Advent - Hope

Well, good morning everybody. If I haven't mentioned it yet, my name is Greg. I'm one

of the pastors here at the house and today is in fact the first Sunday of Advent and

we are talking about hope. And if you don't mind, I'm going to get moving. I want to jump

straight into the scripture that we're going to read for the day. And so it's in the book

of Isaiah, which is in the Hebrew or older Testament in the first half of the Bible that

we have. If you see Song of Solomon and then it goes Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, that's

the neighborhood that it is in. If you don't have a Bible, feel free to grab one on your

way home. We have them out on the bookshelf. You can take one or download one from any

of the digital app stores. So we're going to be in Isaiah chapter nine. We have a tradition

of giving the scriptures our full attention while we read them. And so you can do that

any number of ways. You can do so by standing with me or sitting with your heart turned

towards God, however you prefer. But those who would like to stand, please stand with

me as you are able. All right. Isaiah nine, starting in verse six says this, for to us

a child is born, to us a son is given and the government will be on his shoulders and

he will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, Prince of peace. Of

the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's

throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness

from that time on and forever. Let's pray. God of every tribe, every tongue, every color,

every nation, we thank you for the scriptures that this particular book and chapter has

existed since 600, 800 years before Jesus. We thank you that it has persisted. We still

have it today and I pray that whatever you have for us to learn, pray that it would stick.

It would become a part of the framework of our faith that our faith would become stronger,

that we would become more like your son. Amen. Thanks. I can have a seat. So this is a passage

of hope from Isaiah, but I actually want to back up for a second. We asked the question,

do you have a good sense of time? And I actually think that right now would be a great time

for us to actually find out. So what we're going to do is we're going to do a little

experiment, okay? So what we're going to do is in a second I'm going to ask Liam, who's

in the office, run in the computer. I'm going to ask him to click on a, there's a five-minute

timer. Don't worry, it's not going to take five minutes. It's just the best option. And

he's going to click on that five-minute timer and you're going to see the five and then

you're going to see it start counting down. And what I want everyone to do is as soon

as you see the first second click by, I want you to close your eyes and I want you to open

your eyes when you think it's been one minute. So you're trying to open your eyes when it's

hitting four, four minutes, okay? Because it starts as five minutes and once we get there,

I'll also be like, all right, everyone open your eyes if anyone happens to still be holding

their eyes shut. Ready Liam? All right, let's pop that up there. Ready? You may have to

clear the graphic first. Here we go. All right, close them.

Okay.

All of our eyes open.

All right, you can stop it Liam. How close were you? Easy enough, right? Okay, Greg,

why are we doing a countdown experiment? I'll tell you, because today is the first sunny

of Advent and the word Advent just means arrival. And if there's an arrival, then there's almost

always anticipation and waiting and time. And I wonder if how we think about time or

we feel time impacts our hope. In the Advent of Jesus, time and waiting and hope has two

reasons. First, because Advent is meant to remind us of how long the Israelites waited

for a Messiah in the first place. And then secondly, it's meant to remind us now that

we are waiting for Jesus to arrive again in the context of Orthodox Christianity. Now

it's safe to say that most of us probably know that it's been 2,000 years since the

last ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. That's how long that we collectively as Christians

have been waiting. But those years are actually layered onto the years that the Israelites

had already been waiting. And it's probably also safe to say that most of us are unfamiliar

with the period of waiting that happened before Jesus. So here's a brief history of the Israelites

and their waiting. Around 1800 BCE, BCE just means before the common era, used to be just

before Christ. And then they realized, well, not everyone believes in Jesus, and so maybe

we should come up with something else, right? So before the common era, 1800 years before

that, 3,800 years ago from now, is where in the Bible it begins describing Abraham, Isaac,

and Jacob, nearly 4,000 years ago. 500 years after that, around 1300 BCE, Moses is called

by God to go and free his people from their 400 years of enslavement in Egypt. 300 years

after that, around 1000 BCE, the nation asks God for their first king. Those of you who

are like Bible nerds have already thought of his name in your head, King Saul, and then

King David, and then his son, King Solomon. So if you're keeping track, this is about

3,000 years ago. After Solomon, things start to fall apart again. His father, King David,

had united the southern and the northern kingdom, all 12 tribes of Israel, into one united

kingdom. But after Solomon, the kingdoms break up again because of idolatry, because of power

struggles, even because of a lot of the bad things that Solomon had begun in his lifetime.

