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