It's Going to be Different this Year

Advent 1C

Luke 21:25-36

December 2, 2018

St. Matthias

           The countdown to Christmas has begun!  Only 22 more days to go.  I think I am more excited about Christmas than usual this year.  I turned on the fireplace Friday night, even though it was warm outside.  I told Alexa to play some Christmas music which I would have never done last year.  I even found a LIVE web camera from Telluride Colorado on the internet and watched it snow for a while.  This is not normal for me.  Usually, I fight the shopping. I don’t watch the way too many Christmas specials on TV.  I even put off putting up the decorations for as long as I can. It’s Advent and not yet Christmas.  We have to wait - I usually tell myself.  But this year it is different.

           Part of it is that I have been thinking about my 4 sermons during Advent.  Usually, I just think about Sundays one at a time, but this year I have decided I want to know more about Advent and particularly the Advent Wreath.  There are 5 candles and each one is there to remind us of NOT just how many Sundays are left, BUT also how we should prepare for our celebration of the birth of Christ.  The word ADVENT means ARRIVAL or COMING, and Christians have observed this season of preparation since the 4^th Century.  We can thank the Germans and a Lutheran minister for the first Advent Wreath in 1839.  Originally there were candles for every day placed on a cartwheel.  He used the circle to remind us of God’s never-ending love and the gift of eternal life.  On the outside of the wheel, there were 20 small red candles for each weekday.  On the inner spokes, he placed 4 large white candles – one for each Sunday.  Through the years, evergreens, pine cones, and berries were added to symbolize everlasting life even in the darkness of winter.  Of course, the Advent Wreath has changed since its beginnings.  Sometimes you will see all white candles or all blue or 3 purple and 1 pink candle.  We’ve added a candle in the center for Christmas Eve.  Each candle has come to symbolize one aspect of Advent – one part of our preparation and expectation. 

Today we light the first Advent candle which calls us to remember the HOPE of Christmas.  The Christ Child born in a manger in Bethlehem came as the HOPE of a world looking for a Savior.  We have all perhaps experienced that sense – that feeling of HOPE.  Every child lives in HOPE that Santa Claus will come.  There are Christmas wish lists and certain parts of the holidays that we HOPE will make this the best Christmas ever.  We look forward to our part in the HOPE of Christmas with every box of food we pack, every dollar we drop in a Salvation Army Red Kettle, and every family we adopt from the Angel Tree.  We can pack Shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child, wrap presents for Operation Christmas Hope, and write letters to soldiers with Operation Gratitude.   Christmas is the most generous time of the year in our country.  People give more and do more for others and I think this comes from our HOPE that we can help, share, and spread God’s love.  In our Gospel lesson this morning, Jesus talks about the signs that point to the coming of the Kingdom of God and I think we see those signs every day and especially at Christmas.  With every gift, every box of food, every Angel - we participate in the HOPE of Christmas and the Kingdom of Heaven comes near through you and me.

We HOPE in this Season of Advent for Peace in our world - for Cures to incurable diseases and for those whose lives have been turned upside down by natural disaster.  Thousands of our young men and women in our armed forces will be deployed around the world and along our Southern border this Christmas in areas of conflict where there’s not much HOPE – where war and hate cloud even the faintest glimmer of Love.  The first candle on the Advent Wreath shines as a reminder that even in the darkest places and moments of our world, the LIGHT of Christ shines as the HOPE of the World.  There is a cross in Saint-Yves Belgium which stands to this day as a reminder of what can happen when we believe in HOPE.  During World War 1, on Christmas Eve in 1914, German and Allied forces along the Western Front, stopped – the fighting just stopped. Legend has it that it all began with one soldier singing a Christmas Carol.  Then another soldier joined the first and more and more stopped fighting and started singing.  The troops from both sides came out of their trenches – and celebrated Christmas together.  It happened again the next year even though the troops were given strict orders on both sides to continue their fighting throughout the holidays. Today, groups of Germans, the English, the French and Americans meet in the same spot to remember that Love always wins in the Kingdom of Heaven. Advent is a time for HOPE and we light a candle, so the world can know that in the LIGHT of Christ - that there is HOPE for cures to Cancer, Alzheimer’s, and AIDS, and there is HOPE even in the devastation of an earthquake, a hurricane, or tornado.  For even then and always – God is there.

And we light this Candle this morning to tell the world of the HOPE of Advent.  We come to this altar rail in Faith and Hope with the sure and certain knowledge that God loves us.  Through baptism, we have been given our HOPE of eternal life – that Christ is born in us at Christmas and for all eternity.  Our HOPE is found in the flame of the first candle proclaiming that Christ is the light of the world. 

It’s Advent.  Live for the next 22 days expecting for a star to shine in the East – for choirs of Angels to sing and for a child who is Christ the Lord to be born once again.  Live in the HOPE!  I think it’s going to be different this year.  AMEN.