What does it look like to have hope in a world that doesn’t always feel hopeful? Advent reminds us that we’re invited to hope in what God has done and what God is going to do. But hope is often hard to find, misplaced, or misunderstood. Hope is one of those gritty, active, deep words that culturally we’ve gutted. Too often, we’re sold a shallow version of something rich and beautiful.

There’s a whole lot of waiting and hoping and longing and silence in the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth. They’re old. They’ve been faithful their whole lives, righteous, doing what they’re supposed to do. And yet, they don’t have the one thing every good Jewish couple was supposed to have: a child. 

In addition to their waiting, scholars estimate that by the time of Jesus, it had been 400-450 years since God had last spoken to Israel through the prophet Malachi.

Is waiting evidence that God isn’t working or has forgotten us?  Or, could it be an invitation to lean into what God is doing? In those moments when we cannot see what God is doing, when the waiting feels like being forgotten or the silence feels like absence, we’re invited to lean into our relationship with God. And perhaps, in the waiting, our faith just might grow.

The implication of the words “deliver us from the evil one” is that Christ’s followers were facing a severe and pressing danger. To combat such evil, it might be tempting to pick up a sword, or a gun, but here’s the problem: swords only work against human beings. Paul says that our fight is not against flesh and blood, not against human beings, but against the powers and principalities. And swords don’t work against them.

Even today, some Christians believe that the best way to build God’s kingdom is by grabbing a sword. The sword is one way to build a kingdom. It’s not Christ’s way. When his disciples tried to use them, he said, put those away. It’s hard for people to experience the love of God at the end of a sword. 

God didn’t defeat evil at its own game, God defeated evil with grace, and evil never saw it coming. Jesus didn’t pick up a sword, he surrendered to one…and freed us from its power.

When we pray “deliver us from the evil one,” we’re not only asking for God’s help, we’re also committing ourselves to God’s cause. We’re saying yes to entering the places of pain, of bondage, of enslavement, and to hold that pain prayerfully in the presence of God, trusting that God will empower us to do what we don’t think we can do.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 90% of human beings live in places where we breathe contaminated air. That dirty air gets into our bodies and the consequences are terrible. Respiratory problems are the second most common cause of death worldwide. We can’t see it, but air pollution is out there—and then it gets in here—and it’s killing us. 

Which reminds me a lot of the insidious nature of evil in the world. Similarly, we absorb fear and anxiety, we inhale notions about race and gender and ethnicity into our spirits—and then exhale them back out into the world—whether we want to or not. 

Describing Jesus as he faces his death, NT Wright says, “In that moment of horror and deep darkness, Jesus fears, with good reason, that the whirlpool of evil which is about to engulf him will suck down his close followers as well.” So Jesus, in that moment, inhales all of the darkness onto himself so that the world would go free. 

Jesus was not delivered from evil, he was led to it, he was served up to it so that it could do its worst—to him, so that it would not destroy us. Even though we experience it, it has been defeated. Even though we breathe it in, it will not destroy us.

What does it mean to pray “forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us?” And what does it mean to pray “forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven those who owe us something?” The story of Zacchaeus, a despised, traitorous tax collector, shows us that this clause of the Lord’s Prayer is about what forgiveness does to us and for those around us.

While we don’t know exactly what happened between Jesus and Zacchaeus, we do know that right there, standing in his own home before Jesus, experiencing grace and forgiveness and mercy, Zacchaeus commits to give half his wealth to the poor right now, and restore to those around him what he took from them.  The forgiven becomes the giver.

Sometimes in election season we can feel like "things are the way they are." It's as if we're resigned to the brokenness, the anger, the prejudice, the name calling, and the dehumanization, and content to point the finger at our enemy and say, "thank God I'm not like that person." But just as Jesus disrupted the way things were for Zacchaeus with grace and forgiveness, so with us he says, "things do not have to be this way" and then invites us to forgive, to release, to love, to serve, to give half of what we own to the poor, to change the way things are and in doing so, our world becomes more on earth as it is in heaven.

Today, the verbs change.

The first half of the Lord’s Prayer reminds us that God is a good father who loves us, that God’s kingdom is good, and that God’s is trustworthy. Our requests of God come after, and in the context of, a trusting relationship with God. But now, we get three direct, second person appeals: “please give us,” “please forgive us,” and “please rescue us.” So, when we pray, “Give us today the food we need” are we praying for physical bread or spiritual bread?

Jesus, the bread of life, also fed thousands of hungry people with real physical bread and real physical fish. The people who followed Jesus were primarily poor. “Give us the bread we need today” almost certainly included a request for real bread today. Maybe some of us can relate to that kind urgent physical need, but many of us, because of our affluence, our middle class privileges, are able to secure, on our own, the physical things we need to make it through most days.

Which is kind of ironic, because for people who act like we’ve got it all under control, we sure do worry a lot about a lot of things. 

