In the first two weeks of Advent, those who gathered here at Yellowknife United Church heard about Roberta – a tree-hugging, peace marching, flash mob participating young woman of twenty-something years. Roberta defines herself as a justice-seeker – with involvement in many different organisations both by her presence and her financial commitment that promote world community, care for the earth, non-violent solutions to conflict and a host of other issues in the world. Roberta's commitment to these causes is in large part defined by her faith. Her belief in God and her faith in God as the creator of all creation were a bulwark in the foundation of her world view. She believed in God of love, and that love was both expressed and desired by God in every connection she made in her life.

Her faith was also expressed in a connection with a faith community, and this is the one point of commonality that she shared with her neo-conservative parents. She and her parents were at odds on just about every point of discussion, but it was a constructive difference of opinion – one that often helped each of them to move a little bit in their point of view so that some so-called eternal truths (if there ever could be something like that) could be glimpsed.

The idea of hope as embodied in the birth of a child is one that had informed the beginning of her Advent journey this year. The image of a newborn, particularly a child born in the midst of pain and struggle – which was the real story of Christmas as far as she was concerned – was an important one to consider. Having a child was a radical statement about hope and love. Her mind and heart continually called her to consider the idea of all that desire, the life story contained within, all the pain and the joy that occurs for someone in their life on earth seemingly wrapped up in the small and gentle (mostly) image of a child blinking, kicking, squirming and sleeping in a mother and father's arms.

For Roberta, the justice-seeker this had translated into a concern for children in the world right now. There were so many stories, near and far of children who were bearing the brunt of so many social ills. As the second week of advent rolled around, she was also drawn to consider the advent theme of peace. Roberta was not about to subscribe to what was in her mind a false sense of peace – a peace that shut out justice concerns, and eschewed the wrongs of the world so that she could just sit back and presume some kind of serenity that belied what was happening in the world. She described her peace as a restless peace – a hope for peace for the world. The focus of this restlessness was unavoidably on events in Copenhagen at the UN Conference on Climate Change. For Roberta this was the culmination of much of what she had been doing over the past many months – attending meetings, planning educational events and consciousness raising sessions, phoning and speaking to elected officials and talking things up with her friends and community members.

And so we left Roberta two weeks ago with an expectant mixture of resolve and mystery – a very much expected sentiment for this time of advent. She was also wondering what would happen in Copenhagen and for her.

Roberta had watched and listened closely to what had happened in Copenhagen. She was both excited and discouraged by what had happened. The fact that there had been some kind of agreement was the least of her concerns. She knew that the political pressure to do something had come from what seemed to be a gathering groundswell of both public opinion and what seemed to be a much too slowly awakening realisation. That's where she drew her hope. She could not help but think that something new and exciting was just over the horizon. Copenhagen had mostly been about the old way of doing things, but there small signs, hopeful signs, that things were going to change. She knew that people like her were behind this change. It could in the space of a breath both discourage and excite her. Like many people of her age she wanted things to happen now. She lived in an age of instantaneous cause and effect. She knew from experience that a flash-mob with no advertising dollars, no public service announcements, could be organized in the space of a few days. She was used to writing stuff and sharing it on her Facebook and Twitter accounts without the need to consider publication deadlines and lead times. She knew there were many levels of communication – that the stories from Copenhagen were not limited to the old guard media outlets and press services – even they had created opportunities for on the ground reporting to happen, but even beyond that there were countless blogs from people who had been able to attend the events in Denmark, to say nothing of the many more who were using an online presence to add their own perspective and focus.

So while she was discouraged by the official stuff, she was also very excitedly encouraged by what had happened in other ways.

She also could not get out of her mind the sense that something ground breaking, world changing, game changing was about to happen. There had been inklings of it during the 2008 American Election campaign, and even before that some of the protests around the G7 and G8 meetings in Seattle and other places in the world. As bad as it was, the global economic crisis had also shown signs to Roberta that the old rules, the old way of doing things, and the world power base were in the midst of change.

She wondered if this is what it was like in the days before the first advent. Clearly the stories about Jesus' birth were written after he had gained prominence. Clearly the stories were written to build a case for what people had experienced from the message Jesus had given during his talk and walk around Galilee. But it was also clear that Jesus was a world changing, ground breaking, game changing person. It only made sense that the kind of radical, world view changing, relationship with God enlightening things that Jesus did and said – so that they had inspired two thousand years of interpretation, inspiration and even emulation – would also lead people to flash back to the time when it all began. Surely someone with this kind of message, with this kind of insight, with this kind of fresh and deep and encouraging perspective on what it means to live as God's people would have come into the world in some kind of extraordinary circumstance. And how extraordinary was it – that it would be special because of its lowliness, that it would be great because of who first heard about it – shepherds after all, that it would establish connections with the old political guard – a descendant of David after all, but in ways that were just so unexpected and unlikely. This is the kind of message that the gospel writers had been drawn to tell because of what they knew about Jesus and his upside down – ground levelling, justice making insight into the kind of world God wants in the world and among the people who live in it.

And so Roberta's advent converged on a conclusion, not in a flash of insight, not in some kind of solution to the mystery of life, but in a kind of determined satisfaction – that her causes were ones that were faithful to the ones she drew from the life and words of Jesus, that her sense of purpose, her choice of involvement was directed along a path that God was directing.

But Roberta could also hardly contain herself – because there was just a sense that something was underfoot, something like that Bethlehem birth was about to happen. She could not miss the signs, she could not shake the feeling. Sometimes it made her literally vibrate in anticipation, while at other times waves of regret passed over her that she might not live long enough to see it happen. For the sake of the earth as much as for her own sake, she hoped that was not the case. The earth was sorely in need of something happening sooner rather than later. She also knew that she would not give up. The something that was underfoot – this great emergence – was in part happening because of people like her.

In the four weeks of advent, ever since that image of hope and promise, conflict and struggle embodied in a child had first struck her – it seems that she was constantly seeing young children. They were in strollers pushed by moms on the sidewalk, in slings strung across their mothers chests, held by adoring fathers and bundled up with older siblings as grandparents offered respite time for tired parents by taking them out for an hour or two. They were riding on their mother's backs in the traditional Inuit style and being passed around from one person to another in circles of love – cooing, cuddling and smiling. Was it just her, or were there more children around than usual?

Embodied hope, embodied joy, embodied love – that's what it all meant to her and she was determined to make sure that she kept on keeping on – to make sure that they would find embodied peace as well. THE END. Amen.