today is the first week of Advent.
And with each of these weeks,
there's a different theme that goes with them.
And the first one that we look at is the theme of hope.
See, this season of Advent is the coming,
the coming of Jesus Christ when he was born in a manger
and that he is here to bring salvation and hope
for all people.
So as we're looking through these different weeks,
we see how it is that not only
we're looking to what Christ would bring,
but also that he is truly the one to light us
during this time of darkness,
during this season where he truly is the light of the world.
Now, as I was thinking about this idea of hope
and what it is, one of the movies that comes to mind
most often is one of the ones that's most frustrating
as you're watching it.
And that would be Groundhog Day.
Now, Groundhog Day, Bill Murray, right?
Okay, I mean, honestly, I think he was at his best.
All right, now turned out this movie,
it was actually the last movie that he and Harold Ramis
ever worked on together.
Remember from Ghostbusters, Egon,
and then, you know, so well, the two of them
apparently had such a big fight
that they did not even talk to each other again
for about 20 years after this movie.
So, hey, enjoy it.
A lot went into it, apparently.
Now, the movie, the premise is that Phil Connors,
he is a weatherman and he is in this place called Punksutani
in preparation for the Groundhog,
that he's going to emerge and predict the weather.
Well, Phil does not really appreciate being there.
He's very annoyed and he's gonna try to get out
as soon as he can.
So, as he's there, he wakes up and I got you, Babe,
is playing on the radio and he wakes up
and goes through the motions.
And what everything happening is that he has to go
and see the Groundhog.
Great, the Groundhog saw his shadow.
So, unfortunately, it's six more weeks of winter.
And then he goes back and he tries to leave,
but a blizzard is coming through.
So, he goes to bed and wakes up
and he hears, I got you, Babe, playing on the radio.
And he's like, oh, that's funny.
And the announcer is the same.
And then walks out and every person that he interacts with,
it's the same as what he had just experienced.
Even to the point where as everything's finishing up
and he goes to bed and he thinks he's got deja vu.
And then it happens again, over and over,
the same day keeps repeating.
Now, at first he was just confused,
but then he decides, oh, well, then apparently,
I must be some type of a God.
And decides that, well, you know what?
I can ignore all the rules
because I can do whatever I want.
It doesn't matter because every day
is just gonna keep repeating.
So, he eats what he wants, he does what he wants,
he takes what he wants, whatever it is,
because he believes that there are no consequences
to his actions anymore.
But he also then sees, well,
now I know how everything will play out.
So now I can manipulate things to what I want,
except somehow he can't quite win the heart of the woman
that he loves or he likes at the time, Andy McDowell.
Anybody would ever crush on her.
But with it is that he keeps trying to figure out
the exact formula for how to do things a certain way
to get her to like him.
And when that fails, he finally just decides,
I'm done with this, I wanna find a way out.
But no matter what he tries to do,
even when he feels that he needs to just give up
on everything, is that he cannot seem to escape.
There is no formula that allows him
to get out of this cycle.
He loses hope even giving up on life,
but nothing seems to change.
Have you ever had that feeling?
That it feels like no matter what it is
that you're trying to do,
no matter what it is that you're trying to put forward,
nothing seems to change.
And that somehow it's hard to get out of that same loop.
This is the idea as we're looking at our gospel passage today
of what Israel was going through when Jesus was on the scene.
Israel, when Jesus came on the scene,
they had continually lost their nation time and time again.
They had, the northern part had been conquered by Assyria
in 722 BC, the southern part by Babylon in 586 BC.
Later, the Persians in 538 BC.
Then the Greeks came along and conquered them in 322 BC.
They finally got a little bit of independence
for about a century in 167 BC with the Maccabeean Revolt.
And then they lost it again in 63 BC to Rome.
They could not seem to escape this cycle of being conquered.
So when Jesus came on the scene,
they were waiting again for about 70 years or so,
and they were wondering if it was finally time
for their freedom to arrive.
But you see, when it did,
people were also reacting in different ways.
There were some who were living life however they wished,
because they believed that God wasn't paying attention anymore.
So they figured it doesn't matter what we do,
let's just do whatever we wish.
And then there were some that figured
if we could just find the exact formula
for what we need to do,
then God will finally remember us and help us escape.
But we've got to do things perfectly to make him happy.
And then there were those who just gave up.
And they didn't really believe anything would ever change.
So they just found ways to manage their life
in the Roman-occupied country.
But then here comes Jesus.
And it's time for something to change.
See, the thing is, is that Jesus ends up coming into Jerusalem,
and they say,
behold, your King is coming.
See, Jesus ends up knowing that he's about to have to go to his death soon.
But in so doing, he also knows that he must show the people
that he is the one that they were waiting for.
See, there were different prophecies that had come up before.
Things that were supposed to point to him as being the Messiah.
In Genesis 49,
when Jacob was spying on the cross,
when Jacob was speaking over his sons,
and he spoke over Judah,
who was the ancestor of Jesus,
and he said,
binding his foal to the vine and his donkey's colts to the choice vine,
he has washed his garments in wine
and his vesture in the blood of grapes.
We end up seeing that even then,
they knew that the future Messiah
was going to have to be shedding his blood,
but that riding on the donkey's colts
would be a sign of who he was.
And then later in Zechariah 9,
rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion,
shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem,
behold, your King is coming to you.
Righteous and having salvation is he,
humble and mounted on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
All these things are pointing to Jesus being the Messiah
to be able to show that as he comes in,
he is the one that they are to be looking toward,
and he says, go and get the colt,
because he knows that that's what he needs to ride on.
