Recently, I read in the Star Tribune that Thrivent has sponsored a Hallmark Christmas movie entitled, “Tidings in the Season.”  So, the other night, I went on the Hallmark channel and watched their movie.  Like most Hallmark movies, it was wholesome to the point of being cheesy, but I had fun identifying all the subtle ways that Thrivent inserted their brand, like on an ornament on a tree, or t-shirt at a fundraiser.  The story was cute.  A precocious young boy of a rather attractive single mom, wanted to be a TV news anchor after touring a news studio with his class.  He tells the main newscaster that his mom won’t watch the news anymore because it makes her too sad and worried.  He ends up teaching this “handsome but too serious” newsman to lighten up and tell stories that don’t make people so sad.  Stories about neighbors helping neighbors with unique and caring  projects that give back to their communities. In other words, Lives Lived Generously!  And, of course, in the end, his mom and the newscaster find romance…it couldn’t be a Hallmark Christmas movie without that!  I actually really enjoyed the movie and  I complement Thrivent for doing what they can to spread a message insistent on hope and focused on building joy and giving back to community.  We truly need more of that, don’t we?

Our texts for this third Sunday in Advent echo that same theme, insisting on hope despite times of fear and uncertainty.  Let’s revisit them for a moment and see how they tie this theme to the advent of the coming of Christ.  Our first reading is written like a poem by the Prophet Isaiah to the Israelites who have endured a long and discouraging time of displacement and exile in Babylon.  I’ve not been to the Holy Land, but I have read that the land between where Babylon was located and the way back to Jerusalem was some of the most forlorn wilderness in the Middle East.  Years of longing were layered with heavy disappointment as the displaced people of the God of Israel were forced to adapt to life as prisoners in a foreign and hostel land.  Like refugees of our modern day wars forced to live in internment camps, everyday life was out of their control.  Yet the prophets were compelled to speak into this place of lost hope. 

Like the Psalm, Isaiah’s words literally lift the spirits of the downtrodden.   The Wilderness becomes a welcoming place, a way of rejoicing as they can finally see the way, and the glory of God.  “Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees,” says Isaiah.  “Say to those of a fearful heart, Be strong, do not fear!  Here is your God…He will save you…a highway shall be there…it shall be called the Holy Way.”

The Holy Way….what is that?  John, the baptizer, is the focus of our gospel lesson today from Matthew.  He has been a voice, crying out in the wilderness…this terrible, desolate, frightening place…a prison sentence the Israelites know all too well.  But now that voice has been silenced in Herod’s prison.  John is literally in a dark and dank, and hopeless place.  Prison’s in Jesus’ day were as terrible as a cross.  One can only imaging John’s discouragement for he was a force in that wilderness.  Eating wild honey, wearing animal fur, and demanding to be heard.  What we are being shown her is a profound human moment of doubt.  John had given his all.  He trusted in God’s promise with his whole life and soul.  But now he was in a dark prison awaiting a certain execution.  Doubt crept in and he had to ask Jesus, “Are YOU the one…REALLY…or are we back to waiting again?  

Have you ever had a time like that?  A time when you gave your passion and trust only to be pushed back and blocked.  Maybe a relationship failed, or a health diagnosis stopped you in your tracks.  Perhaps your career didn’t bring you satisfaction or retirement funds didn’t keep up with needs.  Whatever the human situation, you find yourself in a human place of doubt and fear.  What if the way I have followed is wrong?  What if my faith is in vain, or not strong enough to trust that things will turn around?  Is Jesus even listening…Is God actually coming to save me, to guide me, to show me the way? 

This is right where John was on his journey to seek the Messiah the world so desperately needs.  And Jesus answers with a call back to discernment.  He tells his disciples, his community, to bear witness to what they see and hear.  The blind see; the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the dead arise; the poor and displaced are given hope in the midst of dark wilderness.  The poor are blessed to be a blessing to one another in the name of Jesus, the Christ.  Almost sounds like a Hallmark movie!  

As we move into this new season of Christmas and Epiphany, guided this year by the gospel of Matthew, you will begin to notice that Matthew is INSISTENT ON HOPE!  He invites us to know Jesus in a life changing way rather than as a casual acquaintance.  Like Thrivent’s initiation to its members to roll up our sleeves and get involved in acts of kindness and service within our communities, Matthew, Isaiah, the Psalmist, and even James, who admonishes us to be patient in our waiting and discernment, call us into a DEEPER relationship with Christ.  A relationship that engages us, changes us, and leads us to live and think and act differently than the despair that often clouds human life.  A relationship we can lean on and call to in times of human need….and doubt.

One never knows when or how you can be an agent of “insistent hope,” in our world of constant news, rising challenges and unsettling storms, BUT perhaps one just needs to wait patiently….listen….open your eyes and trust you’ll see a little differently when Jesus is our way.

 I had a brief experience of this kind of insistent hope while writing this sermon this week.  I took a break to check my email and came across a message from someone that had checked out  my art website.  I haven’t updated my art photos for quite awhile, but evidently he liked seeing my old stuff and had read my artist statement in which I tell the story of parachuting out of a plane to “jump start” my life again.  I was feeling blocked and fearful, and jumping out of that plane represented to me a moment of absolute trust.  Strapped to the back of a young man who I told was my  “Christ with flesh on,” I literally let myself fall back into the arms of Jesus and to whatever future He would bring.  It was a spiritual moment where doubt was thrown into the winds of hope.  The person who had checked out my website and read my bio wrote this:  “Perhaps I should jump out of a plane too.”  

What about you?  Are you taking life too seriously these days like that movie news anchor?  Are you imprisoned in a dead end that you can’t change?  Do you need a fresh reminder that our Lord, Jesus the Christ, has truly come and comes again and again and again to bring hope into a darkened world?  I hope so, for you see that is what ADVENT is truly about…an insistence on hope.  Amen.