The Light of Baptism

 

Text: Isaiah 42:1-9

Focus: Jesus

Function: to help us see that we are also the light to God’s creation.

42:¹Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
    he will bring forth justice to the nations.
²He will not cry out or lift up his voice
    or make it heard in the street;
³a bruised reed he will not break,
    and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
    he will faithfully bring forth justice.
⁴He will not grow faint or be crushed
    until he has established justice in the earth,
    and the coastlands wait for his teaching.⁵Thus says God, the Lord,

    who created the heavens and stretched them out,
    who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
    and spirit to those who walk in it:
⁶I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness;
    I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
    a light to the nations,
⁷    to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
    from the prison those who sit in darkness.
⁸I am the Lord; that is my name;
    my glory I give to no other,
    nor my praise to idols.
⁹See, the former things have come to pass,
    and new things I now declare;
before they spring forth,
    I tell you of them.

Good morning to the beloved children of the Living and loving God!

The gospel lectionary text for today was on the baptism of Jesus which struck me as profound this year when I pondered just exactly what it means for us that Jesus, who was deemed perfect by nature was baptized since baptism meant that we are giving up selfishness and living for ourselves and are now living for the glory of God to bring about the peace that Jesus gave his life for.

Because of the virgin birth, we assume that Jesus had a divine nature. And then because we hold a belief that God is perfect and Jesus is divine then Jesus must have been perfect as well.

And the whole theology gets deeper when we start thinking of the atonement and Jesus being perfect was the perfect sacrifice. However, I don’t believe in a God of wrath who needed to be appeased by the his own death.

Jesus said that the divine nature that he possessed is also imparted to us by the Holy Spirit when we trust Jesus. He said literally: That they may be one with me and with you just as you and I are one.

At the Baptism of Jesus, we see a symbolic action whereby the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove physically descends on Jesus and this begins his ministry.

Jesus depended on the leading and the power of the Holy Spirit to perform his ministry and that, I believe is why Jesus spent so much time in prayer and contemplation. It is through that quiet time of prayer and contemplation that the Holy Spirit speaks to us and leads us.

And it happens when the Spirit baptizes us with a its cleansing power in our lives.

As I mentioned last week, my prayer for this church is the same as my personal prayer for the year and that is for us to get to know more and more the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Set aside time for prayer and contemplation, it will help you see the love that God has for others.

The Isaiah text that we read this morning goes along with the New Testament Lectionary text on baptism and the creators of the lectionary can see the beautiful correlation between what it means for Jesus when he is filled with the Spirit of God.

It is a prophecy about Jesus, described as the servant of God.

The passage starts out with “I put my Spirit upon him…”

And then the prophecy about tells us what will happen with Jesus when the Spirit of God begins to make this transformation into the Christ, the same transformation that he makes in us.

When you read it, you get a picture of a kind soul who is gentle and does his best through the power of love to lead people towards loving others.

As 1 Peter 4:8 says, Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

And we see listed as a primary mission of this servant who leads people to the good is concerned with bringing justice to the world.

The prophecy says that God gives the servant to the world to open the eyes of the blind and to bring about the justice of God.

We see this illustrated well in Luke 4:18 when Jesus reads the prophecy, again from Isaiah, whereby he declares that his mission is to bring about the justice that “good news” means for those who are dispossessed and struggling.

The prophecy was that Jesus’s mission was to bring about justice and then Jesus gives his first sermon and declares the same thing. God cares about justice for the poor and the dispossessed.

I believe that we are the body of Christ left here on earth. The mission statement of the Church of the Brethren is that we are here to continue the work of Jesus.

We are baptized into the work and the mission of Jesus. We are the Christ, Christ’s body here on earth.

Jesus calls us to take up our own symbolic cross and follow him. That means that the mission of Jesus is transmitted unto us. We are also called to care and advocate for the poor and the dispossessed.

They are what Jesus called his brothers and sisters, the least of these, according to Matthew 25, the refugee, the asylum seeker, the immigrant, the prisoner, the foreigner, sick, the hungry, and the naked. They are all brothers and sisters of Jesus and how we treat them is how we treat Christ.

