Isaiah 2: 1-4; Romans 13: 11-12

Happy New (Church) Year

Today we move into the brand New Year Church year and into a new three-year cycle of the church year with its lectionary readings.  So we’re into the first Sunday of the Advent season in year A, with the last Sunday in ordinary team of year C in the rear view mirror.  This is when it all begins: the anticipation and the proclamation of hope as we expect the Christ child.  The New Year in the Church comes before the New Year on our calendar.  It makes sense that the coming of the new comes first through the Church, because the renewal the Church proclaims, precedes all hope and renewal. It has done so for two thousand years and this renewal, this hope is the most consistent. It comes with the same promise every year.  We cannot say that about New Year’s day. It often comes with a sense of dread and anxiety, depending on the times.  On New Year’s day our hope comes from the confidence of people to do the right thing and of economies to improve and leaders to make the right decisions.  But we are really at the mercy of others.  The New church year comes in spite of all that happens. Consistently the music and the worship remind us that God has been with us throughout history. Isaiah speaks hopefully about swords being turned into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. A peaceful time will come.  In his letter to the Romans Paul talks about hope a time of light and how it important for us to clothe ourselves sin light and not in darkness.  Peacefulness and kindness are the mood of these verses.

Friends, at the same time, the work of God is not separate from history.  God’s working intersects with human history. It happens through our history, but we have to pay attention to make notice it.  The working of God’s grace is so subtle that we could reasonably deny it even exists or ever existed.

I know this is a very confusing time for our nation, but we have dwelt on this quite a bit already and I am sure it was a topic of conversation at family Thanksgiving tables. So let’s look beyond at the world at what kind of history  the world’s people are living and maybe it will tell us something new about what’s happening here at home.

Columnist Tom Friedman in his latest book “Thank you for being late” strikes an optimistic tone in spite of the problems.  He is always good at capturing the social, economic and technological tends that influence our times.  Friedman identifies what he calls “three accelerations” in our time.  One is the acceleration of climate change, the second is the acceleration of market change and third is the acceleration of technological change. These are all happening at the same time.  This is felt everywhere, for instance among the workers of the industrial Midwest.   Friedman also talks about visiting Niger in West Africa to see for himself the refugees from climate change with all the young men leaving for Europe and as they leave communicating on the wassapp application of their phone.  They are looking for work. This phenomenon shows all three accelerations: markets, technology and climate change.  These are not just changes, but they are accelerations.  We are getting more connected all the time and the movement is from nations in disarray to nations with order. Nobody can expect to survive if she or he is not constantly learning.  Lifetime learning is the key and more important lifetime learning on your own cost. Individuals and even families cannot change this. Only communities can make an impact.  Asked in an interview if he believed in hope, Friedman answered:” I believe in ‘applied hope.’” In other words he has hope if people adjust to the times when the climate will do wilder and wilder things and technology can exponentially perform and markets are constantly changing.  ‘Applied hope” is like ‘working hope.’

Well, friends, where does a small congregation like this fit in?  Well, we can ask, not what we usually ask: what will the future bring for our church, but how come we survived so far against demographic odds?  The answer is by being a community that kept reflecting and thinking about what our unique role was.  We didn’t just sit here and do the same thing over and over again and hope that things would be better and people would come. Our hope was a working hope and a reflecting hope.

In this uncertain time the question becomes: how can we as a congregation have a working hope.  How can we continue to be unique? I know this is a question I am always asking.  How can we be creatively faithful?  How can we be true to our faith but at the same time adjust to the accelerating changes.  And how can we do this by promoting the peace and the light the Bible speaks of instead of bigotry and discrimination.  So before we think of Christmas and New Year’s, let us renew our commitment to be creatively and hopefully working. Thanks be to God!