1st Sunday of Advent
Luke 1:18-25
Zechariah said to the angel, ‘How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.’ The angel replied, ‘I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.’
Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah, and wondered at his delay in the sanctuary. When he did come out, he could not speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary. He kept motioning to them and remained unable to speak. When his time of service was ended, he went to his home.
After those days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she remained in seclusion. She said, ‘This is what God has done for me: God looked favorably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.’
The Promise of Hope
There was a short time in my life when I drove for Uber. Same car that I have now, my little blue Prius. This was maybe seven or eight years ago; Uber would probably think my car isn’t good enough to drive for them now. I didn’t do it for very long; I think it was just three or four months. It was during a time in my life when I felt kind of lost. I didn’t know where my life was going, I didn’t know what to do, but I still needed an income, and I figured that would be the easiest thing for me to do until I figured things out.
Like all jobs, there are good things and bad things about being an Uber driver. For one, you get to set your own hours, which was really nice. I am not a morning person, and I could wake up whenever I wanted. If you really hustled, you could make a decent amount of money driving for Uber, but it did mean long hours of driving in the city. I was living with my parents at the time, and they live in an unincorporated part of Ventura County, so basically, way out in the boonies. There aren’t a lot of people trying to get Uber rides out there. Even driving around the cities of Ventura County wasn’t that lucrative. If I really wanted to make some money, I needed to go to LA. I don’t mind driving, but driving for 5 or 6 hours a day in big city traffic is a little stressful. I don’t really have the personality for that, but that’s where the money was.
Most people are nice, but some people aren’t, and anytime there’s a problem, it’s a strike against you, the driver. One woman somehow tried to summon me from another state, and when I called her because I couldn’t find her at the pick-up location that she had specified, she got mad at me, because I was at the wrong place. I tried to explain to her that I wasn’t even in the same state as her, and she hung up on me. My sense of right and wrong, my sense of fairness, wouldn’t allow me to stay in this situation for very long, so I eventually got a job at Target, because they’re so fair to their employees.
I was just kind of moving through life without a plan, without a goal. All my life, I thought that God had a plan for me. But, I was feeling pretty hopeless, ‘cause I couldn’t see what the plan was. What was I supposed to do with my life?
Today is the first Sunday of Advent, Hope Sunday, and we are diving into the Christmas story. Our gospel reading today is about Zechariah and Elizabeth, an older couple who have lost hope because they haven’t been able to have any children. The text even says that Elizabeth was disgraced because of her inability to have children. At their age, they had lost all hope of ever having a child.
But, God sent the Angel Gabriel to them to tell them that they would have a son, and that they would name him John, who we eventually find out, grows up to be John the Baptist, the man who will eventually baptize Jesus. Of course, when Zechariah first hears this, he questions it. How are he and Elizabeth supposed to have a child at their age? It doesn’t make any sense. And because of his doubt, Zechariah is struck dumb, unable to speak until John is born. We couldn’t decide in Bible study if Zechariah being unable to speak during Elizabeth’s pregnancy would have made things easier or more difficult for her. This changed everything for them. Now, they had hope.
Hopelessness is widespread and pervasive. There are people suffering all over the world, war-torn places like Israel and Palestine, Russia and Ukraine. Imagine the countless prayers rising up to God from these places. Imagine all of the people who have lost their homes, their loves ones, people who have had to flee the places where they were born, the only places they had ever known. How do you keep going when everything has been taken away from you? What’s to stop all of these people from just giving up? It’s hope. They persevere because God gives us hope. Regardless of what they think about God, regardless of their religious upbringing, God is alive inside of all of us, instilling us with the hope that we need to keep going…to keep pushing, to keep trying, even when it seems like our efforts won’t change anything.
Throughout our lives, we will face many hardships. But, we are never alone in them. God is always with us, to guide us and give us strength. Whenever we’re worried, whenever we’re sad, whenever we’re missing someone, God is with us. This is what allows us to keep going, this hope that God gives us, even if we don’t know that God is the one who gives it.
Our Advent theme this year is “The Promise of Hope.” We know, because of God’s love and God’s steadfastness that there is always hope, no matter what happens. And, we can use all the hope we can get right now. As uncertainty grows more and more with each passing day, we can be certain that God is with us, and that God is at work in the world to make things better. That is the promise of hope…the hope that Jesus is coming, that God is going to take on flesh and bone and be born into the world, because the world so desperately needs it. We have been promised a new life, here on Earth, in which the status quo will be upended, in which justice will prevail. We have been promised a new life when we move on from this place, to reunite with those who have gone before, to be with our loved ones once again. This is the promise of hope.
As the people of God, we have a responsibility to take that hope and share it with the world. Think about the hope that we bring when we welcome refugees as our neighbors and raise money to help their transition into a new life, here. Think about the hope that we bring to our unsheltered neighbors when we bring them food and sleeping bags, and work so hard to remind everyone to think about them and care about them. Think about the hope that we bring to children who learn about the solar panels that we’ve installed on our roof, letting them know that we care about them and their future, that their concerns about what is happening to our world are not falling on deaf ears. We are agents of God’s hope.
The hope that God brings isn’t always going to look like what we expect or what we want it to. I’m sure Zechariah and Elizabeth didn’t expect an angel to come down to tell them that they would have a child in their old age. Refugees fleeing for their lives would be hard pressed to imagine what life would be like in a different country, surrounded by people of different ethnicities, all speaking a different language. How do you anticipate a new culture? How can you imagine a new cuisine that you’ve never tasted before? How much relief and hope would you feel, knowing that all of these strange new things, these challenges, these foreign experiences, meant safety and a new start? Hope can look look so many things.
I was working all of these random jobs, essentially waiting for my life to start, and I had gotten fed up with the latest one and quit. I didn’t have a plan; I didn’t have any prospects, but like always, I hoped that God had a plan for me. The very next day, like an honest to goodness miracle, I got a call from a friend who was going to a church that needed a youth minister, and she asked if would consider doing it. I couldn’t believe it. I told her that it was a miracle that she was calling me right at that moment, as I was sitting there in my car, having just quit my job, wondering: What was I going to do? I told her I would love to come up and help them with that. All of a sudden, my life had direction, and I knew what I was going to do. And, of course, that decision eventually led to me coming here.
Sometimes it can feel like God has abandoned us, or maybe even that God has rejected us. But, God would never do that. God has a plan for us, and a lot of times we don’t know what that plan is. God does things in God’s own time, no matter how impatient or maligned we might feel. We might have to exist for a time, not knowing where our life is going, but if we remain ready for God’s call, if we keep our eyes open for where God might be pointing us, if we remain hopeful, God’s plan will eventually be revealed to us. We just have to have hope in God and trust in the fact that God only wants what is best for us. Amen.
~ Rev. Charles Wei