That reminds me of the introduction and the question as to why Jesus was baptized to wash away his sins when we believe he didn’t have any.

Baptism is more than the washing of the body with water. Look at 1 Peter 3:21: Baptism, which is like that water, now saves you. Baptism doesn't save by removing dirt from the body. Rather, baptism is a request to God for a clear conscience. It saves you through Jesus Christ, who came back from death to life.

And again, we are taught that Jesus didn’t need to have his conscience cleansed, but he did it symbolically for us, as an example.

And Baptism, as we just read is being more than the physical act of using a form of water, but it is the filling of the same Spirit that Jesus has that causes us to love one another.

Let us seek the filling of the Spirit of God.

The Seal of Our Faith

 

Text: Ephesians 1:3-14

Focus: The Holy Spirit

Function: Experience the Holy Spirit

³Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, ⁴just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. ⁵He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, ⁶to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. ⁷In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace ⁸that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight ⁹he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, ¹⁰as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. ¹¹In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, ¹²so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. ¹³In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; ¹⁴this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

Good morning and Happy New Year to the beloved Children of God!

On the first of the year, I like to remind people to have hope and faith in what God has in store for them in the next year. It is a time for us to pause and consider where we are going.

Personally, I hope this year to grow in my own understanding of the presence of the Spirit of God in my life. I pray the same thing for the Painter Creek Church and the people who seek God together with me in this place.

It is by the power of the Spirit that we are lead to follow Christ in this world. And this passage is ripe with the theology of what has happened to us since we are people who have placed our trust in the Christ Spirit that indwells us.

The text implies that God has destined the entire world to receive God’s love, mercy and grace and I believe that in the end we will all find God’s salvation since Jesus died for the sins of the world entire.

We are the Church, the body of Christ in the world. It is important to remember that the word that we translate as Church literally means “the gathering.” The Church is the gathering of believers and Jesus said when even if just two or three gather, the Spirit of God is present with them in that community. It appears to me that by gathering, we incite the beloved community that Jesus gave his life to foster.

I work hard a making sure everyone is a part of this community because when we gather, we stir up the Holy Spirit.

Now let me take us back to verse 13 from our text: ¹³In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit;

He gives us the course of the salvation God has for us. It starts with hearing “the good news of salvation” that God is here to restore the world to the right and bring justice. And by hearing that word, through the Holy Spirit, we trusted in those words and are now allowing the Spirit of God to lead us.

So, the connection to what it means to be in the church is evident by the leading and moving of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the people who identify themselves as members of the gathering of believers, the Church.

Remember also that believers are those trust Jesus and his teachings to lead their lives. To believe literally means to trust.

It is like in marriage. We trust that from then on the person we are now bonded to will live with our best interests at their own heart and commit themselves to care for us. We become partners who value each other.

With God, like marriage, it is a bond of love that God makes with us when we trust in Jesus and his way of living. And that bond of love is given to us by God, simply because we are resting in Their love for us. We partner with God and live by Their values.

Now the the thrust of the passage speaks of the title of the sermon and how we are sealed by God’s Spirit for restoration.

Look at verse 4 ...he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.

Brother Paul speaks of the majesty of God and God’s ability to know every single person. God has the ability to keep account of all the good that God helps us do through the power of the Spirit. And, God has forgiven all the mistakes we have made.

Paul’s understanding that God knew us before God created the world implies that God exists in the realm of the fourth dimension: outside of time itself. I think that is kind of cool, but that is not why this verse is wonderful.

Through the power of love, God has made us to be holy and blameless. By holy, it means to be a separate people. That is why our early fathers and mothers in the faith dressed in plain clothes because they believed that by their dress they could remind themselves that they live by Jesus’ value system instead of the world’s value system of greed and selfishness.

Holiness means that we are different and gives us the power to live by the leading of the Holy Spirit instead of the revenge and greed orientated systems of this world.

Be Holy, for God is holy is a command from scripture for us to follow. Because it is commanded it is expected and okay for us to be different.

