Today we have begun the season of Advent in which we will spend four weeks journeying towards Bethlehem. Our first stop in that journey is with Isaiah searching for that amazing experience of being one with God. Isaiah begs God to rend open heaven and come down. If only God would show himself especially to God’s enemies. Think about what that would mean! Those who work against God’s will would stand in awe of God and think again about how evil it is to make profit the bottom line as hundreds of thousands of people suffer – as those who control the economic systems act out of greed – as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and God’s good news is thwarted! So Isaiah reminds God that “Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him. You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways.” And just how does God come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember God’s ways? CNN celebrates the heroes who gladly do right! They are searching for hope by following what has become for them spiritual truths! – The nation elects a man of color who has dared to expose the King who has no clothes. Yet only a few generations ago, the nation denied basic human rights to African Americans. Gratefully, spiritual truths have become obvious to a whole nation despite the tremendous increase in threats by those who still remain committed to the lies of racial bigotry.

So we still allow ourselves to be distracted by focusing on sexual preference as if that were the ultimate evil instead of the ways in which we are complicit in continuing to widen the gap between rich and poor. Does the church recognize the spiritual context of hope for the least among us? So hope is intimately tied to faith and love. In fact there are three theological virtues promoted throughout the good news of the gospels: faith, hope and charity.
In Greek mythology Elpis was the spirit of hope. She along with the other spirits were trapped in a jar by Zeus and entrusted to the care of the first woman Pandora. When she opened the vessel all of the spirits escaped except for Elpis (Hope). So the spirits left humans to their own devises. The opposite of the spirit of hope is Moros, the spirit of hopelessness and doom. In mythology, Elpis was depicted as a young woman carrying flowers in her arms. Her opposite spirit was Moros, the spirit of hopelessness and doom. So the Greeks saw hope alone as the promise that overcomes hopelessness and doom.

Amazingly, the despair of clinical depression has become the norm of life today. You might say that Moros is overcoming Elpis as we fail to recognize the spiritual truths of hope that only God can reveal to us. That revelation we have come to know as faith and it always gets acted out as charity. If only God would rip open the heavens so that all would know spiritual truths.
Martin Seligman in his book Learned Optimism (1990) strongly criticizes the role of churches for having promoted the idea that the individual has little hope of affecting his or her life. Optimism is a conclusion reached through a logical pattern as opposed to hope which is an emotional state which through the holy spirit of Christ becomes spiritual truth in each of us if we allow it.

So we hear the words of Paul written to the Greek church at Corinth: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and in all your knowledge— because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

So it follows that the gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus calls us to a state of continual preparation for the fulfillment of God’s will among mankind. We are told that only the Father, not even the son, Jesus knows at what time that will happen. Scholars tell us that the happening began with the event of Pentecost, 50 days after Easter, with the Holy Spirit. It continues to happen again and again as God reveals self to us in amazing ways. So just as you can tell by watching the fig tree when Spring prepares for Summer. We have within us spiritual truths to discern what God is doing so we have to keep discerning that and not be distracted by false truths that is the role of hope!

Some years ago a military plane crashed at Sonderstrom Air Force Base in Greenland. Twenty-two people were killed and the runway and nearby fields were strewn with the horrible image of body parts. There was only one chaplain on the base at the time and so the chaplain and a young lieutenant were assigned the duties of mortuary officer. They led a group of volunteers who went about the awful business of picking up the mutilated bodies and trying to identify the dead so that their families and loved ones back home could be notified. Everyone worked in shocked silence well into the night until every last remnant of death had been picked up and all went silently to their rooms. Around midnight, the lieutenant knocked on the chaplain’s doors. Through a veil of tears he said: “As we were picking up the bodies today, I realized that those volunteers were from the local church. I have always been an unbeliever, and I used to ridicule these same people who go to church here. Yet they are the only persons who would, or perhaps could, do what we had to do today. It must have been their Christian spirit that could help them see beyond the horror to the hope.”

That tragic event, changed the heart of the Mortuary Officer. He recognized the Christ who is the Spirit of Hope. He began going to church with the people and eventually did an unprecedented thing – he extended his tour of duty in Greenland for an extra year. No one had ever done that before. Why did he do it? He saw himself as part of a growing faith community that he needed! The promise of hope was not firmly rooted in his life.
So these three abide: faith, hope and charity! These transcend all ages. Faith assures us that the past is safe because we are definitely forgiven and offered Holy Spirit. Hope assures us that the future is safe because we can count of the presence and direction offered by the spirit of Christ in us. Finally, Charity and love assure us that the present is safe for we are promised that nothing can separate us from the love of God, not failure or finances nor illness nor even death.

