Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36
Hope's not a very fashionable virtue just now. It's so much easier to look around and see everything going wrong and shake your head sadly. For hope makes you vulnerable to jeers of naïveté, stupidity. "Things are much more complicated than you're making out," people can say. And that's true.
If, for example, I decide to explore on this Advent Sunday the possibility of Jesus' second coming, I hit an immediate and obvious snag in our reading from Luke's Gospel - our first reading from Luke, now we've switched Gospels at the beginning of Advent from last year's focus on Mark. What snag? That neat little parable Jesus tells his hearers, that follows on from the reading from Jeremiah we've already heard this morning: "Look at the fig tree and all the trees," he says. "As soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near."
What things taking place? Cataclysms in the heavens. People fainting for fear on earth. Rather obvious events, you'd think, that would be hard to miss. But in two thousand years, though from springtime to springtime leaves have sprouted on every fig tree, they don't seem to have happened yet. Yet what does Jesus say? "Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place." Hm. Some mistake here, surely?
But maybe not. Some commentators think Jesus is immediately referring to a cataclysmic event indeed, but one affecting people more locally in time and space than the end-of-the-world scenario we may be expecting: the siege and fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70AD. To the Jews of Jesus' time, as to the Jews of Jeremiah's time, the fall of their beloved city of David to foreign invaders would seem like the end of their world.
And that threat to and apparently final destruction of their culture is something that we can understand very well here and now, speaking as I am to members of the Caledonian Society of Sheffield. Last night with others here I enjoyed our St Andrew's Night Ball, at Tapton, where we filled our dining space.
But someone who was looking back recently at the Society's historical records - and of course the Caledonians have been in Sheffield even longer than has this church - told me of St Andrew's Night Balls of yore when a thousand tickets were made available, and a lottery had to be drawn, because more than a thousand people wanted to attend, but no more could fit into the Cutlers' Hall! Times have changed...
We in this church, like you of many churches and none in the Caledonians, cannot escape noticing the decline in Scottish numbers in Sheffield. Plentiful jobs in engineering and in medicine, for which Scots came to Sheffield in droves, are a thing of the past. And Scottish national identity, let alone interest in a church from the Presbyterian tradition, is no longer a significant factor in the life of every Scot north of the border, let alone those still to be found south of it. So where can we go from here? Should we fix our eyes on the past and lament the present? Is hope a naïve reaction to our situation?
That was certainly not the case for the Christians in Thessalonica, to whom Paul wrote what scholars now think is the first surviving letter to any Christian church. They were expecting the return of Jesus any time now, so they weren't too bothered about questions of the past. But by no means did they have an easy ride in their faith. Paul commends them earlier in this same letter for standing fast under Roman persecution, and thus encouraging him in his own work for God. But in our reading today, he urges them to increase his joy by holding fast to the love which binds them to one another.
The Christians in Thessalonica could not at this early stage have been bound by a common culture, a common history, common expectations of one another. It was the love of God made visible in the story of Jesus' life and death and resurrection, not their own Jewishness or Greekness, which held them together and drew others to join their number. And still today people will want to join a group where those who start off as outsiders are welcomed in, where there is evident concern for each other, and where the values holding them together are expressed in ways attractive to newcomers, whatever their own background.
But what about St Andrew? as I got asked indignantly a few Caledonian Sundays ago, when I'd stuck to talking about Jesus instead. Where does Andrew come into all this?
The last time we hear about Andrew in the Gospel story - it turns up in the Gospel of John - he's giving Philip the benefit of his advice. And what is Philip asking him about? It's a question of Greeks. Some Greeks have turned up asking Philip if they can see Jesus, and Philip doesn't know what to do. So Philip consults Andrew.
It's coming up to Passover. Everyone's very busy getting ready for the festival. Andrew could legitimately tell the Greeks to go away and stop bothering them. After all, they're not Jewish. They have no right to join a Jewish group, especially at this holy time of year. But no. Far from jealously guarding access to Jesus and keeping the power of decision-making in his own hands, Andrew goes with Philip to tell Jesus. And that choice was one factor in the eventual survival and spread of Christianity. If it had stayed a purely Jewish group, it would probably have died at the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD. Certainly the energy of the church moved then from Jerusalem to new churches at Thessalonica, at Corinth and at Rome, and through the energy of Irish and Scottish missionaries it went on spreading outwards even as far as us.
In the end, is St Andrew's still a Scottish church? Yes, but we are far more than that. We come from Scotland, from Ireland, from England, from Nigeria, from Zimbabwe, from India, from many nations and cultures and backgrounds, but together we are the church of Jesus Christ. This Advent Sunday, as so many before, we are awaiting the celebration of Jesus' first coming. But we are also living in the hope of his second coming, when God will fulfil the promise to put all things right. And in the meantime, we are living the life of his body on earth: welcoming the stranger, forgiving those who have hurt us, loving our enemies. It's a tall order, isn't it? How can we live up to our ideals, hold onto our values, guard what is precious to us, in a world that sometimes doesn't seem to care? That is up to our God, who brings spring out of winter and new life out of death.