The Eliot Church of Newton

Today is the Second Sunday of Advent,
      but because of our Christmas music Sunday next week,
            then the Christmas pageant the following Sunday morning,
      the liturgical season of Advent is going to be fore-shortened this year
            to last Sunday and this Sunday.
So I’d like to talk about the mood of Advent a little bit today.

The mood of Advent is waiting – expecting, hoping for an age to come.
We light the candles of hope, and peace, and joy and love,
      but mostly the season is about hope.
Mary sings her song of rejoicing, but her joy is based on promise,
      joy grounded in a deep trust and hope in God –
            trust and hope that the lowly will be lifted up,
            trust and hope that restoration and salvation will come,
            trust and hope that God is active in history and active in her people’s lives.

What makes our hope so important, and so courageous,
      is that it is hope in spite of present circumstances. 
By definition, to hope is to expect or desire something that is not yet,
      and to have confidence that things can and will change for the better. 

Jim Wallis, the Evangelical Christian leader and founder of Sojourner’s magazine,
      actually defines hope by that measure:
“Hope” he says, “is believing in spite of the evidence,
      and then watching the evidence change.”
Hope is not a feeling. It is not “optimism”. 
Rather, Wallis goes on, “hope is acting with dogged determination
      on what faith dictates can be. 
People who have hope see with the eyes of faith what is possible,
      then bet their lives on the unseen possibilities.” That is Hope.

Advent Hope is an affirmation that life as we know it
      is not life as God knows it, or as God plans it. 
There is more to this story, there is more to this creation and this reality,
      than what meets the eye. 
There is more to your story, more to my story,
      more to our story than meets the eye.
That is what our Advent hope tells us. 

This is not a case of Pollyanna, pie-in-the-sky, rose-colored optimism.
Possessing the virtue of hope won’t always make us peaceful, or joyous,
      or serene in the present. Quite the contrary.
Indeed, hope can even bring the opposite of peace and serenity.
Jürgen Moltmann, author of the book Theology of Hope, makes this point strongly:
“Faith, wherever it develops into hope,” he writes,
“causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. 
It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in us. 
Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is,
      but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. 
Peace with God means conflict with the world,
      for the good of the promised future stabs inexorably
            into the flesh of every unfulfilled present. 
If we had before our eyes only what we see,
      then we should cheerfully or reluctantly reconcile ourselves
            with things as they happen to be. 
That we do not reconcile ourselves,
      that there is no pleasant harmony between us and reality,
            is due to our unquenchable hope.” 

Most of you know about the recent incident of a swastika spray-painted
      on the signboard of Temple Shalom in West Newton,
            then another, smaller swastika found right out here  
                  on the curbstone of our own property a few days later.
Karla and I wrote a letter to the congregation of Temple Shalom,
      expressing our outrage and sorrow at this vandalism,
            and our strong support for them. 
I have met with Rabbi Eric Gurvis since the incident,
      and they have received an outpouring of sympathy and support
            from both the religious and civic community, as has our congregation.

But this whole event reminded me of an incident that happened
      several years ago in Pennsylvania. Perhaps some of you remember it. 
To me, that incident was a great example of a community giving witness
      to their hope for a new age, and a transformed world.

Judy Markovitz is a Russian immigrant who lives with her children
      in Newtown, Pennsylvania, a pleasant, upscale suburb of Philadelphia. 
As a child, she was brought to this country to escape persecution in the Soviet Union. 
Her mother was a Holocaust survivor, and her father was a dentist
      who was not allowed to practice his profession because he was a Jew. 

On the first night of Hanukkah,
      Judy and her children proudly put an electric menorah
            in their front window, with nine bulbs for candles. 

But three days later, before dawn on a Sunday morning,
      someone broke their front window, grabbed the Menorah,
            smashed it to the ground, and broke all nine lights. 
Judy Markovitz was devastated, and she was terrified. 
This is what her family had come to this country to escape from. 
But now the hatred had come to her town, to her neighborhood, to her home. 
No one knew who the vandal or vandals were,
      but obviously, they had singled out her home for attack. 

The morning after the attack, one of her neighbors saw the broken window,
      and learned from Judy what had happened. 
Well, the window got covered over, and the menorah was retrieved,
      but Judy wasn’t at all sure that she should put it back up. 
She didn’t know if it was safe, or if her family was safe. 
She took her family away from home for the rest of that day. 

When Judy came home that evening,
      she thought for a minute she’d turned onto the wrong street. 
There were Hanukkah menorahs shining in almost every window on her block
      -- and even way beyond her block. 
And these were not Jewish homes. 
These were Christian houses, and the Menorahs were shining there
      among the Christmas lights and wreathes and nativity sets. 
Her Christian neighbors raided the stores that Sunday,
      and bought up every Menorah they could find still on the shelves,
            so that the Markovitz house would not be isolated, and would not be a target. 
Judy Markovitz knew that she could safely put new bulbs in her Menorah
      that night, and put it back in her window.

It wasn’t just the Markovitz family who were lifted up
      and delivered from the darkness of hate and fear by this gesture of solidarity. 
All of those Christian neighbors were delivered as well
      -- delivered because of their own compassion and courage, yes,
but delivered also by their hope for a new world order,
      and their willingness to give witness to that new world,
            by demonstrating the power of good over evil, love over hate. 
They were lifted out of their own isolation, their own temptation
      to be reconciled to life as it sometimes is in this uncaring world,
            lifted out of the despair of feeling helpless to act,
                  incapable of changing the situation.