanked, this is what she has been doing. But even when she was in high school, she was like that. Have any of you had the experience of trying to get a teenager who loves to sleep up and going in the mornings? I tried such things as buying her not one, but two extra loud alarm clocks, beating loudly on her door, ignoring the situation so that she would have to face the consequences if she overslept and missed school, even using a wet washcloth on her face. I was in despair that she would make it in college, in the real world, but she did.

Wake UP! Says Paul. It is now the hour for you to arise because salvation is now nearer to us than then we first believed! The early church lived in the immanent hope that Christ would return soon. Be constantly alert, because you don’t know when the event will happen. Paul’s words apply to us: As Christians, we are to be alert to the happenings around us. The awareness that the end was near was an integral part of the daily life of the early church. Their lives revolved around it. If we all so lived and so ordered our lives in the belief that Christ’s coming was right around the corner…how much more alive would our churches be? Instead of wishing that things were like they used to be, we could place more focus on meeting the needs of people in the here and now–always in anticipation of the coming of Christ!

This awareness should extend to the relationships in our lives as well. Parents—do you take the time to listen to your children? Or do you just superficially nod when they try to tell you something? Children…do you honor your parents? For those of us who are grown, who find ourselves caring for aging parents…do we truly pay attention to their needs? Or do we just try to “manage” them? I suspect that many people in late middle age who care for elderly parents see a scary vision of what their own future could be, if they live that long.

Brothers and sisters, if there is an estrangement, a hurt, an old quarrel, now is the time to attempt to patch it up. Husbands and wives…no matter the quality of your marriage…do you take the time to see each other as individuals with unique needs? Single people…do you have others in your lives who help and support you? This time of Advent, this time of the hope of salvation, is a wonderful time to hope that indeed, with God’s help, relationships can be forgiven, restored and supported.

The first year Amy’s father and I were married, before Amy was even born, we had a disagreement over something, I don’t even remember now the details of the argument. I had a particularly bad time at work the next day, someone had died, and by the time I got home that evening, I was emotionally wrung out. I walked into the kitchen. There on the counter was one of these small Christmas cactus plants with a single fuchsia bloom on it, obviously placed there during lunchtime, as it had not been there that morning when we left for work. It was a peace offering. I kept that plant for years, and still had it after he died. I kept re-potting it when needed, dividing it up, sharing cuttings of it with friends. There is still a single stem of it in my office. A few years ago, Randy’s grandmother, who loved plants all her life, gave me a lovely, large Christmas cactus that she had nurtured for over fifty years. It blooms in our living room. She passed away this past fall, and we think of her when we look at it. Every December when that Christmas cactus blooms, I am reminded that Advent brings us the HOPEFULL, full of hope message of eternal salvation.

Theologian Kimberly Bracken Long, of Columbia Seminary, writing in the Journal for Preachers, says “….we see that the (Advent) season is not simply a preparation for Christmas, but for the whole Christ event. Having told the whole story through the previous year, we begin it again. Have we told this same story for centuries? Yes. Have we been waiting all this time for Christ to return and make things right? Yes. Is the world still in need of a Redeemer? Yes. God knows it is, yes. And so we start to tell the story again, beginning at the end, so we may renew the vision that keeps hope alive.” [i]

As Christians, we live in the light of day. Our lives should be models of the Christian way. Notice I said models, not perfection. We are all sinful people who have fallen short of God’s glory. We all make mistakes. Christian hope enables us to be clothed with the armor of light! When we experience that “born again” commitment that John talks about in John 3:16, when we live as new creatures in Christ, we can face each day “armored” against dismay and shame and despair. Put away those old things and live with the new fruits of the spirits.

My favorite move of all time is the Blues Brothers, with John Belushi. I’ve seen it at least 40 times over the years, and never tire of it. I love the music. In the diner scene in the movie, Aretha Franklin sings her song RESPECT. She does not want her husband to go back out on the road with the band. It’s clear from the context of the movie that she is afraid if her husband goes back to the band, he will fall back into old patterns of instability. She wants her desires, her wants, her opinions to be respected. Her husband rejoins the band anyway, in effect “dissing her”. Jesus never “dissed’ anyone. He met people at points in their lives where there spiritual need was greatest. As a baby in the manger he gave hope to lowly shepherds. On the cross, he gave the hope of Paradise to a dying thief.

Rev. Leonard Sweet asks this question: “What would happen to our vision of others if we “put on” Christ like a pair of respect spectacles? That word “re-spect” means to look again. Re-spect means for us to look again and again until we see the full picture. Jesus teaches us to look again at each other, beyond our critical sizing up and breaking down, and to use respect spectacles to receive every person as a gift to be celebrated rather than a specimen to be critiqued, dissected and dressed down. Jesus didn’t look up or down at anyone he met. Instead Jesus treated every person he met with respect. In other words, Jesus looked at, Jesus looked into, and Jesus looked with each person he encountered. He looked at the earnest, yet wealthy young man, and immediately saw his love for money overwhelmed everything else in his life. Yet Jesus loved him. He looked into the cheating heart of the woman at the well and discerned the parched condition of her soul. Yet Jesus loved her. He looked with the eyes of everyone he met, and he saw in us all the neediness of a child, a sponge for attention and nurture and encouragement. Yet Jesus loved children above all. To put on Christ is to re-spect everyone. Instead of critiquing the shortcomings of others the re-spect spectacles offer compassion and companionship. Instead of finding failure the respect-spectacles focus our gaze forward onto a horizon of hope and possibility. Instead of condemnation, the respect-spectacles offer vistas and visions of forgiveness. Even though none of us is perfect in every way, or has it all together, we together constitute in the Master’s hands a powerful force for good and light in the world.” [ii]

I was talking this past week with a friend who is a life-long Presbyterian. She told me that the first time she experienced Communion by intinction, she was taken aback when the server said to her “The body of Christ, given for you.” Why? I asked her. She replied that it reminded her too much of the Catholic Mass, in which the bread is the real body of Christ. It was one of the central arguments of the Reformation–was the bread the real body of Christ, or was it merely symbolic? In our tradition we believe that it is symbolic.

Wheat is only wheat until it becomes baked into bread. Grapes are only grapes until they are pressed into bread and wine. Bread and wine are ordinary elements UNTIL—they are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit into the symbols of Christ. As we come now to the table, let us remember that the hope of Advent, which began in the manger, did not end on the cross. The real hope of Advent was the resurrection of Christ, so that all of us who believe can live in hope!

Amen.