The 10 tribes in the north, when they split up, the 10 in the north keep the name Israel,

the 2 in the south take the name Judah. The south is where Jerusalem was. But they would

find out that they had been better together. Because around 740 BCE, Isaiah, which we read

from, begins prophesying that Israel would be overthrown and sent into exile because

of how they had failed to follow the Lord, and particularly because of the way the leaders

had failed to follow the Lord. But he also said, one day there will be this kind of Messiah

that would reign forever on the throne of King David, the kingdom of peace. And then

it began. In 721 BCE, the Assyrians overthrow the northern kingdom. The 10 tribes are kicked

out of their land, they are exiled, they become known as the diaspora, the 10 lost tribes.

And even to this day, it is believed that those 10 tribes never completely returned

to the land. Isaiah's first prophecy of being defeated is happening. So the waiting for

Messiah begins. Now when the Assyrians defeated the north kingdom, they attempted to defeat

the south as well, but the southern kingdoms were able to defend Jerusalem and they maintained

their independence until 135 years later. In 586 BCE, when the Babylonians came in and

defeated the Assyrians in the north and the Israelites in the south, destroying Jerusalem.

And the Babylonians, just like the Assyrians, sent the southern Israelites into exile out

of their land. What I've been describing here, this is what an old friend of mine would call

extreme home makeover empire edition, because it was just like one empire after another.

And then after this, only 50 years later, what happens is Persia comes in and defeats

Babylon. Another years after that, Greece takes over in 332. Then for the first time

in 444 years in the year 142, 142 years before Christ, there was a Jewish revolt led by the

Maccabees. Some of you have heard of that. The Festival of Lights has its connection and

roots back to the Maccabee revolt. The Jews once again controlled Jerusalem. Was this

their Messiah moment? Well, it only lasted 79 years until 63 BCE when the Romans defeated

the Jewish armies. Then the Romans would rule the region longer than anyone. They would

control that entire region for 539 years. The entire Roman Empire in its totality lasted

1101 years. So when Americans get all huffy about being the best country ever, Rome has

been beaten by like 850 years. They were the boss. Now by the time that Jesus was born

in or around 2 BCE, his people had been under the rule of five different empires. The Assyrians,

the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans. There won't be a test later, don't

worry. In the words of Isaiah, the promise of a Messiah, the promise of hope had been

hanging in the air for 720 years. 720 years, mostly under the subjugation of other nations.

720 years of being kicked out of their own land. 720 years of waiting and testing hope.

Let me back up again. When we did that experiment earlier, some of us, some of us we opened

our eyes a few seconds early. Some of us opened our eyes right at one minute. Others, we opened

our eyes a little late, very late. The truth is, there's a lot more to that experiment

than just counting time. When I was preparing this message, I wanted to look into how our

brains perceive time. I found something fascinating. Dr. Heather Berland wanted to know how accurate

humans are at perceiving the passage of time. And so she did this simple timing experiment

with people that had no known brain injuries and with people that had something called

orbital frontal cortex lesions. The frontal orbital is this part of your brain that makes

all these really important decisions. But also for context, if you have a brain injury

there, it affects your emotions, it affects your behavior, and it can affect how impulsive

you are. So the experiment was simple. She had people try and time exactly nine seconds.

She distracted them a little so they weren't able just to count one, two, three, four,

five. What she found was really interesting. Let me read part of this. This is what the

report said. Participants with orbital frontal cortex damage would stop her at almost exactly

90 seconds, indicating a more accurate perception of time. More accurate. Then she found out

that participants without these brain injuries tended to let a few more, even 95 or 100 seconds

pass before stopping her, indicating a slightly slower perception of time. One of the conclusions

that can be made here is that while this particular kind of brain injury seems to make people

perceive time more accurately, which I think is surprising to some people when you read

that, the other side of that is that it at least implies that the uninjured brain is

in less of a hurry. Made me wonder, beyond brain injuries, what about our hearts? What

about our hopes? What if our brain is fine, but our hopes are damaged? What about the

traumas we experience when our prayers seem to go unanswered? Does hope deferred year

after year have a way of compounding impatience, making us count a little faster with God?

