Dec. 2, 2018                      Hope                                                

    

A few weeks ago, on my way home from my daughter’s house in Elgin, my car was running out of gas, so I pulled into a small service station and filled up. It must not have been a very busy gas station, because when I went in, the attendant was reading a book, which they put down to ring up my purchase. As she did so, I took a look at what she was reading, the bible, and it was opened to the book of Daniel.

When she finished, I told her I had noticed she was reading from the book of Daniel. She said yes, it had been recommended to her by a church friend, who told her that it would help her to understand what was going on in the world today. So I asked her, what do you mean? And she told me that the world seemed to be falling apart, that every newspaper she read, or news program she saw, was all about poverty, or racism, or illness, or lying, or natural disasters, or some form of violence. It just seemed to her the world was coming to an end. "And it makes you afraid?", I asked, and she said, "yes….."

         "So where are you in the book?" I asked, and she answered, "the part about the coming of the son of man." Now at this point, I could have put on my biblical scholar hat, and told her that the part about the son of man comes after Nebuchanezzars dream of the broken idol which represents the nations of Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Greece, and Rome, and how the son of man represents the establishment of a heavenly kingdom on earth, where there is no longer all that poverty, racism, illness, lying, disasters or violence. That the son of man was a symbol of promise of a world that is to come, that we as followers of God were called to look for, and even enact in our lives. But I didn’t want to be a know it all jerk.

         So I asked her, "how do you think it all ends?" And she went on to tell me that she thought that the son of man would come and make the world a better place, that his kingdom would get rid of all the divisions, and violence, and problems that the world had, but that first of all we had to go through all this, and through faith in him, that God would bring a new world into being.

         Now I have to tell you, two things. First, one of the greatest joys of being a minister, isn’t telling people what to believe and fixing their lives, it’s asking people about their faith, and finding in them a depth that people don’t always see, and sometimes allowing them to articulate their faith is the best thing I can do. And the second thing is that I have filled up at this little gas station in Sandwich, numerous times. And the attendant and I have had a number of conversations, about her living in her car, losing her trailer, her abusive husband who she is separated from, and etc. If there was someone who lived on hope and faith, it was indeed this woman.

         And that’s what this morning’s gospel lesson is all about. The early Christians lived in a world that they thought was falling apart. They were persecuted by the Jews and the Romans, the Jewish temple was destroyed, there were disasters and illness, and violence aplenty. And they were waiting, for Jesus to come back and save them. And as scary as all of this was to them, Luke’s gospel message to them this morning was a message of hope, that they would live through these times, and a new world would be born. And the message for us today, is that in these tumultuous times in which we live, that through our faith in the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, that we too will live through these times, and that a better world is coming!  

And that’s the good news of Jesus Christ!