Let Earth Receive Her King | Doug Dortch

1 Peter 1:3-9
“Let Earth Receive Her King”
Advent Series: “Prepare Him Room”
December 1, 2019, First Sunday of Advent, HOPE

Some years ago, when Christmas Day happened to fall on a Sunday, that morning’s edition of the St. Petersburg Times printed two front pages. Normally, of course, a newspaper prints only one front page. But for this special Christmas edition, the newspaper offered two front pages that ran side by side. The contrast was striking.

The first front page was made up of the usual headlines – a local politician who had landed himself in hot water, a flare up of tensions in the Middle East, a murder on the south side of town on Christmas Eve. It was what you’d expect when you picked up the morning paper for a metropolitan community like Tampa/St. Pete – just another litany of bad news.  

But what was different was the second front page. The second front page contained nothing but good news. It mentioned a new business coming to the area, bringing with it a host of new jobs. It covered a story about a poor family that had received Christmas presents from their local police force. It printed a column of Christmas wishes. The second front page was taken up by nothing but good news.

So, which front page do you think people gravitated toward? Which one would you have paid more attention to? Sadly, you have to ask yourself if that is somehow a trick question. We’ve become so numbed by the steady drumbeat of bad news that it’s hard to not look at the St. Pete Times’ nod to Christmas as a cheap ploy, a syrupy stunt. We’ve become so accustomed to the harsh realities of modern day life that we have almost lost hope that the sorrowful status quo under which most of us live could ever change.

What we clearly need is someone who could change our perspective on things, an Agent of Newness who might move life in a different direction, a more hopeful direction.

While we like to think that the challenges our everyday experience confronts us with are unique to our day and our generation, that is simply not so. Every age since the beginning of time has suffered with setbacks and disappointments, and has therefore been in need of a powerful presence that might show up to redeem the times.

We see that need in this letter attributed to Simon Peter, the chief disciple among the disciples of Jesus. Peter wrote this letter for a community of faith reeling under the stress of persecution from the power of the Roman Empire that ruled their day. Their life following Jesus was tough and many were beginning to feel uncertain that things would ever get better, which is why his words, written over twenty centuries ago, still speak to our day where people have reached their wits end about the struggles they face and have embraced hopelessness as the order of the day.  

Peter begins with a word of encouragement as to how those of us who have trusted in Jesus have been given a new birth into what he calls a “living hope,” one grounded in the Risen Jesus who has made possible for us “an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade.” What Peter is telling us is that once a person has set his heart on the Risen Jesus regardless of what comes our way, it will not win out over the work that God sent Jesus to do in us.

I read that word “living hope” and I almost laugh out loud. After all, what other kind of hope is there? Is there such a thing as a “dead hope?” Of course there isn’t. Yet how many people do you know whose hope is dead because they have nothing to set their hopes upon?

The message of Advent is that contrary to appearances, everything around us is not falling to pieces. Yes, things are difficult and people are flawed and there’s no apparent reason to assume that anything will ever change, except for the fact that when God broke through the clutter of our lives in the birth of the Baby Jesus, He introduced into our sordid world an entirely new means by which we might order our everyday existence, one that holds fast to the good future only God could make possible so that if we set our hearts and our hopes upon Jesus, we can endure anything, because we know that it will not be forever and that very soon it will pass.

Today is, of course, the first Sunday of Advent; and in spite of the fact that our church has been observing Advent for a number of years, there are still people who don’t understand its real purpose. I liken Advent to God’s “Save the Date.” Do you know what I’m talking about? In recent years couples you’ve probably noticed how couples who have decided to join their lives together in holy matrimony have chosen to alert their family and close friends months ahead of the wedding date by a notification that’s come to be known as “Save the Date.” In other words, couples have found that people are so busy today that unless the invitees mark the wedding date months in advance, there’s a good chance that something else will get in the way. Hence, couples give their soon-to-be-guests a “heads up.”  Mark this date on your calendar and be sure not to let anything less important interfere.  Save the date.

Advent is the same kind of divine notice for us. It’s not intended to be an “advance Christmas” as some have made it. And it certainly isn’t intended to be something that keeps Christmas at arm’s length, as if anyone could hold back God’s work. Advent is a time for victorious hope, a hope that sustains us moment by moment and day by day, because of we have a path to follow into God’s future, a path in which Jesus goes before us to show us the way.

Can you live in such hope? Can you set your heart upon Jesus so that nothing can rob you of the expectation that with the presence of Jesus close at hand now, and drawing ever nearer in terms of his Second Coming, that each tomorrow can be truly be better than each today?

Some years ago, I was with a group of minister friends I get with a couple of times a year.  We’ve been doing this for quite some time, since we were young pastors who didn’t know what we didn’t know and thought we were bulletproof and would live forever, like most people in their twenties and thirties think. So, in our early meetings we shared ideas and practical advice, but as the years passed, our gatherings became more of a support group, as life’s harsh realities disabused us of our immortality and even threatened to rob us of our hopes and dreams.

At one gathering one in the group shared how he had just received a diagnosis for prostate cancer. He said that when the doctor gave him the news it was as if he was hearing the news about someone else. But it soon began to sink in that the diagnosis was about him.

Surgery was apparent, and so my friend began to think back to previous pastoral conversations with members who had received similar diagnoses. There was one member in particular who came to mind, a member my friends said who possessed such a peace and serenity that he at first had wondered if perhaps this wasn’t some form of denial. So, when he asked the member how he could be so free of anxiety, the member answered, “Because God will take care of me until I die; and when I die, He will take care of me forever.”

In other words, the good news of this special season toward which we are today pointing is that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is with us in the darkest places of our dark lives. We don’t have to look for Him in the sky beyond the stars. We don’t have to try to make Him out in infinite light or glory unimaginable. He is incarnate. He has taken on flesh in the Bethlehem Baby to be with us and to watch over us. He has drawn near to take care of us between now and when we die; and when we die, He will take care of us for all eternity.

I don’t know what you’d call that, but I’d call it a “living hope.”  

So, let us sound forth that good news in the midst of a world that hears nothing but bad news. Let us point them to Jesus, whose birth has made possible for us a new birth into a living hope so that those who place their trust in him, regardless of the chaos and confusion swirling all around, can be filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, because his presence shields us and in God’s good future will bring about the end result of our faith, which is nothing less than the salvation of our souls.