Rejoicing In Hope
Third Sunday Of Advent, Year B ~ Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
Kenwood UMC ~ December 14, 2008
This season we’ve been talking about hope—how to have hope in the midst of a world where it is sometimes scarce. And that task of talking about hope, of believing hope, of creating hope has often been the task of the prophets. The prophets of the Old Testament have both held God’s people accountable for their mistakes, and also offered a new vision for what is yet to be.
We find this new vision in Isaiah today. It is a vision of these words written behind me—liberty, good news, comfort, glory, salvation. It is a vision of a better time, and a Savior upon whom God’s spirit rests. And we heard this good news interspersed with headlines from our world, and the despair and mistakes and corruption of our world. This is the same way that Isaiah’s people would have heard his news—in the midst of despair and mistakes and corruption.
The question before us today is, how do we respond? How are we able to rejoice in hope, to celebrate the ways that our Savior is coming into the world to bring liberty and release, to usher in a reign of peace. We have an image of one possible response on our bulletin cover today. It was drawn by Luke Saunders, who is 3. Luke is going to have a baby brother in the next couple of days. Back in November in Children’s Church, children were asked to draw images of rejoicing in hope, and this is what Luke drew. Without any conscious thought or planning, he drew what I believe is an image of rejoicing—of color and movement and expression that demonstrate joy.
We will all demonstrate joy in unique ways this Advent season. And sometimes it will not come as easily to all of us as it does to a three year old. I want to share a story with you this morning about one member of our congregation and her journey towards rejoicing this season.
Many of you have come to know Joyce Lachut over the last year as she has gotten involved at Kenwood. You know her as friendly, caring, compassionate and enthusiastic. You probably know that she has a large family, and is from upstate New York. But I am willing to bet that there are some parts of her story that many of you do not know about.
Joyce has spent the better part of the last decade caring for her husband who died in 2006 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. She moved to Virginia in 2007 to be closer to some of her family who had relocated to this area.
If you are familiar with Alzheimer’s and related diseases, you know that when you are caring for someone in advanced stages that you have to be careful with their physical environment. Moving furniture, moving their bedroom, anything like that can cause horrible confusion because they often cannot see well and cannot remember the changes. That includes putting up a Christmas tree. So Joyce did not have a Christmas tree in her home in either 2004 or 2005 while her husband was alive. In 2006, and again last year, in 2007, she could not bear to put up a tree, because her grief was too raw, too fresh. The tree’s presence only reminded her of her husband’s absence.
But this year, she put up her tree. She got out all the ornaments that she had moved down here from New York. She got out the nativity. And in her home she erected this symbol of the season—a symbol of hope. She relates that she had to sit down and weep after putting it up, but she also realizes that this tree is a symbol of how far she has come, of the rejoicing she is able to claim now, rejoicing which was absent for many years.
Joyce’s headlines were sickness, caregiving, Alzhiemer’s, death, moving. We all have different headlines. We all have different realities that define us personally. We are all a part of a community, a nation and a world with headlines that we share as reality. And we all have a reason to hope. Christ is coming. The light of Christ is being revealed in our world and in our lives even now. We can rejoice. We can look beyond the present reality to the words of Isaiah. We can turn away from the cruelty of the headlines and we can give the world a gift—the gift of a new reality, a reality born in hope and defined by love.
Dedication of our hearts at 11:00.
