On September 17, 2011, an Occupy Wall Street protest began taking place in New York City.
Two months later, 2,609 towns and cities worldwide have reported to be participating in similar protests directed against economic and social inequality.
The rallying cry of "we are the 99%" refers to the concentration of wealth among the top 1% of income earners compared to the other 99%.
If you listen, you can hear the world crying out in longing and hope for financial relief.
On December 17, 2010, a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire
in protest of the confiscation of his wares and the harassment and humiliation that he reported was inflicted on him by a municipal official and her aides.
He died on January 4, but his act became a catalyst for the Tunisian Revolution and what has become known as the Arab Spring,
which includes protests and revolutions throughout the Middle East and North Africa – protests resulting from extreme poverty, government corruption, and human rights violations.
Characterized by urban warfare, online activism, and civil resistance, these uprisings are demanding free and fair elections and regime change.
Cries of longing and hope for political justice encircle the globe.
Last week, we acknowledged the violent murders 69 people because of their gender identity and because of who they wanted to present themselves to be in this world.
This comes on the heels of a report earlier this year revealing that a staggering 41% of our transgender siblings have attempted suicide,
as compared to the 1.6% of the general population. Fifty-five percent have lost a job due to bias,
51% have been harassed and bullied in school, 61% have been victims of physical assault, and 64% have been sexually assaulted.
We cry out in longing and hope for equality and justice for all people, including our transgender siblings.
This coming Thursday is World AIDS Day. An estimated 1.2 million people in the United States are living with HIV infection.
And one in five of those people are unaware of their infection.
New infections continue at far too high of a level, with approximately 50,000 Americans becoming infected with HIV each year.
AIDS has killed more than 25 million people between 1981 and 2007,
and an estimated 33.3 million people worldwide live with HIV as of 2009,
making it one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history. Despite recent, improved access to antiretroviral treatment and care in many regions of the world,
the AIDS epidemic claimed an estimated 1.8 million lives in 2009, of which about 260,000 were children.
Millions of people around the world lift their voices in grief,
longing and hoping for relief from a disease that has become so commonplace that we have become numb to the statistics.
A shroud of despair seems to cover the world today, more than ever before.
And we lift our eyes to the heavens, and cry out to God with the desperate plea of this morning's poet-prophet:
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence —
as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil — to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence! When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down,
the mountains quaked at your presence. From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait.
And so we wait ... and wait ... and we continue to wait.
In fact, we wait for so long, that we begin to wonder the same thing as the prophet does within this morning's text.
We suspect that maybe we have done something to make God angry.
Could it be that God's back is turned upon us because we have transgressed God's ways, because we are as "unclean as a dirty rag," to use the metaphor of our text?
Things don't seem to be happening as we would like them to happen, and we don't understand why God is so silent and cold, so distant from our deepest longings and hope.
And so we wait. And we continue to long for relief. And we hope for a new day.
But here's the good news: our hope is not in vain. God is not an angry Judge, as some would try to convince us.
God is a God of love, a God of compassion and grace. And God wants the same thing as all of us want:
a world that is healed of its brokenness.
We admit that we have made a mess of things and we cry out to our heavenly Mother to hold us close and to wipe away our tears.
We beg our holy Father to fix our broken world.
We pray for God's sacred Spirit to brood over the chaos of our world as it did in the beginning, separating light from darkness and creating something new and good.
And one thing you can be sure of, my friends, is that God hears our voices. And in God, there is hope.
There is hope because God is in the business of creation – creating masterpieces from the simplest of ingredients.
From the opening verses of holy scripture, we read that God created the heavens and the earth out of "a formless void and darkness [that] covered the face of the deep."
And a flame of hope was lit.
From a man and woman who were past childbearing age, God created a nation "as numerous as the stars of the heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore."
And a flame of hope was lit.
And the New Testament Christmas story is a story about the birth of hope in the form of a baby who was given the name of Jesus –
hope that was born to a people who lived in terror of Roman imperial authority.
And a flame of hope was lit.
It would seem that God always responds to our longing with the creation of hope.
The tone of this morning's text shifts from that of fear and distress to words of hope in God with its closing words,
"O Lord, you are our Creator; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand ... Now consider, we are all your people."
Out of our despair, God is creating hope. God longs for our broken world to be healed, just as you and I do.
But God uses the raw material that is available at hand to shape and mold this vessel of hope.
Jesus was the incarnation, the embodiment of hope for the world. And you and I are also called to embody hope for a broken world.
We are that incarnation of hope when we offer up prayers on behalf of others.
We are that embodiment of hope when we do what we can to serve others.
We are that manifestation of hope when we open ourselves to God's message for us.
You and I are the light of hope in today's broken world.
It was Jesus who said, "You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your heavenly Creator."
Advent season is the spirit of Christ that is waiting to be born, yet again, within you and me.
Within our lives and into our world is the unstoppable hope that just beyond the horizon is a new day.
And it's up to you and me to usher in that new day.
But for now, we wait ... and we marvel at the miracle of hope that is forming within our very being.
You and I call that miracle of hope the spirit of Christ.
We long for the comfort and peace that comes with that hope. We ready ourselves with joy and anticipation for this hope we call the Christ.
And we worship God in love and adoration, the God of our hope and our longing. Amen.