The Color of Hope

​Designers will tell you that color is a powerful tool for conveying meaning and evoking emotions. What meaning and emotion a particular color symbolizes varies with culture, and even within a culture, a color can carry different meanings depending on the context. In our western culture, the color red for example, can mean warmth and love, and also anger, danger, boldness, excitement, speed, strength, energy. In Eastern cultures, red is a symbol of prosperity while in some parts of Africa, red is the color of mourning.
 
The church also uses color throughout the year to invoke meanings and emotions tied to particular liturgical seasons. Red is used on Pentecost as a symbol of fire and energy, representing the Holy Spirit. Purple is used during the season of Lent to invoke an atmosphere of reflection and repentance.
 
Sometimes the colors and the meanings assigned by the church in a different time and place are at odds with cultural meanings. The traditional use of white representing purity and joy, and black representing mourning and death is problematic in a culture already divided by racism. White/black, light/dark dichotomies promote that division. In recent years, there has been a movement in the church to recognize that white light contains all the colors of the rainbow and to embrace the darkness as good, beautiful, and holy. Advent can be a reminder that there is sacredness in the dark – the baby Jesus growing in Mary’s womb, the crucified Christ rising in the darkness of the tomb. Similarly, Advent can remind us that the light which is coming into the world is a symbol of unity for all the colors that it comprises.
 
Advent also reminds us that with the coming of Christ comes hope, the radical hope we talked about in worship on the first Sunday of Advent. Because of this, the color chosen by the church for the season of Advent is blue, representing hope. This year during Advent, we at CLC are embracing the idea of hope: hope for our congregation, hope for our neighbors and hope for our world and we are boldly using the color blue in our sanctuary to evoke and witness to the radical hope that can only come from God. Come and check it out.  
 
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)
 
Advent Blessings,
Pastor Sue