“Hope Grows” Colchester Federated Church, December 1, 2024, First Sunday of Advent (Luke 2:7 & Matthew 14:13-21)

Advent has begun!  This liturgical season centers on hopeful waiting for the birth of Jesus Christ into our midst.  We take time to prepare our hearts for Emmanuel—God-with-Us.  Advent is about waiting and trusting in God’s promises.  We contemplate the themes of hope, peace, joy, and love.  Benedictine nun and worship scholar Joan Chittister explains, “The liturgical year does not begin at the heart of the Christian enterprise.  It does not immediately plunge us into the chaos of the Crucifixion or the giddy confusion of the Resurrection.  Instead the year opens with Advent, the season that teaches us to wait for what is beyond the obvious.  It trains us to see what is beyond the apparent.  Advent makes us look for God in all those places we have, until now, ignored.”[1]  

This year we are observing the season of Advent a little differently here at Colchester Federated Church by using some of the From the Manger materials from Illustrated Ministry.  As an aside, do you remember during the pandemic when we individually colored coloring sheets that depicted the Beatitudes, and then our individual coloring sheets were put together by Nicole to create beautiful posters that hung in the sanctuary?  That feels like a long time ago.  Though that congregational activity offered to boost our spirits during that time of separation was from Illustrated Ministry!  So the liturgies we will pray, the Advent Candle Lighting we will hear, “From the Manger” we will sing as we progress through Advent, the Children’s Messages we will experience, some of the Sunday School lessons our youngest ones will learn, and the sermons preached are all centered on the themes of hope, peace, joy, and love growing From the Manger.  It is good to try something new! 

From the Manger gathers around the story of Jesus’ birth from the second chapter of the Gospel according to Luke.  We often don’t hear this story until Christmas Eve in the spirit of hopeful waiting during Advent.  Though this December we are being invited to embrace the playful symbolism of Jesus being lovingly laid down to sleep by his mother Mary in a feeding trough for animals.  Talk about Advent making us look for God in all those places we have ignored until now!  For Mary “gave birth to her firstborn child, a son, wrapped him snugly, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the guestroom.”[2]  Emmanuel, God-with-Us, comes to us and connects us for God’s kingdom, but this happens in an unexpected way.  It ends up that this humble feeding box for animals will symbolize the purpose of Jesus’ advent and ministry—to feed a world hungry for the presence of God.

Hunger is a universal human experience.  As human beings, we need nourishment for our bodies to be healthy and strong.  Every week at our church we collect food that is brought forward by our ushers and blessed and brought to the food bank here in town.  We do this because some of our neighbors here in Colchester are hungry.  Not everyone has a refrigerator full of food and a pantry full of snacks.  It is good to help our neighbors not just during holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the whole year long.  That’s the physical side of hunger.

People also have more complex hungers—emotional and spiritual hungers.  We may hunger for liberation and a sense of belonging.  We may hunger for healthy relationships with loved ones.  We may hunger for forgiveness.  We may hunger for peace.  We may hunger for meaning and purpose.  In a world that can feel so rushed and busy, focused on consumerism and the artificial “need” for more and better, it can be difficult to feel connected.  Sometimes we are downright starved for meaningful connections.  Throughout Advent, we can ask what it means that Jesus was born into a hungry world. 

We can ask ourselves what do we hunger for in our lives?

Because we remember that Jesus as a newborn infant was laid to sleep in a feeding trough for animals in a town called “House of Bread.”  From that humble beginning, hope would grow.  That baby laid in the manger would grow up and become a teacher and healer.  Jesus would one day have compassion for people who were sick and lost, despised and forgotten.  Jesus would offer hope and healing to everyone he encountered during his ministry with and among God’s people. 

On this First Sunday of Advent, we contemplate Jesus laid in that humble manger and how he would grow up to feed hungry people.  All four Gospels share Jesus’ feeding miracle.  The details differ of course, but the story was important enough that it is shared by all.  We recall in that miracle (as Matthew tells the story) that Jesus sees the crowd before him and has compassion.  In the story of the feeding of the five thousand, the disciples want Jesus to send the crowd away as evening comes and the hour gets later so they can go into the villages nearby and buy food.  But Jesus says to his followers, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”[3]  The disciples have five loaves of bread and two fish, and that’s enough for Jesus to feed the hungry crowd.  As Rev. Dr. Jeehei Park explains this Gospel story, “The miracle is not only the multiplication of loaves and fish; it is actually the hope that Jesus wants his disciples and followers to see from him, the hope defying fear and despair.  In doing so, this miracle becomes a paragon of Jesus’ love and care.”[4]

The baby born in humble circumstances would become a man who could not bring himself to turn away from the hunger of the crowd.  Yes, the miracle of multiplication helped ease peoples’ physical hunger.  Because everyone ate until they were full, and there were even twelve baskets full of leftovers!  As we are coming together again after Thanksgiving feasts, we can perhaps appreciate all the more that everybody had their fill and there was even more delicious food the next day. 

Yet this is not just about the bread and fish satisfying hungry stomachs.  The words Jesus shared and the way he encouraged people to live by loving God, loving their neighbors, and loving themselves helped give people purpose, satisfying their spiritual hungers.  Jesus taught, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”[5]  People left that place feeling full and satisfied physically, and full of hope spiritually.  The baby laid in that feeding trough for animals would become a man who fed a hungry world.  How beautiful and unexpected.  Hope grows.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1] Joan Chittister, The Liturgical Year: The Spiraling Adventure of the Spiritual Life, 59.
[2] Luke 2:7, CEB.
[3] Matthew 14:16, NRSVUE.
[4] Commentary on Advent One in From the Manger, Illustrated Ministry, 2024.
[5] Matthew 5:6, NRSVUE.

Photo by Greyson Joralemon on Unsplash