Readings: Jeremiah 33:14-16;1Thessalonians 3: 9-13; Luke 21:25-36
It might surprise you but I am learning the piano. I didn`t do piano when I was a kid because my mother had a negative response to it from her childhood, so I took it up just before I had the boys. I used to go into the chapel at RPH and play at lunch time before I bought my own piano. But of course when the boys were small there was no time to do anything except cook clean and be a mum. So I am back tinkling the ivories now.

But not very well. In fact although I practise and I hope that I might one day play really well, and even play at church, I know deep down in my heart I will not be a concert pianist. That is a bit of a pipe dream, a hope with little real substance. What is real are my attempts to master the simple pieces I have, the fun and enjoyment it brings and the relationship I have with my gorgeous slightly hippie teacher who I have known for a long time.

So there is hope, based in the here and now, concrete and earthy, like my piano playing, and there is pie in the sky hope.

This difference is the subject of today`s reading.

We come this week to the season of Advent, traditionally seen as the time of waiting for Jesus. A time to prepare, a time to stay alert to the moving of the spirit.

Yet the early church did not understand it that way. They didn`t have any birth stories of Jesus to create any advent for. Christmas wasn`t celebrated until the 4th century. What the early church was preparing for was not Jesus` birth but his return. They were hoping that Jesus would soon tear open the skies and come back down to earth on clouds of glory to gather up the elect, turn the tables on the existing social and political order and usher in a new age of God`s reign. But it didn`t happen that way, and still hasn`t and isn`t going to.

So does that mean hope has gone for a better more just world? No it doesn`t. We put our faith and hope in God just as the ancient writers of the gospel did, just in a different way.

The reading today is filled with language and imagery that jars with the modern reader.

The passages from Luke are based on similar passages in Mark`s gospel, written not long after the year 70. In that year, Jerusalem was recaptured by the Romans after a four-year Jewish revolt, and Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed. For Jews - including Christians - the loss of the temple and of Jerusalem felt like the end of everything.
The gospel writers in these passages and not just the one we heard today have Jesus talk about false messiahs, wars and rumours of war, nation rising against nation, persecution and betrayal, an even greater ending than the capture and destruction of Jerusalem, and finally what is now called `the second coming` of Jesus when all will be made right.

This type of writing is termed apocalyptic and means an `unveiling`, or a `disclosure`. It is a style of literature where one or more visions are said to disclose or unveil the future. In apocalyptic literature, the time immediately before the coming of the new age is typically marked by intense suffering, and by natural and cosmic catastrophes and by warfare. There is then the appearance of a conquering hero - in early Christian apocalyptic texts, the Christ figure, who saves God`s people.

As David Clarke, a minister from New Zealand suggests, `These biblical stories in both old and New Testaments are poetry, and have all the truth that comes not with alleged facts, but with the power of metaphor to touch people`s hearts and minds and souls. The biblical imagery is that what began in a garden will climax in a city; what began in the Garden of Eden will reach its fulfilment in the City of Jerusalem. They are hope-giving, vision-creating, and commitment-inducing poetry.`

The problem is what to do with them in the 21st century.

Well, we need to read these texts with the understanding that has come from 2,000 years of knowledge about the world and about who we are. They are time-specific. They reflect the writers` expectation that Christ will return in their lifetime. They express encouragement to the fledgling Christian church in times of persecutions and fear. And they are a call to remain faithful to the God whose purposes are love and who is revealed in Jesus. Poetry but not history, displaying a deep yearning in the people of Israel for something better.

So let`s leave these stories where they belong, in the 1st century and move to our story, one that has expanded to include all creation and the cosmos.

Who is God for us, today? Who is Jesus? And where lies our hope?

God is not found somewhere else, but is with us at all times and in all ways, a divine presence in all of life. A presence that drives us to be better than we are, more loving, more compassionate and more forgiving. This God is calling for a new heaven and a new earth, if you like, a New Jerusalem, a new kingdom of peace and love where no one shall go without and everyone shall be included. The whole earth is full of God`s glory, not just a chosen group, and the whole earth is our responsibility.

And what about Jesus? Who is Jesus for us at the start of Advent 2012?

We wait not for a supernatural saviour to rescue us, but a saviour called Jesus of Nazareth whose life was spent among the people and who showed us the way. In him the God of the universe is revealed and in him the hope of the world is found. Jesus represents a watershed moment in time, but the process goes on. God is still here working within all of creation and in you and me and in all people everywhere.

Our hope then is found in men and women who speak and act in love. Who work for justice and peace. Who are compassionate and forgiving. Our hope lies in people touching and connecting to God`s spirit in ways that make a difference, both to themselves and to others.

Our hope lies in the transformation possible in the everyday moments of life by ordinary people. Moments that reveal God as ever present.

So while we share with our ancient biblical writers the constancy of God we believe the kingdom of God, the New Jerusalem, has to happen here and now and with us. Our hope is grounded in this time, not some other time. Our hope is about commitment not wishful thinking or false promises.

So Advent is a window not to take us away from here, but to bring us home, a light in the darkness of our world. A light that shines through the mess we have got ourselves in. We can find signs of this hope every day if we look, in people transforming the way they live, transforming the way they love.

I had a whole pile of papers full of darkness but also full of light and hope from the last few weeks that Matt shared in the children`s address.

But I also have a person to help me. With this in mind I want to introduce Lee Anne Burnett, who is part of a group bringing hope to young people in West Papua.

(Lee Anne talked about an English intensive program for young people from West Papua held in Perth, WA by the Uniting Church.)

This is where our hope lies.