The salient word in verse 4 is the love.

In God, we have the power to love and forgive. And it is our love for others that makes us separate: holy. At the same time, it is God’s love for us that makes us blameless. We are Holy and Blameless in love.

So, forgive, because God forgave you. We forgive even when we are wronged and have no recourse. Forgiveness sets us free from the pain inflicted by someone else upon us. And it works even if they haven’t changed their ways. When we forgive others, the slate between us and God is cleared. Walking in forgiveness is part of that holiness and love.

The Spirit of God seals us in a miraculous way.

In my personal life, I have seen just a few miracles. They remind me to rest in God’s love and to not fear the circumstances.

However, I have seen many miracles in my role as pastor. And they are all the same. It is the miracle of being born from above, according to John 3, and it happens when one places trust in Jesus. One of the greatest joys in my pastoral ministry is to watch the supernatural joy flood into someone who has been forgiven.

We respond to God’s love with love and that moves the Spirit in us. Be loving.

The Light of Life

Text: John 1:1-14

Focus: Christ

Function: Advent 5 (after Christmas)

1:¹In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.

⁶There was a man sent from God whose name was John. ⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. ⁹The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

¹⁰He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. ¹¹He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. ¹²But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

¹⁴And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

Good morning to the beloved children of God!

Today we celebrate the light of life that has come into the world as we have lit the last candle, the Christ candle and it symbolizes how we feel the change in our hearts through the power of the Spirit inside of us as we celebrate the way the Jesus has lit up our lives with the Spirit.

I love this passage of scripture because it describes Jesus as the word of God of God made flesh in our midst.

The fact that God left heaven and became human says a lot about the love that God has for humanity.

Without being political, the bible commands nations to take care of the poor in their land. And I heard about a person who was disabled and was losing their benefits and was going to become homeless who said: “I wish those politicians who don’t seem to care for us knew what it was like to life day by day scratching for survival so that they would care for us.

Well, that is exactly what God did in Jesus. God left the wonder and majesty of heaven to join humanity. And he didn’t come to humanity as a person of power and prestige, but as an innocent, weak and vulnerable baby who had a sentence of death over his head from infancy and had to cross the border illegally in order to survive. Thank God those strangers welcomed the holy family.

When God left heaven for humanity and became Jesus the Nazarene, and incarnated the Christ into the world, God became familiar with all of human suffering.

If Jesus were born into privilege, he possibly wouldn’t have known the burden of the Royal census and the misery the ensuing taxation caused. He possibly would not have experienced the grief of the premature loss of his earthly father, Joseph. And As I mentioned, his family would not have become refugees.

The bible says the Jesus experienced the full range of human suffering and joy that we have. God, the light of the world, wanted to be with us.

He did everything like us and felt everything like us and showed us by his reactions of love, mercy combined with some stern warnings and some significant praises in the community of people he was around what God is all about.

Father Richard Rohr points out that in Jesus the Christ, God anointed creation with the divine presence in order for us to know that God loves humanity enough to share our both our pains and joys in real time.

And the text says that the purpose was for us to become the Children of God.

John the author of this text points out a great tragedy that must have been felt by God. God comes to the people that God has cared for in a special way for generations and those people refuse to receive him.

What does it mean to receive him? The text says those who believe or trust in him. I like to call it resting in God by faith.

It speaks of “The power” to become the children of God. I believe it is speaking of the transformation that happens when the Spirit of God moves in our hearts and gives us the kind of love and mercy that Jesus showed us when Jesus walked among us.

And when that power comes upon us we are born anew. Simply put, the Spirit moves on us with love toward others and directs us to follow Jesus instead of the way of the world around us.

It is the power to be transformed into loving and caring people. Jesus said we will be known by the way we love and care for others.

God’s Spirit, in this passage is the light of life inside of us.

And God has lit the entire world through the birth of a little baby almost 2,000 years ago. Let that light shine through us.

Love's Joy

Text: Isaiah 35:1-10

Focus: Love and Joy combined

Function: Advent 4

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;
    the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus ²it shall blossom abundantly
    and rejoice with joy and shouting.
The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
    the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They shall see the glory of the Lord,
    the majesty of our God.

