I love that the first Sunday of Advent always begins with lighting the candle of hope followed by the most apocalyptic reading we can find in Matthew, Mark, or Luke.

I love the raw honesty of it, because it is a stark reminder that our faith, to paraphrase James Finely, “protects us from nothing even as it sustains us in all things.”

Beyond these doors, every retailer from Saks 5th Avenue to your local Cumberland farms would like you to tune out reality and tune into the idea that this is the hap-happiest time of the year; the better to sell you something like a triple mocha peppermint latte with extra whip and a cherry on top so red it could rival Rudolph’s nose.

But not here in the church. Here in the church, as we move through these four Sundays before Christmas, we will hear from Jesus and John the Baptist, Mary and Elizabeth, sages and angels: prophets one and all who show up and tell us the truth about ourselves and our world:

The truth that how we are living is both harmful and unsustainable.

The truth that the empires we build and maintain through violence and exploitation of the poor and the earth can only ever last for so long.

The truth that eventually the mighty will fall, the bill will come due, and everything we’ve built and built and built in our quest for more and more and more will all come crashing down.

The prophets tell it to us like it is and always has been. …but not - and this is the important part - not how it has to be.

There is no prosperity gospel here in these passages. Believe and you will be blessed. Say the right prayer and you will be saved. There is no cheap grace on offer.

Finely is right. Your faith will not protect you from persecution or suffering or collapse and Jesus never said that it would. Actions have consequences and the time of reckoning is drawing nigh.

But that is not the same thing as saying there is no hope. There is hope here, even in this morning’s passage. As there will be joy, peace, and love, hidden in the passages to come. All throughout this season there is light, even and especially in the midst of the darkness.

There is a reason that Jeremiah can proclaim the day of the Lord amidst the ruins of Jerusalem.

There is a reason Jesus can look toward a future full of death and destruction and still say, “lift up your heads, for your redemption is drawing nigh.”

There is a way to find hope even when all hope seems lost; a reason to move forward even when it is too late… too late to put the sun, the moon, and the stars back up in the sky, because the sky itself is falling. Which is to say that there is good news even in the midst of the apocalypse…good news that begins right here with you and me.

But to get at it we have to first unpack this idea of what the apocalypse is really about.

So a little background, if you will. If you’ve ever heard me preach on passages like this one or on the book of Revelation, then you’ve heard me say that the word “apocalypse” doesn’t mean the end of the world. “Apocalypse” is a Greek word that literally means, “unveiling or revelation,” which is why John chose it as the title for his book at the end of your Bible.

John, like Jesus here in Luke, was revealing, in extremely vivid but coded language, the rot at the heart of the Roman Empire that would eventually bring it all down. But because their prophecies appear to detail the end of world, the word apocalypse has come to mean exactly that… the end of the world.

When prophets like John or Jesus use apocalyptic language - when they say that the moon will turn to blood or warn that the stars will fall from the sky- they are not talking about the heavenly bodies that rule over our atmosphere, but about the mortal bodies that ruled over their world. 

In this case it helps to know that Rome’s primary symbol was the sun. The rulers of all the people they had conquered and now ruled over were represented by the moon and the stars on all of their flags and propaganda.

Jesus knew Rome’s days were numbered but to say so out loud would have drawn down the wrath of Caesar, so he spoke instead of unsettling signs in the sky. (thanks to Kate Huey’s Weekly Seeds for this information). 

Which is to say that none of this is detailing the actual physical destruction of the universe as we know it, but is, instead, describing what it will feel like when the world as they know it - the Roman Empire - comes crashing down.

So one more time for the people in the back: apocalypse does not mean the end of the world. Apocalypse means “unveiling or revelation,” the revelation that how we are living will lead to our own destruction until we learn to do things differently.    

But now that I’ve cleared that up, I’m starting to wonder if it’s really even a distinction worth making anymore. I mean, some 2000 years later, we’re still not doing things all that differently and we’ve now become so powerful and power hungry that we may well destroy the world before we’re done.

