1 Thessalonians 3:6-13
“Is Your Hope Downsized?”

     The Apostle Paul had a ministry that was conducted as much through his absence as through his presence.  He wrote long pastoral letters (with long sentences!) to struggling communities of the Christian faith; letters spent encouraging them, correcting them, teaching them, and always thanking God for them.  Every church, I think, needs a Paul in its life.

     What is good to remember, however, is that Paul’s letters were often written out of a context of his own persecution, imprisonment, and suffering.  We realize that Paul drew hope by remembering the faith of these struggling communities.  They, in turn, drew hope by remembering his.  Their correspondence, forever captured in the epistles of the New Testament, testifies to the hope that sustained both writer and reader.

     On this first Sabbath of Advent we light the first candle of the Advent wreath.  In some churches, as in ours today, this is the Sabbath to celebrate “HOPE!”  Some may wonder why we begin this season with that theme.  Perhaps it is because hope is the only light strong enough to shine all by itself in the darkness.  It is the only light strong enough to stand alone.

     Once the light of hope is shining, many things are possible that were not possible before.  And each new possible thing takes its light from this first light of hope.  But what do we really mean by hope?

     Sometimes the best hope people carry is nothing more than being able to put one foot in front of the other each day.  We think that we cannot presume to hope for more than that, or we are afraid to hope for more than that, or we can no longer imagine more than that.  Have you ever felt yourself at that point in your life?  Have we ever experienced our church at that point?  It is as if in the process of adversity, challenge, compromise, disappointment, lowered expectations, etc., hope becomes “downsized” too.  Our understanding of it becomes driven by a “bottom line” approach to living – hope can be nothing more than surviving.

     But, then, in the season of Advent we have a special opportunity.  We have the chance to break out of the bondage of a hope that has been downsized – downsized to the point that it no longer bears the weight of the gospel promises.  In the rhythm of the church year we are encouraged on this day, the first Sabbath of Advent, not just to blow the budget line on this theme, but to overspend without any constraints whatsoever.

     That is why it is good to be reading in one of Paul’s letters on the first Sabbath of Advent.  Perhaps you were looking for the voice of Isaiah, the wildness of John the Baptist, or the great promises of justice and mercy to get us all into that world of extravagant hope.  However, we have this portion of an extraordinarily personal and passionate letter, written under difficult circumstances.  What could this letter reveal about extravagant hope, a hope that lives up to the season called Advent?

     The church at Thessalonica to whom Paul wrote needed to hope on that scale.  Let us think about the hard realities of their situations.  Paul was physically absent.  The resurrected Christ had been taken up into heaven.  However well they were managing, they needed to know that surviving those two realities was not their best hope.  They needed hope that allowed them to expect that their experiences of absence would eventually be filled, first by a reunion with Paul and ultimately by the coming of their Lord Jesus with all his saints.

     Someone who is struggling to survive writes this letter, and it is written to a community that is also struggling to survive.  These people know as much as anyone could ever know about having faith and living out their faith with a bottom line in their face all the time.

     All this is true, and yet, I believe, they do not hesitate to presume extravagant hope.  They are not afraid to put it in writing, an act that permitted centuries of people who came after them the chance to read it and weigh its spiritual credibility.  They are not afraid to pray it as Paul prayed for them.  They have not lost the imagination that comes with gospel promises.

     We may be tempted to read their extravagant hope as a product of a simpler time or the last stage of a desperate situation.  We may be tempted to see ourselves as better positioned in history and intellectual enlightenment to assess the most likely interpretation of such a hope and the context of its extravagant cosmic implications.  Notice as soon as I begin to talk about that temptation, I have to talk with big words in the hope that no one will really understand me.

     We may be tempted to do all that, but I suspect that most of us will also possess the historical positioning to remember another best hope.

     We will remember the best hope of a people that was the hope of a Messiah.  A hope that traveled through the centuries and societies, surviving various re-expressions until that best hope was incarnated by the power of the Holy Spirit overshadowing the young woman Mary and birthed under a night sky in the company of animals.  How extravagant was that best hope!  How faithfully it was proclaimed for centuries.  How diligently people prayed for it.  Are we really foolish enough to forget the longevity of that best hope and the fact of its fulfillment in the very season of the year we are beginning?  Are we really foolish enough to forget the long years of waiting for that best hope, just so we can be excused for letting our best hope go?  How hard it is to wait!

     Friends, all of our hopes for the coming of the Christ Child at Christmas and the reunion of friends and family (however imperfect they are) are not our best hope either.  The occasion, the celebration of the twelve days called Christmas, that we manage to achieve are always signs of promise for our best hope.  These things, by themselves, are not our best hope.

     This first Sabbath of Advent is not just about lighting a spiritual fire under all our Christmas preparations.  It is about calling everyone into our best hope.  It is about publicly presuming the extravagance of everything promised through Jesus Christ.  It is about breaking through the “reality check” of the bottom-line spirituality and proclaiming that Christmas has always been about the beginning of our best hope, not the end of it.  The best is yet to come!

     We proclaim, we prepare, and we pray for the fulfillment of our best hope – a hope strong enough to shine all by itself in the darkness, a hope that every absence will be overcome, that every empty place will be filled, that every deficit will be paid, for at long last we will be together “at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints!”

     How many ways has this hope been described in this season in particular?  Justice will flow!  Tears will be dried!  There will be no more war!   Sickness will end!  The prisoners will be released!  Peace will reign!  Our best hope is nothing less that these things and more than these things.

     We do not need to apologize for the extravagance of the good news that came through Jesus Christ.  That is the hope that belongs to you and me.  Do not let it go.  On the first Sabbath of Advent, let Paul’s prayer for the church at Thessalonica be our prayer for each other: “May he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints” (verse 13). 

     Jesus Christ came into our world long ago.  Jesus Christ may come into our hearts at any time in the now when we invite him in.  Some day, Jesus Christ is coming again!  As a prayer, may we sing #124 “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus!”