Our goals, in the words of today’s Epistle lesson: Lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; live honorably. Let Christ transform us into people who love one another.
We learn from the past. The Bible is a record of divine promises made and kept. God, who was faithful in the past, will be faithful in the future. We are free to give up any obsession we have with the past, past wounds, past anxieties, past hurts, fears, and doubts, and live freely in the present, hoping for the future because God kept God’s promises. God will keep God’s promises.
We are realistic about what is possible. Trusting in God, we are realistic when we hope for things yet unseen, even big things, like joy and peace and salvation and wholeness.
But we are realistic: all of these things lie ahead of us. All of these things are in our future. All our real wholeness, our real joy, our real love, completely, fully realized, is in our future.
That’s whey Advent, and our Christian faith, is future-oriented. Yes, Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem. Yes, he actually died and was buried and rose again and appeared openly to his disciples. Yes, all these things, historically, in the past, happened. But they all happened so that we can live into the future which awaits us, a future for which God is preparing us, a future of which Christ, raised from the dead, is the first fruits.
We cannot underestimate the importance of our future goals. They not only give us hope, but how we envision the future breaks into how we live our present. Our future can form our present, rescue it, revitalize it, give it meaning.
- The Rev. Dr. Amy Richter, rector of St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Annapolis, Maryland
Condensed from Sermons That Work
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