HOPE IN OUR HEARTS

Scripture: Matthew 1:18-24

INTRODUCTION

During the years that I served the Presbyterian Church of Sewickley in suburban Pittsburgh, I wore a clerical collar on Sunday mornings in keeping with the tradition of that congregation. I also found that it was helpful to wear the collar when I visited hospital patients, especially in the city where there was a large Catholic population.

So it was one December afternoon in 1988, as I, in full uniform, walked into St. Margaret’s Medical Center to see a friend who was facing surgery the next day. When I got to the elevator, the doors opened wide and I saw that several people were already inside. Looking at them, including three Catholic sisters, I asked the question, “Going up? Are you going up?” To which one of the nuns replied, “We hope so, father, we sure hope so”!

As we take our first steps into the Advent Season today, our journey will continue to focus on the theme for this church year: “Christ at the Center: the Hope of the World.” And it is that hope which I will preach about as we make our way toward Christmas – next Sunday “Hope in Our Homes,” and then “Hope in Our Church,” “Hope in Our City,” “Hope in Our Nation” and on Christmas Eve, “Hope in Our World.”

It is my personal hope and prayer that these sermons will help us draw close to God, even as God seeks to draw near to us through His Son, our Savior Jesus. And this morning, we begin where hope really starts – with a sermon about “Hope in Our Hearts.”

A shoe company in New York City sent two of its top salespersons to Mexico to survey the business possibilities there. They both went to rural areas, and within a week, one of the salespersons e-mailed this message back to the home office: “Situation hopeless here. Nobody wears shoes. Ready to come home.” A day later, the other salesperson e-mailed a different message: “Fantastic potential here. Nobody wears shoes. Send samples right away.”

Well, I don’t know all that much about the shoe business in rural Mexico. But when it comes to the way that we live out our faith right here in Atlanta, Georgia, I think that the situation is basically the same. We, all of us, have a choice to make. Either we choose to look at life with negative and pessimistic eyes, clinging to our fears and being held back by sorrow and apprehension…or we can choose to hold onto hope and look at life with trusting eyes, helping us to embrace today and look forward toward tomorrow with a sense of great expectation.

That was the choice which Joseph faced at the dawn of the very first Advent-Christmas Season a long time ago. Matthew tells us in his gospel story that Joseph and Mary were “betrothed” but not yet married when she told him about the baby. The Bible doesn’t record their conversation, which we can imagine must have been difficult and painful as they talked about staying together or moving toward a separation and divorce.

And then it happened. An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him, Do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name “Jesus,” for he will save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:20-21).

Well that was enough for Joseph and Mary to begin the process of restoring their trust and reclaiming their love. So with hope in their hearts and great expectation in their eyes, they watched and waited until the child was born…and just as the angel had told them, they named the little boy Jesus.

II.

On this first Sunday of the Advent Season, as we begin our journey toward Bethlehem, do you have that kind of hope in your heart today? It is a gift that God wants to give to you and to me for Christmas, and all that we need to do is open our hearts to receive it.

But for so many of us, that is easier said than done, because at some point along the way, our hearts have been broken and to open them up again is almost more than we can bear.

Dr. John Claypool, the Episcopal priest and author who has often preached and taught in this church and ministered to our souls in more ways than we can measure – Dr. Claypool has just written a new book entitled “The Hopeful Heart,” which I commend to all of you.

In the third chapter, he tells the story about C.S. Lewis, one of the truly great Christians in the 20^th century, who “at the age of 56 married an American Jewish woman named Joy Davidman, whom he came to love quite profoundly. What he had not been given in his twenties and thirties was graciously bequeathed to him in his fifties, and he came to delight in this gift of marriage.

Lewis’ bride had miraculously recovered from cancer just after they were married, but three years later, the cancer returned and she died in a matter of weeks. Lewis was devastated by this sudden turn of events, and was cast into the valley of the shadow of grief.”

Claypool tells us that “Just before his own death, C.S. Lewis was persuaded to publish a portion of the journal (he had kept) and the book was entitled ‘A Grief Observed’ … He made no effort to hide how utterly betrayed he felt by the God he had come to know and trust … but as he continued to wrestle with God … he discovered that God had actually been present all along and had in fact provided consolation, even though Lewis had failed to perceive it. When he looked back on … his wife’s death and focused on what had actually happened, Lewis saw more clearly the presence of the Divine. As a result, ‘A Grief Observed’ ended on a far more hopeful note than it began.” (From “The Hopeful Heart” by John R. Claypool, Morehouse Publishing, 2003, pages 37-39).

It was that same man, C.S. Lewis, who wrote these words about the human heart. Please listen:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one… Wrap it carefully… lock it up safe in the casket … of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” (From “The Four Loves” by C.S. Lewis, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1960, page 169).

If there is anyone here in this sanctuary today or listening by radio or watching on TV who has been hurt that way, then listen again to what that Advent angel said to Joseph: Do not be afraid! And those same words come echoing, echoing down through the ages of time to you and to me, here and now. Do not be afraid! Do not be afraid! Open your heart and take hold of the love and the hope that God wants to give you. Life is too short and our families and friendships are too precious to miss it. Don’t miss it! So as we make our way toward Christmas, open your heart to the Lord. He will heal the hurt and the pain, and He will help you share your heart with others again.

CONCLUSION

Near the end of his play “The Skin of Our Teeth,” Thornton Wilder wrote this piece of powerful dialogue between a wife and a husband who loved each other and yet were struggling to keep things together:

She says to him “I didn’t marry you because you were perfect. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for all of your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married, and it was the promise that made (the difference).”

Mary and Joseph made and kept their promises to each other, and prepared to welcome God’s Son into the world with open hearts and with open arms. And that is the choice that we can make today. Either we look at life through negative and pessimistic eyes, clinging to our fears and being held back by sorrow and apprehension … or we can choose to hold onto hope and look at life with trusting eyes, helping us to embrace today and look forward toward tomorrow with great expectation.

The choice is yours, even as the angel of God still speaks to all of us today, saying Do not be afraid! Do not be afraid! So let’s take those words to heart as we listen to part of a poem by our Presbyterian friend Ann Weems:

There are some that don’t open their eyes or their ears

or their hearts.

They wander through the stores looking for Christmas.

But others open their whole being to the Lord,

and that is the Christmas spirit.

The Christmas spirit

is that hope

which tenaciously clings

to the hearts of the faithful

and announces

in the face

of any Herod the world can produce

and all the inn doors slammed in our faces

and all the dark nights of our souls

that with God

all things still are possible,

that even now

unto us

a Child is born!

(“Kneeling in Bethlehem” by Ann Weems, The Westminster Press,

Philadelphia, PA, 1980, pages 70 and 51)

So open your hearts, my friends, and prepare to welcome Him in.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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