One morning while I was walking our dog last week one of my neighbors, who normally has kind of a dour disposition, greeted me with some uncharacteristically upbeat words.  She said:  “Hope springs eternal.”  Then she added, “I’m quoting my mother.  I find myself doing that quite a bit lately.  She died at the age of 95 after several strokes, but on one of her last days, when she woke up and looked out the window, she said:  ‘It’s a beautiful day.’  I try to remember that.”  I thought it was a wonderful testimony, even if I did suspect that her more upbeat than usual attitude on that particular morning was probably the result of her political persuasion.    

 But it was a great way for me to start the day and I held on to her words, making them a kind of mantra as I went about my work:  “Hope springs eternal.  It’s a beautiful day. Hope springs eternal.  It’s a beautiful day.”  As I was driving to work that morning (some of you may know that I live way out at the other end of town, about three miles south of here) I was just knocked out by the beauty of the fall foliage.  I used to walk to work but I really enjoy the drive these days.  It really was a beautiful day, and just holding on to those words kept my awareness in a kind of heightened state.  “Hope springs eternal.  It’s a beautiful day.” 

Then I got to work and started working on my sermon.  I flipped open my Bible and read the Good News, the words of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Gospel of Mark:  “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come.  For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines.”  Did I say good news?  Oh, I forgot the punch line. At the end of these dire predictions, Jesus adds:   “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” 

Birth is beautiful, but it’s hard work.  It’s not for nothing that birth is preceded by labor.  Some of you know Anni’s and my story.  I actually climbed up on the delivery table during labor and sat behind Anni, coaching her on breathing and letting her push back against me.  When it was time for the birth I caught Chalice, and even cut the cord.  It was about as intimate a birthing experience as a man is able to experience.  Birth is beautiful, but it is a lot of hard work, and it’s painful!  And that’s not even addressing the subject of childhood, adolescence, adulthood or getting older.  Even when birth results in a beautiful, healthy baby, its journey through life from infancy to old age is subject to the inevitable suffering of the human condition.  But, I am stubbornly holding on to the Good News.  “Hope springs eternal.  It’s a beautiful day.”  If we truly believe that we come from God, and return to God, then even death is not the end, and every birth is a miracle of incarnation, an opportunity to begin again.

I think about those incredible fall colors.  When Bill Brown and I were driving up to Steve Smith’s place the other day the sun broke through and suddenly the whole mountainside was ablaze with glory.  We commented about how those dying leaves were so beautiful and I think again of the 95-year-old woman, waking up - on her deathbed - and saying, “It’s a beautiful day.”  The lesson of the leaves!

The 5^th century Indian dramatist and poet, Kalidasa, who is regarded as the greatest figure in classical Sanskrit literature, wrote this poem of hope:

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

The reason this morning’s scripture uses apocalyptic “end times” language is that the church calendar, like nature itself, is cyclical, and we are approaching the end of the church year.  In just two weeks we’ll begin all over again with the season of Advent, and the scriptures will bare witness to the promise and the hopefulness that we associate with the birth of Christ.  You’ve all seen those cartoons of the doomsday prophet, carrying a sign that says, “The End is at Hand.” It’s depressing.  But, did any of you see the guy carrying the sign in the Halloween parade?  I loved it.  It said, “The Middle Is At Hand.”   That’s more like it.  We need a little levity, a little humor, and a lot of hope!

It’s no secret that we’re living in hard times, and I’m no Pollyanna.  Without denying for a moment the magnitude of the suffering and the injustice, the environmental and the human crises that threaten us - and fully accepting the responsibility we have to work for change in the things we can change – at the same time we have to recognize that there have been desperately hard times in the past, times when people wondered if life on the planet would survive. In Jesus' own time the people of Israel were under the domination of the Roman Empire and when the Empire fell, people wondered if that was a signal that the world would end. In our own time there are memories of two World Wars, the Holocaust and the dropping of the Atomic bomb. Today we’re living with global warming, environmental destruction, terrorism, the AIDS epidemic and violence of our society.  We fear for our children, and wonder what the future holds for them.

It’s easy to understand why some people believe that the end of the world is at hand. Some of them believe that the apocalyptic writings of the Bible are a road map for the end of the world and spend a lot of time trying to match current events with the images contained in those writings. People have been believing that we’re in the end times for centuries, and I have deep compassion for that sense of hopelessness and those fears.  But the key words there are hopelessness and fear. These end-time predictions are rooted in fear and hopelessness, that’s what feeds them and fans the flames, and the one thing we must remember about apocalyptic writings is that there is always hope. The old way may be destroyed, not one stone left standing on another, but there’s always the promise of new beginnings.

Jesus told the disciples that we don’t know when the Kingdom of God will arrive, neither the day nor the hour. He also told them that the Kingdom of God is within us, and that those who have eyes to see and ears to hear will recognize that it is born anew each day.  We cannot deny that these are hard times for many, but the promise is that even hard times contain the promise of Good News.  Hard times are the birth pangs that accompany the promise of new life. We are - by the power of our faith and the gift of the Holy Spirit within us - the midwives of New Life in Christ.  Birth is hard work, but it’s full of hope and promise. 

As we move into the darkest time of the year, we also turn once again to the anticipation of the season of Advent and the promise of New Life through Christ. We turn again to hope in the Light of the World, the hope and the promise of God's kingdom and the one who we call the Incarnation of love and the Prince of Peace.  So, I’ll close by sharing the last verse of  “Hymn of Promise” which we’ll sing together to conclude this service:  “In our end is our beginning, in our time, infinity, in our doubt there is believing, in our life, eternity.  In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory, unrevealed until it’s season, something God alone can see.”   

 Hope springs eternal.  It’s a beautiful day.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.