Keeping Awake: The Candle of Hope

A sermon given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on Sunday, Nov 27, 1st Sunday of Advent

Is. 64:1-9.

Ps. 80:1-7,17-19.

1 Cor. 1:3-9.

Mark 13:24-37.

Today we light the candle of hope. Candles have always been used as lights in dark places. And Jesus said, “You are the light of the world.”

We don’t live in a world where hope makes much sense. Rather we live in a world where the two main responses to news we hear are despair and denial.

Either we are paralyzed by news of violence and injustice or we hear about it – consider it to be elsewhere – and ignore it, live as if it doesn’t exist.

But the truth is that this world is full of hatred, of violence, of greed, of oppression. Darkness is all around us but also within us.

Today we light a candle in the midst of it. The candle of hope.

Those who follow Jesus live as lights in a dark world just as Christ has shown the light of his grace in our hearts, forgiving our sins and assuring us of God’s love. The source of our light is the hope in God that we grasp with faith giving us the courage to love.

Candles also remind us of staying awake.

I suppose a more modern equivalent might be the light of a television screen, a computer screen, or a bedside lamp.

The candle is lit and by it we continue to see, continue to watch. By it we keep awake.

We keep awake. The refrain from today’s gospel reading.

Jesus our Emmanuel, which means God with us, came and inaugurated a new time, a new reign of God, but peace on earth is far from the reality that we see around us.

And so we exist in hope of the full realization of God’s shalom on earth as in heaven – 'the Son of Man coming in clouds' – and that hope is the candle which gives us sight in dark places.

The hope keeps us awake.

Jesus says, “It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.”

We have been given good news in Christ and entrusted with the care of God’s kingdom on earth, “to bring good news to the poor…to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free…to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

We have a job to do: keep awake. Let not the master find us asleep when he comes.

Keep awake!

So much in this world works to extinguish the candle of our hope.

But we return to God’s promise – God’s hope of peace, of justice, of salvation – and we find our strength in the remembrance of God’s great love for us, God’s great grace and we are spurred on again to be that love, to be that grace to others – to manifest a new kind of life, a new kind of politics, a new kind exchange – not based on selfishness, but based on love, not based on dominance, but based on service.

And this way of Jesus is the kingdom which is already/not yet – it is coming to be now but will be fully manifest in that day when 'the Son of Man comes in clouds'.

And so we hold a candle of hope in a world of sin, of violence, of loneliness, of despair, of oppression – and we hear the words of the apostle Paul in Romans 13:11:

“you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.”

Let us then press on with our candle of hope – keeping awake even when others around us give up and fall asleep–

Let us hear and embrace the gospel of God’s love within our hearts – rejoicing in the liberty of God’s forgiveness and the wonder of God’s generosity!

and let us therefore go out into God’s world – to the people that God loves: the poor, the oppressed, the blind, the least of these our brothers and sisters – and proclaim the gospel of love in word AND deed – the salvation which is already… but not yet – but nearer now than when we first believed.

For what Christ said to his disciples then, he says to us now: Keep awake! Amen.