Made me think about how time, maybe you've all experienced this, how time just seemed

so slow when you were a kid. Now the older I get, it's like the years are just racing

past. And I wondered if God can heal our hope. And I remembered 2 Corinthians 5 17 where

Paul tells us, therefore if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old is gone,

the new is here. Romans 12 2, Paul says, we can be transformed by the renewing of our

minds. And 1 Corinthians 2 16 where he says, but we have the mind of Christ. I remember

that Isaiah 55 quotes God saying, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways

higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. There is a promise in

Jesus that our minds, that our thinking, that our thoughts can be healed. I thought if we

can be made new, if we can have the mind of Christ, if we can share in the way that God

thinks, then we can learn again to put our timing down, learn to count like God. Then

I remembered in Psalm 90, verse 4 where Moses says, a thousand years in your sight is like

Psalms 90:4

a day that has just gone by or like a watch in the night. And in 2 Peter 3 8 when Paul

says, beloved, do not let this one thing escape your notice. With the Lord a day is like a

thousand years. A thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his

promise as some understand slowness. I think our way of thinking, our way of waiting, our

way of counting and keeping track of time, our way of hoping can be healed. Maybe, maybe

you need your hope healed today. So I was like, close this up. There's just two more

things I want to say about time and how we perceive it. About two years ago I started

helping out at the hospital. There was something wrong with me. It was like the height of the

neck. And Trish Britton, Pastor Chris's wife, emailed me saying that they were looking for

more chaplains and I thought, you know, what a better time to go work in the hospital.

But this last week I learned something new about being a chaplain. It turns out that

research shows when it comes to patients and caregivers like nurses and doctors and chaplains,

they found that when patients have a caregiver that will sit down with them, everything else

being exactly the same. But if the caregiver sits down with the patient, the patient will

perceive that visit lasting five times longer than it did. Five times. Some of us have heard

that phrase, the time is a construct. Like, there's something that's happening. I wonder

if some of us just need someone to sit down with us. To slow down, to just be present

and watch God multiply our hope in this setting. Because if you have this much left, maybe

someone would sit with you, it would be multiplied by five. Some of us need to stop and be the

one that sits down with someone else. And last, I want to acknowledge, I'm not saying

that waiting is easy. I'm not saying that hope is cheap or that it's magic. I am saying

that how we perceive time isn't as sure as we think it is. And there's plenty of proof.

There's another experiment I want to tell you about. In this one, the doctor took two

different groups of people, well, actually many different groups of people. There was

no, like, mental or brain injuries involved. It was just people. And what they would do

is they would put them in a room and they would give them basically like an assignment,

a task to do. Something like handing them a paper and saying, I need you to underline

every time that there's a double letter, like the two T's and the word letter or the two

L's and all. And we're going to give you ten minutes to do it and we're going to see if

you can underline all of them. And then the person leading the experiment would say, okay,

click ten minutes and leave the room, making sure that they saw that the only timer left

and that had been started. And what would happen is that then they would go back in

after ten minutes and say, okay, it's done. It's been ten minutes. And then for other

groups they would go in after twenty minutes and go in and say, all right, it's been ten

minutes. Other groups they would go in after five minutes and say, okay, it's been ten

minutes. Other groups they would go in after ten minutes and say, okay, it's been five

minutes. Other groups they would go in after twenty minutes and say, it's been five minutes.

And they found out something fascinating. Then when they had them fill out a survey

about how satisfied they were with how they did, the people that were most satisfied,

whether it had been five, ten, or twenty minutes, in reality, the most satisfied people were

the ones that had been told it had only been five minutes. Just being told, just being

told, lied to, just being told that it was shorter than it was made them feel better.

It reminded me of 2 Corinthians 4 where Paul says, Therefore we do not lose heart, though

our outer self is wasting away, yet our inner self is being renewed day by day, for our

light and momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory that is

far beyond comparison. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.

For what is seen is only temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. And it made me think

of something beautiful. I believe there is a future advent. I believe Jesus will return

and he will make all things new. And I think that when it happens that maybe some of us

are going to ask Jesus, what took you so long? It's been thousands of years and Jesus will

look at us and say, My child, it has only been a few minutes. And we will feel better

and our hope will be satisfied. Amen. Let's pray. God, I pray that you heal our hope today.

That you take away that we keep track of time, how long hope has been deferred. And you teach

us again how to count like you. Then in the moments where it still feels like too much,

I pray that you convince our hearts that we will see you again one day. Because for you,

a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day. You will tell us this long

wait has been but a moment. We will believe you. Amen.