³Strengthen the weak hands
    and make firm the feeble knees.
⁴Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
    “Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God.
    He will come with vengeance,
with terrible recompense.
    He will come and save you.”

⁵Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
    and the ears of the deaf shall be opened;
⁶then the lame shall leap like a deer,
    and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness
    and streams in the desert;
⁷the burning sand shall become a pool
    and the thirsty ground springs of water;
the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp;
    the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

⁸A highway shall be there,
    and it shall be called the Holy Way;
the unclean shall not travel on it,
    but it shall be for God’s people;
    no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.
⁹No lion shall be there,
    nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it;
they shall not be found there,
    but the redeemed shall walk there.
¹⁰And the ransomed of the Lord shall return
    and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
    they shall obtain joy and gladness,
    and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Good morning to the beloved children of God!

May the Spirit of Peace, Love, Joy and Hope from Advent fill your hearts and minds throughout the year.

Today we are continuing with our advent celebration by looking at the themes of Love and Joy.

I hope you don’t think of this as lazy, but during Advent, I like to focus the title of my sermon on the advent theme for the week because those four themes from advent bear reminding.

In 2 Timothy Paul reminds the leaders of the Church to continue to remind the people about the important things.

Advent, or the birth and the meaning of the hope given is one of those important things to keep on remembering.

It has a lot to do with my preaching. I am aware that because of the advertising that is intended to make us unhappy unless we get more more and the news programming that fuels our rage against the other, whether they be left or right, I have a lot of competition in presenting the value system of the Kingdom of God versus the value system of the world that we live in.

The value system of the world is greed, revenge and selfishness.

The value system of the Kingdom of God is the golden rule to treat others as well as we want to be treated. Period. There is no qualifier about what religion they are, what color they are, what nationality they are, what gender they are, and what economic class they are in.

Since everyone we meet is created by Christ, they all bear the image and the likeness of Christ inside of them. Since the atonement of Christ on the cross and the veil of the temple was rent and the Holy Spirit returned after Jesus’ ascension into heaven, every single person has a bit of the Spirit of Christ inside of them to lead and guide them. We are now the family of God, siblings with the entire world.

We are the kingdom of God on earth commissioned to be the light bearers of hope, peace, love and joy.

I mentioned the first week of advent how it is difficult to separate the themes of Advent since they all depend on each other. Faith is the basis for all of them. Love is the basis for our faith. Hope brings us to the point where we are willing to have faith and trust and Joy seems to be the result of what God is doing.

As I mentioned, my competition in preaching is an almost 24/7 bombardment of the idea that everything is about us and we can have it all regardless of how it affects others or the planet.

So, reminding ourselves of these advent themes is spiritually healthy and necessary.

I thought of love and how love is the foundation of the new commandment from Christ to us. And I though of the relationship between the experience of love and the feeling of joy.

Joy is a lot like hope. Hope is something that God gives us but we have control over whether or not we will accept it and let it build our faith.

Joy works the same way. We release it, or we accept it as a result of the way we experience God’s love for us.

Allowing joy to manifest in our lives is an act of worship. The scriptures say that the shepherds rejoiced at what they found when they found Jesus that Christmas night.

We celebrate Christmas to allow Joy to flow and that flowing of Joy is a cycle that reinforces our faith and our hope and that gives us the strength to manifest love for others as a result of our faith in Christ.

I see the expression of joy, or the release of joy, the celebration of the good that God has brought to us as an acceptable act of worship.

And it reminds me of why we give presents. While I am not happy about the consumerist nature of what the incarnation of God into humanity means, I rejoice at the idea of giving because for us, God gave himself at Christmas.

Last week I heard bits of a podcast about the importance of giving because giving brings us to a place of joy. 1 John says that we are to love God, but we cannot see God so we love God by loving others. Giving to others at Christmas is an act of worship that reflects the gift that God gave us.

At Christmas, God bridged the gap between us and Them and Jesus showed us in a very real way the nature of the community, what he called the gathering, what we call the church which is here on earth to continue healing the nations.