We encourage you to check out https://www.bread.org to discover how we can partner with the work God is doing to feed those who need bread today.

When Jesus was asked by a lawyer “What is the greatest commandment” he replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind, and the second is like it love your neighbor as yourself.” Our neighbor is the person neigh unto us.  The one in the cereal aisle next to us. Or in the ditch on the other side of the road from us. Or the Samaritan outcast, who showed what loving one’s neighbor really means.

And Jesus, himself is our model for this.  He met the physical, spiritual and relational needs of the whole person. Ultimately it was God who brought heaven to earth—in the incarnation, in the person of Jesus, who not only reconciled us to a relationship with God but showed us the way to respond to others in need of the same. Jesus shows us that the kingdom of heaven is among us, and often, in places we don't see as so pleasant, amongst people we might otherwise avoid, in circumstances we would rather not face.

He asks this of us not by heaping burdensome to-dos on our already weary selves, but by moving our hearts to love in action, those He loves. Not for rewards or recognition but to reflect  Jesus to others. Recognizing the worth of every person God has made and for whom Jesus died.

Trust is part of the prayer Jesus taught us to pray, “May your kingdom come, may your will be done.”  As we talked about last week, the grammar here is important. It reads closer to “help us do your will” and implies some action on our part.

When we pray your kingdom come, your will to be done, we’re choosing to admit that our understanding, knowledge, and perspective is limited, partial, incomplete. We’re choosing to trust God, to defer to God when we do not know, do not understand, and do not agree—and also, when we think we know, assume we understand, and happily agree.  We’re choosing to defer to God in all things. 

What trust falls are you facing? Are you considering a new job? Are you trying to let your children make their own choices, trusting that God loves them like you do? Are you trying to show up for a grieving friend, trusting that God can work in and through you even when you’re not sure what to do or say?  Can we yell our anger at God over injustice and war and senseless death and still lean into God, taking the next step of faith that God asks us to? Trust takes full surrender and full courage all at the same time. It takes great strength to let go. 

Where do you struggle to pray, Your will be done? Are you facing a situation where it’s hard to defer, hard to surrender, hard to trust God?

Have you ever felt in your body that you were somewhere special?  Call it awe or reverence. You knew, deep down, that the ground beneath your feet was was special. Different. Sacred. That’s what’s happening when Moses encounters God in the burning bush.

God assures Moses that he can go to Pharaoh because God promises that he will be with him. This assurance is embedded in God’s strange, wonderful, mysterious name. When Moses asks about God’s name, God replies, “I Am that I Am.”

God is—present, located here, with us, among us and God is active, engaged, doing, alive. God’s name is a twofold reassurance. God promised to be with Moses and to work through Moses.

God was also with us and present and working in and through the life of Jesus. Jesus kept God’s name holy. Set it apart. Among us and different from us. When Jesus teaches us to pray the Lord’s Prayer, he invites us to participate in keeping God’s name holy.

“Our Father in heaven, help us keep your name holy.” And as God did with Moses, God promises to be with us and empowering us to what is impossible for us to do on our own: Reflect and reveal Christ. Show the world who God is. In the world, but not of the world. Be among, but be different.

The very first recorded words of Jesus as a child when he was found in the temple were, “Why are you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”

Now, as the son of God, Jesus easily could have reserved the title of Father to refer to God for himself. He invites us to pray to “Our Father”, not just his Father. With just a word, Jesus grants us permission to access the presence of God like never before.

While acknowledging that “Father” might not be the easiest or most comforting title for some of us to use for God, maybe it can actually help us redeem the meaning of the word by giving us a fuller, more perfect picture of what a father should be. It can remind us that God desires to be in relationship with us—to nurture and provide for us, to pour out love to us, to be present with us through the dark moments of our lives.

Praying to our God, who is in heaven, does not mean that He is separated from us. God’s done the opposite in drawing near to us and our broken world, coming to dwell with us in the person of Jesus, and inviting us to partner with God in following the example of humbly giving up power and privilege to make God’s infinite grace and wisdom known to the world. Not to escape the world, but to transform it.

We can experience joy at many times and in many different ways, but often it sneaks up on us when we weren’t quite expecting it. Joy isn’t something we conjure up, hoping if we can just figure out how to escape our sadness, change our situation, or figure out an easier way forward, then we’ll finally grasp joy.  

The key to joy is knowing God.  It’s a deep, fundamental acknowledgement that God is God and I am not, which opens the door to seeing with a different perspective.  It quiets my demands that God do things my way.  And it opens the door for us to look for God, to see God with us, in the midst of difficulty and suffering, instead of putting our whole focus on looking for the way out.  Perhaps so much so that we miss God in the midst of our circumstance.  

In order to really truly experience deep joy, we need to be willing to feel all the other things that we also feel, and to bring them to God.  When we numb ourselves to feeling sadness or grief, we also numb ourselves to experiencing joy.