SPEAKER_04: Our first lesson this morning is from the third chapter of Genesis.
SPEAKER_04: Now the serpent was more crafty than any other animal that the Lord God had made.
SPEAKER_04: He said to the woman, Did God say, You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?
SPEAKER_04: The woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.
SPEAKER_04: But the serpent said to the woman, You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
SPEAKER_04: So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.
SPEAKER_04: And she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
SPEAKER_04: Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew they were naked.
SPEAKER_04: And they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
SPEAKER_04: They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
SPEAKER_04: But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you?
SPEAKER_04: He said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked and I hid myself.
SPEAKER_04: He said, Who told you that you were naked?
SPEAKER_04: Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?
SPEAKER_04: The man said, The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.
SPEAKER_04: Then the Lord God said to the woman, What is this that you have done?
SPEAKER_04: The woman said, The serpent tricked me and I ate.
SPEAKER_04: The Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals, and among all wild creatures upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
SPEAKER_04: I will put anemone anonymity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers.
SPEAKER_04: He will strike your head and you will strike his heel.
SPEAKER_04: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_06: The second lesson, a reading from Isaiah.
SPEAKER_06: Comfort, oh comfort, my people, says your God.
SPEAKER_06: Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her.
SPEAKER_06: That she has served her turn, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.
SPEAKER_06: A voice cries out, In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
SPEAKER_06: Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill will be made low.
SPEAKER_06: The uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.
SPEAKER_06: Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
SPEAKER_06: A voice says, Cry out.
SPEAKER_06: And I said, What shall I cry?
SPEAKER_06: All the people are grass, their consistency is like the flower of the field.
SPEAKER_06: The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it, surely the people are grass.
SPEAKER_06: The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.
SPEAKER_06: Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings.
SPEAKER_06: Lift up your voice with strength.
SPEAKER_06: O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear.
SPEAKER_06: Says to the cities of Judah, here is your God.
SPEAKER_06: See the Lord God comes with might, and his arms rules for him.
SPEAKER_06: His reward is with him, and his recompense before him.
SPEAKER_06: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: A covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.
SPEAKER_01: I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
SPEAKER_01: No longer shall they teach one another or say to one another, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: For I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.
SPEAKER_01: The word of the Lord, thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_00: A reading from Isaiah.
SPEAKER_00: Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying, Ask a sign of the Lord your God, let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.
SPEAKER_00: But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.
SPEAKER_00: Then Isaiah said, Hear then, O house of David, is it too little for you to weary mortals that you weary my God also?
SPEAKER_00: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign.
SPEAKER_00: Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.
SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: The fifth lesson, a reading from Micah.
SPEAKER_03: But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrata, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth from me, one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.
SPEAKER_03: Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has brought forth.
SPEAKER_03: Then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel, and he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_03: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_05: A reading from Isaiah.
SPEAKER_05: He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.
SPEAKER_05: He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
SPEAKER_05: Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
SPEAKER_05: The wolf shall lie with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with a kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a child shall lead them.
SPEAKER_05: The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
SPEAKER_05: The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den.
SPEAKER_05: They 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.
SPEAKER_05: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus said, There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.
SPEAKER_02: People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
SPEAKER_02: Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
SPEAKER_02: Now, when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.
SPEAKER_02: Then he told them a parable.
SPEAKER_02: Look at the fig tree and all its leaves.
SPEAKER_02: As soon as they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already here.
SPEAKER_02: So also when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.
SPEAKER_02: Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.
SPEAKER_02: Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
SPEAKER_02: Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly like a trap.
SPEAKER_02: For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth.
SPEAKER_02: Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place and to stand before the Son of Man.
SPEAKER_02: The Gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the beginning of church year.
SPEAKER_02: This is Advent One, so this is New Year in the church.
SPEAKER_02: And of course, Advent is a Latin word that simply means coming, and we know to expect on December the 25th it will be Santa Claus.
SPEAKER_02: No, in fact, it will be the Christ child.
SPEAKER_02: And uh even though we did this last year and will do it again next year, Advent asks us not to look blithely ahead to the salvation that, frankly, if you're like me, you could use this year.
SPEAKER_02: Salvation in your lives, in new places.
SPEAKER_02: In places that are like stables, dirty and smelly.
SPEAKER_02: You could use the arrival of the Christ child in your life again this year, I suspect.