God so loved God’s creation so much that God gave of himself for us to bring us back to a place of peace, hope, joy and love.

Let us enjoy, and rejoice at our Christmas celebrations this year as we reflect on the nature of God’s gift to us.

The Gift of Peace

 

Text: Isaiah 11:1-9

Focus: Peace

Function: Advent 2

11:¹A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
    and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
²The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
    the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    the spirit of counsel and might,
    the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
³His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see
    or decide by what his ears hear,
⁴but with righteousness he shall judge for the poor
    and decide with equity for the oppressed of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
    and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
⁵Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist
    and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

⁶The wolf shall live with the lamb;
    the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed together,
    and a little child shall lead them.
⁷The cow and the bear shall graze;
    their young shall lie down together;
    and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
⁸The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
    and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
⁹They will not hurt or destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.

Good morning to the beloved children of the living and loving God!

May Christ’s peace fill you today as we look at the importance of peace in our lives.

I hope that by the end of the sermon, we will see better how the phrase from Philippians 4:7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

I believe the qualifying phrase from that verse is “as you live in Christ Jesus.” I preach a lot about the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And I keep that theme before us because more and more in my own life, I have learned to depend on the peace that Christ gives me when I take my frustrations to Christ Jesus in my prayer life.

“As we dwell in Christ,” I believe is a phrase about our lifestyle of living by faith in the fact that God loves us, cares for us and is with us in the midst of all of our trials and tribulations.

God brings us peace. The birth of Christ is where we celebrate the coming of God’s peace into our lives through the Spirit that Jesus sends us.

God is not some angry father who only thinks of himself and instead of helping us when we struggle, shames us for not getting it right.

God is the perfect father who loves us enough to take the time to lead us by the Spirit and sometimes, God even works miracles in our lives.

God does this in answer to our prayers. But at other times, most other times in my experience, God gives us the peace to endure during the trial and then works out the circumstances according to God’s will in our lives.

Living in Christ, I believe is living in surrender to the leading of the Holy Spirit deep inside of our hearts who will call us to love others as much as we love ourselves.

And, that same Holy Spirit will give us boldness to address injustice. And that is what our text is about. It is the Peace that Christ’s mission on earth is to bring about.

But Jesus’s kingdom is not spiritual where the Spirit reigns in our hearts and gives us peace. We celebrate the inner peace of Christ this morning and we anxiously look for the Peace that Christ promises to bring to the nations.

That inner peace in Christ can come when we follow Christ closely through prayer and forgiveness of others.

I learn by this that when I get afraid, I to go to God in prayer and let Christ’s peace assure me that God knows my pain and fears and cares.

I love Jesus at the grave of Lazarus and that simple verse in John 11:25: Jesus wept.

He knows our pain and walks with us through it.

We get that peace in prayer as we are brought to that place of trust in God.

But there is more to peace that just that feeling of comfort and lack of fear.

Our text for this morning is a prophecy about the way that when Jesus the Christ comes to earth, He will bring with him the kind of Political peace that delivers the oppressed from injustice.

He contrasts the righteous with the wicked. And the wicked are described as those who oppress the poor.

This reminds me of Jesus first sermon, Luke 4:18:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to set free those who are oppressed,

Jesus stands up in the crowd and reads this text from Isaiah 61 and describes as his mission as a mission to bring about justice for the poor and the oppressed. It is the same theme as the prophecy about him from earlier in Isaiah that is this morning’s text.

And it also speaks of a miraculous transformation.

The wolf shall lay down with the lamb, the calf and the lion feed together and the little child will not be harmed by nature’s predators.

There are those who take this passage literally and believe that in a new heaven and a new earth the carnivores will be transformed into herbivores.

I tend to believe that it is symbolic of what happens when the Holy Spirit gets into the hearts of people and gives them a desire to love their enemies instead of hate them. I see this as God’s design for all nations to live together in harmony. God’s plan is for humanity to give up the violence and predation of the weak and the poor and cease from war. I feel a calling to proclaim this peace.