Perhaps we only really recognize this when we come face to face with the spirit of moros. As we attempt to understand the pain of so many during this crisis of economy, we catch a vision of the spirit of hope anew in story after story of hope. Think about what happened during the American influenza epidemic of 1918. During the height of that plague, churches and all public gathering places were ordered closed. Yet more than ever, it was then that people needed hope and consolation. What they needed were images of hope.
One resourceful pastor, burdened by his inability to reach out to people in their time of need, remembered his magnificent stained glass windows that graced his church. Those windows faced a major thoroughfare and were large and commanding in design. He had numerous floodlights placed inside the church; illumination through the glass to the outside world gave passers-by the full effect of the windows story.

How like the gospel of John which says: The true light that gives light to all was coming into the world. As people passed by the church they would often stop reverently, silently and find new resolve and encouragement. They would be reminded that this is God’s world and we are his creation. We are given eyes of faith to know that we can never be separated from the love of God, not sickness or death, not economic hardships nor hostility can ever separate us.
More recently, an article last week in the Mercury News tells of Sister Marilyn Lacey whose career included running the Catholic Charities refugee resettlement program in San Jose for 21 years. In her soon-to-be-published book entitled “The Flowing Toward Me” she writes about the family that inspired her to dedicate her life to helping refugees. Some 25 years ago, Sister Marilyn was called to the San Francisco International Airport to help a Hmong family in distress. Like other Laotian refugees, Nhia Bee, his wife and five children, had arrived in the fall of 1980 with little more than the clothes on their backs and unable to communicate in English. The family was to change flights in order to continue to their destination in Illinois. Confused and in panic, Nhia had struck an aid worker and was subsequently rushed off to a hospital psychiatric ward. His wife and five children were stranded in the airport and missed their connecting flight.

It was Sister Marilyn who brought them back to the convent and eventually convinced authorities that Nhia, a gentle but bewildered man, posed no threat. For nine weeks, the sisters cared for the family, taking the children shopping and treated to ice cream as they watched wide-eyed the amazing resources of their new world. Finally, it was time for their flight to the Midwest. At dawn before their departure, Nhia climbed a 50 foot tree. There he stayed mysteriously out of sight until dusk, when he returned with something under his shirt. The next day, he bowed and presented Sister Marilyn with a “fluttering gray mourning dove he had snared ever-so-gently” in the tree. Having not financial resources, this was his farewell gift of peace. Then as they were boarding the plane, his wife, Seng reached into a cloth satchel and tied around Sister Marilyn’s waist her last valued possession, “a fabulous hand-made cotton sash, hand made in beautiful colors. For 25 years, Sister Marilyn has kept it, wrapped in a box, still fragrant with “the smell of a faraway place.”

We are living in a moment of great anxiety in America. Families are desperately worried about loss of homes and jobs, or life savings and retirement funds. Yet, the Bees, like other refugees remind us that wealth is truly relative, but hope for a new life in America is priceless. We are a nation of pilgrims who speak many languages and share many customs. As we seek to appreciate one another, let us also share our hope, the hope for which all people seek, the hope which is assurance of what we are yet to discover as God walks with us and helps us to reach out to one another.

In a world constantly reminded of the horrors of terrorist activity, we need hope.
In a world where the bottom line is profit and we measure success by what we can control and possess, we need hope!

Only 48 hours ago, we experienced Black Friday as merchants hopes were counting on hoards of people coming in to purchase those amazing bargains. Crowd mentality and greed forced it way through doors as early as Thanksgiving eve. The mad rush towards Christmas had officially begun. Did you hear about the person crushed to death in the process?

As we approach the Christmas season, Dr. Suess may be our best instructor when he wrote: And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: “How could it be so?”
“It came without ribbons! It came without tags!”
“It came without packages, boxes or bags!”
And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!
“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store.”
“Maybe Christmas. . perhaps. . . means a little bit more!”

As we journey towards Bethlehem, searching for hope, may we recognize the signs that point us there! It is the spirit of hope which comes through faith and is evidenced by charity.

Isaiah 64:1-4
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you! For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you. Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him. You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways.

I Corinthians 1:3-9 Thanksgiving
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and in all your knowledge— because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

Mark 13:24-37 The Day and Hour Unknown
"But in those days, following that distress, 'the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.' (Isaiah 13:10; 34:4)

"At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens. "Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! Be alert and pray! You do not know when that time will come. It's like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with his assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch. "Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: 'Watch!'”