There are many facets to the concept of hope. For example, what happens when our hopes are realized, but in a way that we had not expected – in a way that we never saw coming? This is the essence of Advent – the core of the story of the incarnation – of God coming into the world.
Hope is a word I use all the time. Maybe you can relate… I hope for good things for my kids in their education, in their interests, in their friendships and experiences. I hope for good things for this congregation, for you, for what we are able to do together – the places and ways that God will call us forward to serve and grow in the future.
I hope for good things for our country and for our world – that peace and justice, understanding and compassion would become more and more the experience for all of us, but even more for those on the margins of society. All of these I hope for…
I imagine that you have similar hopes and probably some other ones too.
Hope is a really interesting concept.
Our hopes may be total longshots or they may be completely foregone conclusions. There is a difference between “hoping the sun will rise tomorrow” and “hoping that my loved one will be healed of their cancer” – both are within the realm of the possible – but one of those challenges our emotions and our faith on a totally different level.
There are many facets to the concept of hope. For example, what happens when our hopes are realized, but in a way that we had not expected – in a way that we never saw coming?
Christmas night of my junior year in high school – 6 kids from my class, all athletes, kids I played football with – they were drinking that night and managed to wrap their pickup truck around a tree – one kid lost a leg, others had broken limbs and one had a terrible head injury. All in all, they were actually lucky to be alive.
My classmate with the head injury was a quiet kid – probably the best athlete in our class – a good student – a genuinely nice guy. As a result of the accident, he was in a coma for I don’t remember how long. People visited and prayed and hoped for his recovery. Fortunately, the swelling in his brain went down and he began the long road to recovery.
And he did recover – but he was different, changed. Of course, he was no longer the athlete he once was – but I remember it being a pretty emotional day the first time he ran track after the injury – it was amazing to see him out there at all. But beyond the physical, his personality was different too – not bad different, just different.
Prayers had been answered – but not exactly the way we had hoped.
This is the facet of hope that I think is challenging. It is the unknown – the unexpected, unanticipated result. What happens when our prayers are answered and our hopes realized, but in a way that we do not expect?
This is the essence of Advent – the core of the story of the incarnation – of God coming into the world.
The prayers and hopes are for the Messiah – the anointed one – to come into the world in power and in glory. Instead, those prayers are answered and hopes realized in a baby born into circumstances that scream anything but power and glory – born into a situation that resembles anything but a pivot point in the history of the world.
And yet, if we know the stories of scripture, we begin to recognize that this kind of “hope realized” is right in line with the character of God that we have heard about and have already experienced.
You see, what we know is that God is predictably unpredictable – God makes use of the unexpected person – the most unlikely to succeed – and through them God turns impossible situations into unbelievable futures.
And in so doing, God calls us to the edge of society, to the margins of the world – to the poor, the sick, to those who have lost hope, to those who have no value in the eyes of the world, to those who stand in opposition to the powers of today.
It is this facet of hope that is really important – we are to be ones who embody hope in this world – to be the signs of God’s presence – to be those unexpected, even unlikely people that God uses to call forward the vision we heard in Isaiah this morning – where:
…the great nations…
”will hammer their swords into plows
and their spears into pruning knives.
Nations will never again go to war,
never prepare for battle again”. (Isaiah 2:4)
When we wonder about injustices in our world with the pipeline dispute in North Dakota and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe – or when we see the fear of immigrants and refugees being whipped up to score political points – or when we feel the weather getting colder and wonder about those who are homeless and hungry in our communities – or when we think for a moment about those around us who are suffering with health issues, or with relationships – many who suffer silently and alone…
When we think about all of these – who will be hope for the hopeless? Who will be the glimpse of God for those who find themselves in these places and circumstances?
God is looking for people to be answers to prayer and to be hopes realized in the lives of others – to be those who embody God in the world.
As we enter into this season of Advent – we know that Advent is about waiting, but as we hear from Matthew, we also recognize that this waiting we do is anything but passive. Matthew tells us to “keep awake” – to be ready – because how we live while we wait really matters.
Bill Muehl, who was once professor of preaching at Yale Divinity School, tells the story of a child in preschool who had made a ceramic figure to be taken home as a gift for his parents on the last day of class before Christmas.
When the child sees his parents in the hallway, in excitement, he runs toward them and accidentally falls. The ceramic figure crashes to the ground and shatters into a hundred tiny pieces.
The father takes the sobbing and frightened child up into his arms and attempts to console his son saying, “Don’t cry. It’s all right, it doesn’t matter.” But the child’s mother, wiser in such things, quickly intervenes. “Oh, no,” she says. “It does matter.” And she wept with her son. (Rev. Dr. Stephen Montgomery, day1.org, Nov28, 2010)
On this first Sunday in Advent, this is our hope – that God’s promise to enter into our world, into our brokenness is real. That Jesus’ entrance as unexpected and unconventional as it was – is a sign of the way God works. That as we wait and watch again this Advent – that in our hope, we are invited to embody God’s presence in the lives of others – because what we do and how we live matters.
Let us pray – Holy God, may our hearts and minds be prepared in this holy season – prepared to see you and experience you in unexpected places and unexpected people. May we be awake and alert to the opportunities that we come upon to share a word of grace and be a sign of hope to someone else. May your vision for your creation be made real in us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Rev. John Berg
Gloria Dei Lutheran Church
Northbrook, IL
