A few weeks ago, I got one of those emergency alerts on my phone—the kind that makes your whole body jump. You know the sound: loud, jarring, impossible to ignore. The screen flashed “Test of the National Emergency Alert System.” And for a split second, before I read the fine print, my mind raced through every worst-case scenario. Did something happen? Is this it? Was there another earthquake? A missile? A national emergency? My heart started pounding before I even had time to think rationally.

It was only a test, but it stayed with me longer than I expected. I caught myself checking the news later that night, double-checking that nothing had actually happened. And it made me realize how fragile our sense of stability can be. One moment everything feels ordinary, predictable, and safe; the next, the ground shifts. A text, a headline, a storm, a diagnosis—and suddenly we realize how little control we actually have. We live with the illusion that we’re in charge, until something reminds us that we aren’t. And it all feels like someone suddenly turned the lights out.

And in a way, that’s where Advent begins.

Today we enter into a new season in the life of the church—the start of the Christian year, a time not of arrival but of anticipation. Advent invites us to wait, to watch, and to prepare for God’s coming among us. But it doesn’t begin with comfort or nostalgia. Advent begins in the dark—before the candles are lit, before the room warms with glow—like that sudden alert tone reminding us that something urgent is happening.

That’s why our theme this year is Desperate Measures. Not because we are being dramatic, but because Scripture is honest about the moment we’re in. These Advent texts are sober, even unsettling; they name a world that is not as it should be. And that resonates, doesn’t it? We truly live in desperate times. War and hatred. Loneliness and loss. Systems that wound and stories that break. Advent does not ignore any of it. Advent looks at the world’s unraveling and says: yes, this is the truth. And yet, as people of faith, we live in the tension of the already and the not yet—acknowledging the world’s brokenness and the urgency for rescue, while trusting that God has already taken the most desperate measure of all: coming among us in Jesus. Over these next four weeks we will lean into the gifts that ground us—Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love—not as soft comforts but as acts of holy resistance. And today, we begin with Hope.

Jesus says, “About that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. … Therefore keep awake.” The teaching continues with images of two people in the field, one taken and one left; two women grinding meal, one taken and one left…

Let me pause for a moment and say this: These verses have been misused for generations—especially in rapture and Left Behind theology—to imagine God whisking a few people away while abandoning everyone else. At best, it’s sloppy interpretation; but honestly, it’s harmful theology and fear-based theology that shrinks God into a cosmic escape hatch. Jesus’ point isn’t about disappearance at all—it’s about paying attention to a world we’re sometimes tempted to ignore in pursuit of a better afterlife.

In our text, Jesus actually doesn’t give us the cozy start we might hope for. There’s no manger yet, no shepherds or carols. Advent begins in the dark, with warnings and watchfulness. The season opens not with certainty but with urgency. And maybe that’s exactly what we need right now—because no one strikes a match at noon. We light candles when shadows lengthen.

Jesus doesn’t give us a timeline. He doesn’t say, “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine by spring.” He says, “Keep awake.” Advent begins with uncertainty because that’s where faith lives—on the edge between what we know and what we hope for.

Hope isn’t optimism. It isn’t pretending everything will work out. Hope is a discipline, a practice, a desperate measure. It’s choosing to believe that God still breaks into this world—even when the headlines say otherwise. It’s staying alert to God’s movement in a world that keeps trying to lull us to sleep.

Despair numbs us. It tells us there’s nothing we can do. It pushes us inward, away from the pain of our neighbors. But Advent says: wake up. Even now, God is coming near. Even now, a small light glows somewhere on the horizon.

Hope, in a time like this, requires desperate measures. It requires us to build before the rain comes—to organize, to care, to prepare, to love, even when people think we’re foolish for doing so. It means showing up at school board meetings to speak for inclusion. It means advocating for refugees and the unhoused. It means refusing to give up on peace when the world insists war is inevitable. It means planting trees whose shade we may never sit under. Hope is not passive. It dares to imagine what could be. It looks into the night sky and says, “More light is coming.”

Walter Brueggemann writes that the church’s task is to nurture, nourish, and evoke an alternative imagination—to help people sense that God’s future is possible even now. That’s what hope does. It imagines differently.

When we light the candles in our own sanctuary each week, we don’t do it because peace has already come or because justice has finally been won. We light them because the very act of striking a match in the dark is a form of protest against despair. It is our way of saying, “We refuse to let the darkness tell the whole story.”

