This is the sermon I will be giving on Sunday, Nov. 30. I was given the passages below as the lectionary passages for the week. It was a challenging assignment, but I think I found a way to talk about Thanksgiving, Advent, and these passages—eventually.

Daniel 3 John 18:36-38

Advent, Thanksgiving, and Hope

Good morning! Today is the first Sunday of Advent! The first Sunday of the New Liturgical Year. And the first Sunday after Thanksgiving. Advent is a time of preparation, anticipation, and hope. Unlike Lent, which is a time of soul-searching and penitence in remembrance of the sacrifice of Jesus, Advent is a time of preparation and celebration that looks both forward and back. And in the process—changes our hearts today.

Today’s readings from the lectionary don’t track very well with either Thanksgiving or Advent; they describe a world at war with God and all those who follow him. They describe some of the painful and challenging realities of being a faithful follower of God in a fallen world. Nevertheless, we will circle back to these stories later.

To prepare our hearts for the Advent of Christ, we first have to go back and remember why we need Jesus in the first place. What happened to separate us from God? Why did God need to come to us? Why is the world in such a mess? And how does Jesus fix it?

This war between the powers that influence the world and God goes way back. Back to the first pages of the Bible, where we find a snake in the garden of God trying to subvert and destroy God’s plan for the future. Throughout the Scriptures, we see over and over again the persecution of those that follow God and His truth. The passages today are just two examples. Time will not allow us to review all these stories, but everyone from Abel to Joseph to David and the prophets suffered in this ongoing battle between the powers of evil and the followers of God.

And the battle continues to rage. Today, Christians are being murdered by the thousands around the world simply for being Christian. In the past 5 years in Nigeria alone, it is estimated that 3,000 to 5,000 Christians a year have been murdered for their faith. And if we add to that the constant lies and manipulation of the media and the corruption we see in every earthly government, our hearts can easily be overwhelmed to the point where thanksgiving and hope seem almost impossible.

Advent, on the other hand, is a celebration of hope for the future and a thanksgiving for God’s greatest gift to us in the past. During Advent we declare God’s faithfulness in the past and proclaim our hope for the future. It is our way of standing in faith against the trials of our time. Whatever they may be. It’s a chance to focus on the fact that God himself has come to us; he has become one of us, and maybe most importantly, it helps us remember that he is not finished yet. So let’s take a few moments to think about the hope of Advent.

Advent - The Past

Ironically, the Advent hope goes back to our first failure and a veiled promise God made to Eve. After Adam and Eve failed by pursuing their selfish desires over their love for God. God curses the serpent but adds this promise to Adam and Eve as he does.

Gen 3:15, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

In this short statement we have both an explanation of the hostility we see everywhere in the world and the source of the hope we celebrate here today. The war began with the serpent, but God has promised to end that war one day through one of Eve’s children. But as great as this promise is, our sin still separated us from God that day, and we were expelled from the garden. We lost direct access to God, and we lost access to the tree of life. We once lived in the Garden of God, the Garden of Eden. It was a place where we could walk and talk daily with God. But choosing our own way over God’s way caused us to lose access to all of this. We lost direct access to God. We could never undo what we had done. This promise was that first ray of hope, a lifeline when all other hope was gone.

However, this first promise was not the last. As time went on, God gave us more insight into the nature of his plans to save this fallen world.

In Isaiah, God sends word again regarding this child, but this time he adds a bit more detail.

Isaiah 9:6-7, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end…”

This short passage gives us a tremendous amount of help in understanding the plan of God.

First, we see that this child is born to rule. The government was going to be upon his shoulders. And the names that are given to this child teach us even more. These names inform us that this child will be no ordinary human ruler. Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace all describe this child as far more than just another human leader. Only God himself is worthy of names like this. This human child was to be called “Mighty God” and “Everlasting Father.” This is an overwhelming thought. And, as our Wonderful Counselor, he would teach us, and he would be our everlasting Prince of Peace. What’s more, his government, his rule, his peace, will increase forever, and his kingdom will never end.

The cynic might say, “If Jesus is the prince of peace, why is the world still at war?” This is obviously a complex question, but there is an answer. And that answer is, the government of Jesus is increasing—and will do so—forever. His kingdom has come, but His kingdom is, at the same time, still coming. It is ongoing. Our hope is not just in the past with a baby in the manger but in a risen king who has conquered the power of evil and is coming again to destroy evil once and for all. But in this time between, we will see trouble as the kingdom of God continues to rise and grow among the evil kingdoms of this world.

Our earlier readings today describe challenges the people of God have faced in the past. Whether we are discussing the faithfulness of the three friends of Daniel in the face of a terrible death or the steadfastness of Jesus as he stood unjustly condemned before Pilate. We see the enmity between the people of God and those who follow the serpent everywhere we look in the Scriptures. Jesus is that child who was described so long ago. But the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, as wonderful as they are, were not the whole story, but rather, the beginning of a longer and more glorious story.

We still have a future hope, and Advent is a time the Church has set aside every year to remember it. Jesus is our hope now and for the future, and this hope gives us the strength to endure, regardless of what challenges or threats come our way. Daniel’s friends found the strength to stand up to Nebuchadnezzar through their hope in God. And in the book of Hebrews, we read that Jesus took strength from the joy that was set before him. Hope is a powerful thing. And Advent is about strengthening our hope.

