people of hope

Advent Sunday
St Paul’s Church, Ipswich
1 December 2024

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Here we are: 

• 1 December
• Advent Sunday
• the beginning a new year of faith and mission here in the heart of Ipswich.

Over these four Sundays we are asked to reflect on key themes:

• Hope
• Peace
• Love
• Joy.

I have no idea who chose those 4 themes or determined their order.

However, I am glad that someone did. 

They are great themes for us to reflect on over these 4 Sundays.

I am not interested in them as abstract ideas, but I am very interested in them as real-life challenges for us as a faith community:

1. How do we be(come) a community of hope?
2. How do be a community of peace?
3. How can we make love the spiritual DNA in our life together?
4. And what about joy? How do we as a church move beyond fake smiles to genuine happiness?

We can work our way through those 4 sets of questions over the next few weeks, but for now let’s focus on HOPE.

How hope can flourish here

Sometimes hope gets squeezed by all the awful stuff happening in our lives, in our community, or around the world.

Yet hope can flourish when it is grounded in faith and love. 

Maybe that is why St Paul concludes his powerful Hymn to Love in 1 Corinthians 13 with the line:

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three …

If we stick with that triple list for a moment longer, we might think of faith as the soil in which the seed of hope is planted; and love as the sunshine that ensures the plant (in this case, faith) is healthy and abundant.

If someone has not experienced much love in their life, then their capacity for hope is going to be diminished.

And if they are not sure that life is a precious gift to be enjoyed and lived to the full, then their capacity for hope is going to be diminished.

There we have a first clue as to how this church can be a community that grows hope.

As a first step we need to stop talking so much about evil, sin and guilt. Instead, we should affirm repeatedly that life is a precious gift from God. Every life. All of life. Even the tough bits.

Faith is not the art of believing 16 impossible things before breakfast (as someone once said), but rather the confidence that life is good; even when it seems far from good some of the time. Even much of the time.

As a church we proclaim our faith that God is good, that our world is inherently good because that is how God caused it to be. Indeed, one way to talk about God, is to use the phrase “the love at the heart of the cosmos.” 

If we connect people with that love at the very heart of the cosmos, then they will discover the deep truth of creation:

God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. [Genesis 1:31]

There is always much to learn as we travel along the road of faith, but the most important thing is not how many things we know but rather whether we have understood this one truth: life is good, and it is a blessing to be here.

From the ground of that confidence grows the seed of hope.

As that seed grows, we can say YES to God. Here I am, Send me.

Our role as a faith community is to nurture that seed of hope as it grows within each person who comes within our circle of faith.

This is not to ignore the need for us to overcome blindspots, moral and spiritual injuries, and plain old nastiness at times.

There are weeds in even the best-kept gardens, and there is a need for renewal and transformation in each and every person within this community.

Conversion is a lifelong process, but it need not begin with shame. It can begin with delight and the joy of being loved .

The profound truth that we have to offer our world is this message of hope.

Because God brought us all into being in the first place, there is hope.

Because Jesus shows us that love overwhelms fear, there is hope.

Because the Spirit of God is at work in us, there is hope.

Because we discern the Word of the Lord when the Scriptures are opened, there is hope.

Because we affirm the faith of the church, there is hope.

Because we pray for the world and the church, there is hope.

Because we gather around the Table of Jesus, there is hope.

Because we baptise babies and adults, there is hope.

Because we feed the hungry, there is hope.

Because we are church, there is hope.

This Advent, let’s pray for God’s help to become the kind of people who inspire hope in others, and the kind of church that nurtures hope in the heart of everyone who walks through our doors.