SPEAKER_02: We're not supposed to look blithely to the fact we know that's coming.
SPEAKER_02: We're supposed to prepare ourselves these next four weeks and trust that arrival will come.
SPEAKER_02: We prepare ourselves, of course, not by giving the baby Jesus a bottle and a crib and baby blankets.
SPEAKER_02: He won't need those things this year.
SPEAKER_02: Instead, we prepare ourselves by cultivating hope, peace, joy, and love.
SPEAKER_02: We're asked not to cultivate these things, frankly, in ordinary ways.
SPEAKER_02: After all, we come in here into the sanctuary, into a safe place, not to do ordinary things, but to ask God to work in us that which is extraordinary.
SPEAKER_02: Ordinarily, hope means something like I wish.
SPEAKER_02: Boy, I hope this sermon is not long.
SPEAKER_02: I hope it cools down, but not too much.
SPEAKER_02: Hope my football team wins.
SPEAKER_02: Ordinary hope.
SPEAKER_02: At the end of the day, hope is when we pray, God, my will be done on earth and in heaven instead of yours.
SPEAKER_02: God, do it my way.
SPEAKER_02: After all, I've got some pretty good ideas.
SPEAKER_02: Advent is not about that.
SPEAKER_02: It's too ordinary, too disappointing, and it leads us not to receive a Christ child.
SPEAKER_02: It leads us to receive despair.
SPEAKER_02: Slightly better, I want to put to you.
SPEAKER_02: Brene Brown, who worships up at Christ Church Cathedral, says hope is not a feeling at all.
SPEAKER_02: That helps because I don't always feel hopeful.
SPEAKER_02: Brene Brown says that hope is actually a practice.
SPEAKER_02: It amounts to something like goal setting.
SPEAKER_02: Picking, hopefully, something that is righteous to pursue, having the perseverance to do it couched in the belief, frankly, that I am capable of pursuing this.
SPEAKER_02: Sounds like smart goals to me, right?
SPEAKER_02: That are specific and measurable, achievable, that are timely and realistic.
SPEAKER_02: And I think that is certainly better than just ordinary hope.
SPEAKER_02: But I still think, frankly, it's a little bit extraordinary.
SPEAKER_02: I think God is asking us to go deeper.
SPEAKER_02: At the end of the day, the Oxford English Dictionary says that hope, this is the third definition, it's the archaic one, says hope is really more something like trust.
SPEAKER_02: Trust.
SPEAKER_02: And I think the scriptures we've read really invite us to think about what it is we choose to trust and where we put it.
SPEAKER_02: And maybe that comes back to goal setting, but the question is frankly, do we hope for too small of God?
SPEAKER_02: Do we hope for too little of ourselves?
SPEAKER_02: Is our vision imaginative and creative and unifying?
SPEAKER_02: Or frankly, do we hope that God will confirm, conform to our wants and desires?
SPEAKER_02: Consider the readings.
SPEAKER_02: You know, I suppose we could hear the first reading from Genesis and say, oh, that describes the fall of human beings.
SPEAKER_02: But you know, the rabbis have never read it that way.
SPEAKER_02: The rabbis have said, at the end of the day, this story tells us about human beings that given the choice between life and knowledge, we pick knowledge.
SPEAKER_02: We pick ordinary things.
SPEAKER_02: Knowledge is good and evil, we know it, and of course we know it because we learned in middle school and we all went there or are going there.
SPEAKER_02: Knowledge is things like gossip.
SPEAKER_02: And boy, it's attractive, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02: It's attractive to know things and be experts on other people without thinking about whether or not we spread life.
SPEAKER_02: I like knowing things.
SPEAKER_02: I believe in education.
SPEAKER_02: But sometimes I think we put our hopes, frankly, in the outcomes that we know.
SPEAKER_02: And I've pretty much only ever been disappointed when I do that.
SPEAKER_02: As a parent, as a child, as a sibling, as a priest.
SPEAKER_02: These other readings, the whole panoply sort of talks about God's presence and recreation in the middle of, frankly, catastrophe.
SPEAKER_02: Jerusalem is surrounded by an invading army.
SPEAKER_02: And God tells Isaiah, I'm with you.
SPEAKER_02: It's what we call cognitive dissonance, right?