As one commentator said, “I am not a biblical literalist, yet the imagery in this passage gives me pause. As our planet gets hotter and tidal floods increase, aren’t we already seeing “signs in the sun [and] the moon”? And as rising waters drive more and more climate refugees from their homelands, it’s hard not to notice that “distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea” is already upon us” (Catherine Healy, https://www.christiancentury.org/lectionary/december-1-advent-1c-luke-21-25-36)."

Add to that the wars and rumors of wars we read about every day, rising inequality, increased division, and our immense overreach when it comes to natural resources and it would seem that the signs are all around us.

For many it feels like the end of the world is upon us because for many of us it actually is or will be before long. “The days are surely coming,” says Jesus, and I think he’s right… again.

Empires rise and empires fall. The empire of Rome collapsed and some day our empire will too. Perhaps sooner rather than later.

Which is why we need to hold on to hope now more than ever. I know that probably sounds delusional or futile or like the advice of someone in deep denial, but I’ve been reading a lot about hope these days and I’ve come to understand that hope is not the sunny belief that, come what may, it will all turn out alright.

That’s optimism, and folks I’m not particularly optimistic these days. But I am still hopeful because the more I come to understand what hope really is, the more I understand that hope doesn’t depend on what is right in front of us. Our hope depends on what we do with what’s in front of us.

Writing from a Soviet prison - about as hopeless a place as one could imagine - the Czechoslovakian dissident Vaclav Havel wrote, “The kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless …) I understand above all else as a state of mind, not a state of the world…

Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart (that) transcends the world that is immediately experienced…Hope is not the same as (the sense) that things are going well, or a willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for success, but, rather, an ability to work for something not just because it has a chance to succeed, (but simply) because it is good,” (Found in Rebecca Solnit’s “Hope in the Dark” p 11).

Friends, the hope we prayed for this morning when we lit the first candle of the Advent wreath isn’t a pollyannish let’s all get in the Christmas spirit exercise in spiritual by-passing. It is not a denial of the challenges we face. It is a posture, a practice, a choice we make to stay present even and especially when things seem hopeless.

The hope we pray to embody in this season is a hope that looks reality square in the face and chooses to believe that no matter how bad things get we can still make a difference for the better if we can just find the courage to lift our heads and show up.

Real hope, to quote Cameron Trimble, “doesn’t (sidestep) reality but steps (right) into it, anchored in the belief that every small act of goodness matters.”

That sort of hope sounds awfully small in the face of such big challenges. It doesn’t sound like much to hold on to when the world is ending all around you.

But perhaps because it is small, it is more powerful than we realize. Because small acts preformed with great love are something ordinary people like you and I are capable of no matter what.

Like Jesus and John, Mary and Elizabeth, the angels and the prophets, I’m not going to lie to you. The days are surely coming and they will not be easy. We can’t stop the apocalypse and there is no use denying we’re in one. But we can show up in the midst of it all and reveal something of God’s love by facing the challenges in front of us with heart, imagination, courage, and compassion.

We can show up and trust that our efforts, however small, still have the power to make a difference. We may not be able to turn back the tide, but we can still pull people into our little boats.

We may not be able to keep the stars in the sky or certain people in the White House, but we can organize on the ground and leave our porch lights on for our most vulnerable neighbors.

And even if our light goes out, we can still reach across the great expanse of the unknown and hold each other’s hands in the dark. In our stubborn refusal to give up hope, in our determination to believe that a better world is possible, we can become a revelation of our own.

We can reveal through our words and our actions that there is a better way to to live and love. We can lean into the hope that the kingdom of heaven is near, that a new world is being born out of the rubble of the old, a new kind of kin(g)dom built on justice, righteousness, safety, and peace.

The hope of Jeremiah. The hope of Jesus. The hope of generations past and generations to come. A hope we can live and love into being one small act at a time.

May it be so and may it be soon. Amen