When we open our doors to families seeking belonging, when we install solar panels to care for creation, when we show up for our trans and queer neighbors, when we feed the hungry at the food bank—these are not just “good works.” They are acts of desperate hope. They are ways of saying: we believe God is still at work here.

And that’s the paradox of Advent: we wait for the One who is already with us. We prepare for Christ’s coming even as we trust that Christ is already present. We light candles in the dark not because we can move clearly, but because we refuse to surrender the light. Every Sunday of Advent we light another candle—Hope, Peace, Joy, Love—and each one is a small rebellion against the darkness. Each one says, “The night is far gone; the day is near.”

But maybe you’ve come today and hope feels far away. Maybe you’ve been awake for too long, and the waiting feels heavy. If that’s you, hear this: even the longing itself is holy. Advent honors that ache. It doesn’t rush us to the manger. It gives us permission to name our fear, our fatigue, our desperation—and to trust that God can meet us there. Sometimes the most honest prayer is holding an unlit candle and saying, “God, I’m not sure how to light this today.”

The story of our faith is not one of people who had everything figured out. It’s a story of people who kept showing up anyway. Abraham set out not knowing where he was going. Mary said yes without knowing what would come next. The shepherds went to find a baby without knowing why. Hope is not certainty; it’s courage that persists even when clarity does not.

And maybe that’s why Jesus tells us to keep awake—not because we can predict the hour, but because we can choose to live alert to grace. We can choose to notice small resurrections: a reconciled relationship, a meal shared with someone lonely, a protest that changes a heart. These are sparks God keeps striking in the world. When we stay awake, we begin to notice the sacred woven into ordinary life.

So as we begin this Advent season, I want to invite us to take hope seriously—to treat it not as a mood but as a mission. Because we are living in a world that needs hope more than ever. And not the cheap kind—the kind that looks away from suffering—but the kind that looks suffering in the eye and still believes in redemption. The kind that refuses to let despair have the last word. The kind that shows up, again and again, for justice, for joy, for love. That’s the hope God is birthing in us.

Because the hour is unknown, but the call is clear: keep awake. Stay awake to God’s presence, awake to your neighbor’s pain, awake to the Spirit moving in quiet, unexpected ways. 

Here are your action items:

1. Stay awake to the world. Resist the temptation to tune out. Read the news with compassion, not exhaustion. Notice where creation groans, where neighbors suffer, where God might be calling you to respond. Staying awake is a spiritual discipline.

2. Practice defiant hope. Do one tangible act of hope this week—something small but faithful. Write a letter to an elected official. Volunteer at the food bank. Plant something green. Reconcile with someone estranged. Each act says: despair does not get the last word. Each act is a flame someone else may sense.

3. Practice courageous presence. In a season that rewards distraction, choose presence instead—presence with someone who is grieving, with someone who is lonely, with someone who has been pushed to the margins. Advent hope is not sentimental; it is embodied solidarity. Bring steady, faithful light into a place or relationship that needs someone to simply show up and stay.

Church, this is what hope looks like in desperate times: not passivity, but participation; not fear, but faithfulness.

The world doesn’t need a church that hides from the dark. It needs a church that dares to strike a match. A people who believe that even in the longest night, dawn is possible.

Every act of compassion, every refusal to give up on justice, every voice that speaks truth in a world addicted to comfort—those are candles of hope burning in the night.

And maybe that’s the invitation of Advent: to live as if God’s future is already unfolding. To trust that the Christ who once came among us still comes through us.

When we dare to hope, we join the long line of people who have chosen love over fear, courage over comfort, mercy over indifference. We become a living sign that the kingdom of God is still breaking in.

Hope is not about crossing our fingers and wishing for better days. Hope is about building those days, even when we can’t yet imagine them. It’s about living now in the shape of the world God desires—one where justice rolls down like waters, where the hungry are fed, and where every person knows they are beloved.

So this Advent, do not just wait for Christ to come near. Live as if he already has.

Be a messenger of light in your neighborhood, a bearer of peace in your relationships, a witness of joy in a weary world.

Let your life this season say: God is not finished with us yet.

And as you do, remember this: every time we gather in this sanctuary and light one more candle, we are making a declaration. That even when the world feels dark, God is kindling something new. That despair doesn’t get the last word. That a single flame—protected by trembling hands—can still change the room.

So keep lighting candles until your hands smell like wax and your heart burns with compassion.

Keep lighting them until weary hearts can sense the dawn again, until the morning reveals the world God has been preparing all along.