The coming of Jesus can be seen in three phases. And we recognize and celebrate all three during Advent. We recognize the past promises of God that were fulfilled by the first coming of Jesus. We celebrate our current ability to receive the gift of Jesus, allowing him to change us from the inside out. And we set our hope on the day when Jesus returns and fully restores our relationship to God, resurrects our bodies, and creates, or recreates, heaven and earth again. We will once again walk with God and eat from the tree of life.

Let’s look briefly at all three of the ways we prepare ourselves during this Advent season.

Remembering the past prepares us by reminding us why the world is the way it is. The short answer? Sin. Our rebellion against the authority of God cost us our relationship with God. We lost direct access to God, and we lost access to the Tree of Life. The result is that we are all alone and dying in this world, separated from God and without hope. We have been trying to fix our problems ever since we first sewed fig leaves together to cover up our shame, but we were unable to fix our problems—because we are the problem. If we were to be saved, God would have to save us.

But he chose to save us in a somewhat unexpected way. God himself came to us as a human child. He wanted to be with us again, so he became one of us. God did for us what only He could do. He came and paid the price for what we have done. He became a human to pay the price for humanity’s sin.

Only God could pay such a price, and only a human could rightfully take our place. Jesus is that man, and the life of the eternal Son of God was the price. Through Jesus, God set us free from our slavery to sin and conquered the powers that have ruled this world since that fateful day in the garden.

And now, His kingdom is growing. Sin’s power over us has been broken, and we work to announce that freedom to the entire world. There is a new king now, and we are his ambassadors. His reign of peace has begun, but we have yet to see the full realization of his kingdom.

This takes us to the future.

The advent of Christ is not just about a baby in a manger two thousand years ago. Jesus will be back. He is returning to destroy the works of evil once and for all in the final judgment. At his return he will create (or recreate) a new heavens and earth free from the corruption of sin and evil. He will wipe away every tear and heal every disease. Peace will reign forever and ever, and we will live forever in the presence of God. This is now our hope; the promise of the child has been fulfilled, but the healing of this world and our own mortal bodies is yet to come. It is our faith in the faithfulness of God that motivates us now. He has shown us His faithfulness in Jesus. He has demonstrated His power through his miracles and, most of all, through the resurrection of Jesus.

We now live in the time between, the time between the promised arrival of Jesus as a child and the fully realized eternal kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God has begun, but there is more to come. The king will return, and when he does, he will restore everything. His first coming made us new in our spirits; when he returns, all of creation will be made new.

For thousands of years people hoped for the coming of this child. Now we celebrate the faithfulness of God in sending us His Son Jesus. Hope is always a future thing. The past is history. Our hope now is in the return of the King. Our hope is in that glorious day when all this pain and suffering will finally end, and all of creation will be made new. This present world is hard, but the pain of this age is not forever. Injustice rules in this age, but when Jesus returns, there will be true justice. Evil and its sources will be destroyed, and all those who have suffered under the present evil will be comforted.

How we respond to this hope.

During Advent, our celebrations are for the victories of the past, and our hope is for the coming final victory over evil. But today—right now—is the only time we have where we can actually do things. We can’t do things in the past, and we can’t do things in the future. We can only effect change today. Advent is a time to take stock of our relationship with Jesus and our hope for the future.

Maybe we have heard about Jesus, we know the Christmas story, but we have never allowed it to really control our lives and change our destinies. The gift of God has been given, but have we ever, from our heart, responded to that gift?

If you have never responded to the gift of God in faith, don’t wait, today is your only opportunity. Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow never comes. Today is the only day we can do anything. Take the time today to allow Jesus in. Allow the Prince of Peace to give you peace today. Allow the Wonderful Counselor to comfort and guide you today. Loosen your grip on your life and allow Jesus to lead you today. Leave your old life behind, and begin a path that leads to eternal life with God.

Maybe you have already done this, but life in this fallen world has become extremely difficult. It’s possible that for you, hope is hard to find and even harder to believe in your current struggles. If that is you, remember Jesus today. Jesus gave up his position in glory to become one of us. He was mistreated and suffered great loss and ultimately suffered the most cruel and humiliating injustices on our behalf. He felt it, he cried out and asked his Father if there was any other way, but in the end, his love for all of us was greater than his desire to avoid suffering. Jesus is our strength, our life, and our example. Today, if you need encouragement, remember Jesus and lean into his body, which is the Church, and allow Jesus to comfort you through his body.

And finally, for those of you who are feeling ok today, take this time to hear and to celebrate once again how God loved us enough to send his only son to us, to become one of us. So that we can be restored to the arms of God. If that is you today, look around, for you are the body of Christ. You are the physical manifestation of Christ on earth now, at least until he returns. So look around and see where your voice can be the voice of Jesus. Look around and see where your hands can be the hands of Jesus. And let’s celebrate the coming of Jesus right this year. By being the people we were created to be, by being the people Jesus suffered to save.

For the next four weeks, we will remember and celebrate the hope that came with Jesus and still awaits us when he returns. Advent is not just about remembering that the baby Jesus was born in a manger. It is about remembering the victorious Jesus, who will one day return and fully bring about eternal life, peace, and justice. In Jesus, God is with us now, and will be with us forever.

Today, we can be the first coming of Jesus for someone. Jesus came, he died, he rose again, and made us, through his Spirit, into his hands and feet. Now, everywhere we go, we are the physical presence of Jesus to a lost and dying world.

Today is the advent of Jesus Christ on earth. Jesus has come; now we bring Jesus to the world. Today the body of Christ is at work around the world bringing peace from the Prince of Peace until he returns.

Have a Great Week!

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