But how did he know?
How did he know where to send them?
Did he just hope that there would be a colt there
that somebody had never ridden on before?
Did he just hope that if they went up and they said,
the Lord has need of it,
that somebody would happen to let it happen?
This was not the kind of way to look at prophecy
that we might think of,
because in our mind,
in our way of looking at things,
we oftentimes think of it as,
as long as I know what's coming,
and then I can prepare for it.
But with Jesus, it was more than that.
It wasn't just predicting what the circumstance would be.
It was because Jesus was the one who had authored it.
Jesus was the one who was saying,
I am the son of God,
and this is what we have said would happen.
See, that's the thing about who God is,
is that we don't hope in God
just because of the circumstances that we're in,
and just hoping that they work out.
But rather that our hope is in the God
who has made and designed everything already.
Our hope is in the God who knows everything
because he has made it for good.
But that's difficult sometimes,
because what we end up seeing in the circumstances that we face
do not always make us feel very hopeful.
Sometimes as we see things play out,
and they don't turn out the way that we wished that they would,
and we begin to feel hopeless.
That's the thing is that as Jesus is coming,
he is not the one that they are expecting.
You see, Israel was not expecting this.
See, the thing is, is that in our story with Phil Connors,
is that he wasn't actually expecting what was going to happen,
and he didn't know what it was that he was meant to do
to somehow escape everything.
But he just felt frustrated and tired.
And then finally decided that he was just going to try something new.
And he ends up seeing somebody in an alleyway
that he can't seem to help no matter how many times he tries.
And he wants to save this person,
and over and over again, the person still passes away.
Until finally he realizes how much he had been wasting his own life,
and he decides to spend his time becoming the person he was meant to be.
See, that's the thing, is that hope is not in the solution that we keep wishing for,
but rather is being able to turn to God and see what it is that he is doing instead.
It says, blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord,
but that's the thing with Jesus, is that he was meant to be a different kind of King.
The people were excited to see him. They saw him coming down on that cult.
We are so excited.
And then he ends up kicking people out of the temple
and being crucified on a cross.
What kind of hope could we have when it ends up being unfulfilled?
They were hoping for a victory against Rome.
They were hoping that finally their world would change
and that they would see something that they were looking toward.
But that wasn't the kind of victory that Jesus came to bring.
Because that's the thing, what we keep hoping for in our lives
is always so much more shallow than anything that God is actually going to do.
The thing that we keep wishing for, the thing we keep hoping for,
it always pales in comparison to what God is actually going to do.
Because that King coming down on the cross to go through humiliation and to shame
is meant to be the blessing itself.
See, that's the thing about Jesus.
As he came to do his work, it was to provide what we were actually hoping for.
Life, salvation, and to know that we are part of God's family.
See, that's the thing about hope, though.
Hope is not easy.
Hope is not something that just comes and gets fulfilled like that.
Hope is not something where you sit there and make a wish
and then somehow it happens exactly the way you thought it would.
Hope does not come without struggle.
Because that's the thing about hope, is that for hope to be real,
for hope to have substance, for hope to be meaningful,
is that the path to get there is one that is difficult to journey through.
Because if it's something that's meaningful, then it's going to take effort.
But it's not just what Jesus has done on the cross for us,
but it's also the path that he gives to us as well.
Because that's the thing, our character,
all he ends up doing is spending that day
giving everything that he can without wondering what was going to come of it.
He ended up running up under a tree at the exact moment
when a kid was about to fall out of a branch to grab him.
He ends up going to a restaurant and giving someone the Heimlich mover
because he knew exactly where to go and when to be there.
He ends up going for his first piano lesson
after however many times he had repeated that same lesson
because of the same day.
And then that night when he's spending time with the woman that he loves,
and all she sees is who he is,
not who he was trying to pretend that he was.
But that's the thing about it,
is that then when they finally finished that day
and he woke up the next morning,
it was February 3rd,
and he was finally moving forward in the life that he was intended to have.
And that's the thing,
is that we oftentimes need to let go of what it was that we were wishing for,
that we thought was so meaningful,
and to have hope in the one who actually knows what we really need.
To have hope that it's not some sort of a magic formula,
that if you do this or you do that,
or you can somehow prove something,
that you will get everything that it is that you thought you wanted.
That is not where hope is found.
Hope is found in a Messiah who gives up everything.
Hope is found when we see that sometimes the struggle is real,
because hope is meant to be real, not just a wish.
The reason why it matters so much
is because of everything that we have to go through to get to it.
And that's the thing about this time of Advent,
is that for these coming weeks,
we're going to look for the things that are going to bring brightness and joy,
and the things that are going to be fun,
but that's not where the hope is found.
The hope is not in the Hallmark movie.
The hope is not in the Christmas bonus.
The hope is knowing that each and every step of what we are struggling through
has meaning and purpose,
because we don't do it alone,
and because every step of it isn't an accident,
but is something guided and provided by a God who loves us.
I don't know what it is that you're struggling with right now.
I don't know what it is that causes you to struggle to have hope at this season,
and that when the cold sets in and everything feels dark and you're wondering what now.
But what I do know is that resurrection requires death,
but that's because death in Christ Jesus leads to new life.
Whatever this season may be doing in your life,
we know that our hope in Christ Jesus will be fulfilled.
Not the way that we expect it,
but in the way that God loves you and cares for you.
So this season, instead of focusing on the wishes that we want fulfilled,
may we appreciate the journey that God has us on
to get to a place of hope and a place of meaning
because it is a place won for us by Christ Jesus.
Thanks be to God.
Please rise for prayer.