SPEAKER_02: In which the situation we're living does not line up with that which we hope and trust for.
SPEAKER_02: In the gospel, the disciples have just said, Jesus, look at this beautiful temple, and he says, nothing lasts.
SPEAKER_02: This temple won't last.
SPEAKER_02: This beautiful edifice that you think will be around forever won't.
SPEAKER_02: The things that last, he tells his followers, are my words.
SPEAKER_02: And I want to suggest to you, Jesus is differentiating frankly between ordinary hope and outcomes.
SPEAKER_02: And things that God invites us to cultivate and trust, and those might just be our inputs.
SPEAKER_02: The truth is, we have no control.
SPEAKER_02: You learn this quickly as a parent over what our children will do with what we put in.
SPEAKER_02: We have control over what we put in.
SPEAKER_02: We have no control with what our parents do with what we put in.
SPEAKER_02: I've got great ideas on how they should be taking care of themselves.
SPEAKER_02: Mom, my will be done in your house, not yours.
SPEAKER_02: But we do have control over what we put in.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe this is about the God of the small things.
SPEAKER_02: Small things like everyday kindness.
SPEAKER_02: Moments that seem insignificant, but our faith tells us in God, frankly, are eternal.
SPEAKER_02: And I want to suggest to this advent we have this opportunity to reimagine the scenarios in our lives that are most shrouded with our enemies.
SPEAKER_02: Because after all, there's this image here in Isaiah that is so beyond me that I sort of think has to be from God.
SPEAKER_02: It's not anything I want.
SPEAKER_02: The wolf will lie down with the lamb.
SPEAKER_02: And the calf will lie down with the bear.
SPEAKER_02: What God has in mind is not that our natural predators are distanced from us and we never see them again.
SPEAKER_02: That's my idea.
SPEAKER_02: God doesn't have in mind that people get what they pay for.
SPEAKER_02: That's my idea.
SPEAKER_02: God has in mind that our predators and those we've preyed upon will be reconciled to the point that we can rest with one another without anxiety.
SPEAKER_02: There are multiple relationships in my life where I don't want that.
SPEAKER_02: I want people to get what they deserve.
SPEAKER_02: Because then my knowledge will be proved right, and I continue to eat from the tree of the knowledge every day.
SPEAKER_02: And Advent asks us to eat from the tree of life.
SPEAKER_02: Advent is the opportunity, I think, to say, God, I have no idea how you're going to do this on earth.
SPEAKER_02: But I hope, that is, I trust, that if I cannot do it on earth, you will do it in heaven.
SPEAKER_02: What if this week we could imagine God reconciling us with those we've hurt and those who have hurt us after we die?
SPEAKER_02: What if we could imagine God doing that and us enjoying it?
SPEAKER_02: That's what Martin Luther King had in mind when he said, I've been to the mountaintop.
SPEAKER_02: He saw a vision of real hope.
SPEAKER_02: I mean extraordinary hope, where people with dogs, fire hoses, spraying people on the march to Selma, were reconciled with the same people.
SPEAKER_02: That's what Jesus is talking about today.
SPEAKER_02: Hope.
SPEAKER_02: Trust.
SPEAKER_02: And from the mountaintop, see when Martin had the vision, he was able to come back and live in the middle of cognitive dissonance.
SPEAKER_02: Knowing that God would do it one day, he was able to pursue it in his own lifetime.
SPEAKER_02: I think that might be the invitation of Advent.
SPEAKER_02: Hope.
SPEAKER_02: One last word.
SPEAKER_02: I used to live in Atlanta, and the big water source is called Lake Lanier.
SPEAKER_02: Lake Lanier has got like maybe 5,000 people living there.
SPEAKER_02: And within a mile, there's three little churches, all Baptist.
SPEAKER_02: The first one's called Hope Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_02: Half a mile down the road, there's New Hope Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_02: Another half a mile, there's real hope, Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_02: And every single one of those hopes is ordinary.
SPEAKER_02: And God invites us to an extraordinary hope in which we are not divided, but we are commonly united, frankly, not because of what we believe about some arcane theological principle, but because we are invited to be God's family on earth.
SPEAKER_02: Because our faith tells us we will in heaven.
SPEAKER_02: Advent asks the question why wait for that?
SPEAKER_02: Because God has said it is very good.