The Challenge of Hope

 Let me begin with two quick notes: 

 

First, if you have not yet turned in your pledge card for 2021 please do so as soon as you can. As you can imagine, 2020 was a challenge for us. Our pledged giving came in well, but we lost a lot of the revenue that we often gain from different groups using our campus for one-time or recurring activities. When we combine our income losses with our commitment to increase mission giving and to pay our employees, we have run a deficit in 2020. We have the reserves to cover those deficits – and that is precisely what reserves are for – but a strong showing of pledges for 2021 would enable us to continue our ministries without and undue effects of cost-cutting. You are a generous congregation and I fully believe we will come through this pandemic strongly, so thank you for all that you do as St. Mark Presbyterian Church. 

 

Second, we had a very ambitious “Giving Tree” this year, filled with tags representing people in need whom we can help during Christmas. Those gifts are due next weekend, so we can use a few more folks dropping by to take a few more tags. I truly believe that generosity is the mark of the church during a pandemic, when gathering is limited and people are insecure about their future. Once again, St. Mark, you’re doing a great job being the church. Very well good job. 

 

Now, a brief word about our Advent theme, worship services, and how you can participate even as we continue to be physically distant. “Angels of Hope” is our theme and we are looking at four stories where angels visited different persons involved in the birth narratives of Christ. Last week we heard the story of Zechariah, the priest who struggled to believe the angel’s message about the forthcoming Messiah as well as a forthcoming child for him and his wife Elizabeth. Genuine hope is never without struggles. That is why I wanted to bring James Baldwin’s wisdom into the story as well, when he said that “Hope is invented every day.” We do not inherit hope, it is never automatic, there are often a myriad of reasons against it, and so it is always only appropriated by faith. In the end, Zechariah and Elizabeth did have a child even in their post-child-bearing years, their child did become the forerunner to the Christ, and, in Christ, God has fulfilled God’s promises. But, it was not because Zechariah and Elizabeth willed it into being. They had a child because God is faithful; the Christ came and dwelt among us because God is faithful. Zechariah’s and Elizabeth’s lives were enriched with hope when they trusted that God is faithful. And, to be clear, Elizabeth trusted far more quickly than Rev. Zechariah did. (On behalf of pastors everywhere, let me sarcastically add, “Way to represent, Zeke!”) 

 

So here we are, also struggling with hope. Will the truth set us free, in a time when people seem able to say anything at all and call it “their truth”? Will the meek inherit the earth, when the market seems to reward those who already have much more readily than those who work themselves ragged? Are the peacemakers blessed, when a pacific tone is treated as irrelevant weakness in the “real world”? Is there room for “peace on earth” when we seem fundamentally divided and incapable of listening to one another? Like Zechariah, we have every reason to doubt and to struggle with the messages of hope that angels share with us. But, God is faithful. And God’s faithfulness is always the one and only reason for hope. Thanks be to God. 

 

Mark of St. Mark

 

Pre-preparing

Friends o’ the Mask, 

 

We had a brief conversation yesterday at dinner over whether there was such a thing as “pre-preparing,” or if simply “preparing” includes all of the stages of getting ready for something and not just the last part. The word “prepare” is curious in itself. The root, pare, taken by itself can refer to cutting the outsides away, like we might do with a paring knife, or simply to reduce something down. To pre-pare, then, would refer to the process of focusing, prioritizing, paring down ahead of time in order to be ready for the event for which we are preparing. You can see why the discussion might arise sitting at a Thanksgiving meal. The food was prepared all morning – in our house that meant baking garlic, caramelizing onions, chopping vegetables, and so forth, all of which was done by three marvelous cooks not named me. But, before all of that preparing could happen, Wednesday had trips to Grower’s Ranch (our favorite produce store), Trader Joe’s, and elsewhere. And before those trips, someone had to volunteer to take a side, a dessert, a main course, etc., and make up a list of ingredients that we needed. And so on. The ‘preparing’ on Thursday morning was preceded by several steps of preparing. Hence, the discussion of whether to repeat the prefix ‘pre’ and create the word ‘pre-preparing.’ 

 

The dinner conversation ran out of steam with no resolution, but the issue remains a live one, because we are now getting ready for the season of Advent. Since the word “Advent” means “coming,” it is a season where we prepare for the coming of Christ. We sing, “Prepare the Way, O Zion,” and hear the words of John the Baptizer that are echoed in that song. We prepare for the coming of Jesus by listening anew to the prophets of old, and sing, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” And we give ear to those messages of the New Testament that point to what we call “the Second Coming” or, properly, “the Second Advent.” That’s a bit trickier for us, since we have heard so many misguided attempts to dissect the mystery out of those messages and to treat the Second Advent as a kind of parlor guessing game. But, still, we know that the early church was animated by the idea that the world-as-we-know-it is a time-dated reality that will one day give way to a ‘new heaven and new earth,’ where peace and justice kiss, the sting of death is gone, and every tear is dried. So, the season of Advent is that time when we focus directly on the double-layered experience of anticipating the coming one. 

 

But, as our dinner conversation displayed, ‘preparing’ has many layers. Today, an Advent Team will be preparing the sanctuary, fellowship hall, and other spaces for you to have a fulfilling worship experience, we have been pre-preparing for this preparation for quite a while. Likewise, the idea of ‘preparing for the Second Coming’ is multi-layered. “Preparing” is rarely a matter of a last-minute rush to make sure that all things are ready. It is, rather, a discipline, a manner of living a lifetime of expectation. We go through this Advent season year after year - not because we are mad and imagine that if we do the same thing over and over we might get a different outcome, but because we are cultivating a mindset of living toward the coming of Christ. That’s the pre-preparing that enables us to hear the words of the prophets, angels, and characters in the stories anew. And that is why we participate in the Alternative Christmas Market or take a tag off of the Christmas Angel tree. These are our ways of preparing, by living into the coming one’s reign of justice and peace.

This year our theme is “Angels of Hope.” We’re not so interested in vexing over whether angels are real or mythological symbols, whether they are like giant bird-people or shiny choir members, whether rational 21^stcentury people should even be using that language when speaking of sacred things, or the long-lasting waste of time wondering how many of them can dance on the head of a pin. The word “angel” actually means “messenger,” an etymology in Greek that carries over into English in the word “evangel,” or “good news.” Each week we will hear how the good news comes to people and we will marvel at how powerful, but complex hope is. Through the stories of Zechariah, Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds, we will see how angelic messages bring faith and doubt, wonder and fear, hope and despair – a genuine look at what it means to prepare for a new world. 

 

So, today, we are pre-preparing - or, for you sticklers out there, we are in early stages of preparing. Get ready. The season of preparation is at hand. 

 

Mark of St. Mark