And we keep hoping and striving for this outcome. That is why peace is a major theme of Advent.

We call it the Christmas Spirit and we are learning to let that Spirit that brings us peace and promises to bring peace to the world.

Let Peace reign in our hearts.

The Mystery of Hope

 

Text: Matthew 24:36-44

Focus: Hope

Function: 1^st Sunday in Advent

³⁶“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. ³⁷For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. ³⁸For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, ³⁹and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so, too, will be the coming of the Son of Man. ⁴⁰Then two will be in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. ⁴¹Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken, and one will be left. ⁴²Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. ⁴³But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. ⁴⁴Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

Good morning to the beloved children of God.

Today is the first Sunday in Advent. Advent is a season of reflection before the celebration of Jesus’ birth whereby we focus on important themes of our striving in our lives to reflect the love that Jesus has shown us to the world around us.

The themes of Advent are: Hope, Peace, Love and Joy.

This is actually pretty difficult for preachers to manage because Peace enjoys an integral relationship between Peace and Love, between peace and Joy, and between Peace and Hope. It is hard to separate them in my thinking, so it is going to be hard to draw a distinction in my preaching the themes for advent.

The first theme we see is Hope.

I choose the lectionary text about expectant hope from Matthew when Jesus is talking about what theologians call the second coming of Christ. Most of the prophecy in Matthew 24 was fulfilled in AD 70 when Israel ceased to be a nation for almost 2,000 years and then God brought the nation back, a miracle.

And I believe that Jesus is preaching the message to the church, to us, in order for us to not lose hope in the fact that He is here and has come to redeem the world from its selfishness and greed.

Jesus came to set up a kingdom that is not of this world. It is a kingdom that resides inside the hearts of men and women and it grows when we place our trust in Jesus and allow the Spirit of God to lead us to love others as Jesus commanded us.

Salvation from Jesus, the main thing we hope for, is Jesus coming into our hearts and giving us the love of God and leading us in the spiritual paths of God’s love for the whole world.

I think hope is a beautiful thing. But I feel at times that it is hard to hold on to.

I look at the story of Peter and Jesus on the water when the boat was sinking and Jesus appeared walking on the water and they thought he was the angel of death and they got afraid and then Jesus speaks to them and gives them hope.

Peter tests the Lord and for some reason, the Lord allows it, and Peter gets out of the boat and walks on water toward Jesus. But the text says that when he saw the waves and the storm he got afraid.

He took his eyes off of Jesus and got afraid. And when fear set in, he began to sink. Now when one steps in the water what happens? Whoosh! They don’t begin to sink, they sink.

So here is Peter, slowly sinking, a miracle is still going on and it seems to me that the more he allows fear in the farther down he goes.

The lesson, I believe, is to keep our eyes on Jesus and not to let fear control our minds.

That leads us back to hope.

Hope in the love of God delivers us from fear and keeps us in a place of faith where we can live our lives loving and serving God in spite of the way other people get along without living a sacrificial life for the good of others.

So, for me, as I mentioned, I can get afraid when I lose hope.

And when I think of hope, I think of my hope in the love that God has for us.

God is love. According to 1 John 4:8 and it says that everyone who walks in love, walks in God.

And this is where it gets hard because Love is another theme of advent and I need to save those scriptures for that sermon. But it is important to know that when we are loving others and giving of ourselves then the Spirit of God is working through us and is filling us with faith and that faith increases our hope.

And we just finished thanksgiving and we looked at the importance of gratitude.

I find that gratitude goes a long way when fear starts to set in and I lose sight of the power of hope in my life.

When I am grateful in the midst of my fear, when I find things to be grateful for, I then realize that God is indeed with me and will not abandon me.

And when I am reminded that God is love and God loves me and that God wants me, as we saw in the series on the beatitudes, God wants me to thrive in the midst of life, Good or bad, I find a reason to have hope.

Hope is like the mystery of faith. It comes from God and we have the choice to allow hope to build our faith our reject it.

This season of advent, let us let that hope fill our hearts so that we can share that love that Jesus has for us and the world entire.