advent 1                                                                     29 November 2009

Jeremiah 33. 14-16
Luke 21. 25-36

I always feel a bit strange about the readings during Advent. I feel like they should give us stories that take us toward the nativity;  a journeying toward Bethlehem. Instead we often get difficult apocalyptic images which send me, I don’t know about you, into strange internal machinations. What have these apocalyptic images got to do with the baby in the manger and the brightness of Christmas day which we anticipate and so frantically prepare for?

The reading from the prophet Jeremiah and the section from late in Luke are both written for communities in extremis. For Jeremiah the Babylonian armies are at the door. So desperate are things that parts of the city have been torn down by its own inhabitants in order to create barricades against the army besieging the city. All appears to be lost.

And for the audience for which Luke is writing, 600 years after Jeremiah, Jerusalem has again been laid waste. Although this apocalyptic vision is written as though it’s predicting cataclysmic events to come Luke is actually written after the fall of Jerusalem in CE70; the city lies in ruins and the Christian community is seeking answers about how to be in the face of the destruction of the city they hold as so precious. How to be? How to live? Who are we? Who is this God whom we seek to honour and follow? If we think this Jesus has shown us God in some new and profound way how do we now live given the temple at the heart of our identity is now gone.

The apocalyptic images in the gospels have often been used as the means to stir up fear and anxiety in people. Prophecies of the wrath to come used to cause people to get their house in order and live right and proper lives. [how do you respond to JWs at the door] A motivation for holiness based in fear.

These apocalyptic images are not about scaring people into belief but about seeking to live with hope in the face of adversity.

Paul in the letter to the Corinthians tells us that faith, hope and love abide; it seems that for him these are the three essentials of the life of following Christ. We talk much of love these days; God is much less a God of judgment that he was in the 19th century. And the letter of James speaks much of faith – especially that faith without works is dead. But what about hope – what is it? Do we know? Does hope play a part in your life? Does it sustain you? Like faith being dead without works, what do we need to have, or do, or be, in order that hope is not dead in us?

You see much of our thinking equates hoping with wishing. We say I hope when really we mean I wish. I hope I’ll get a new iPod for Christmas. I hope that John and Shirley  can patch up their differences. I hope you get better. I hope that they’ll come to an effective and binding agreement in Copenhagen. You could replace  the word hope with the word wish in these four sentences and not much will have changed. I wish that I get a new  iPod for Christmas. I wish that John and Shirley could patch up their differences. I wish that she would get better. I wish that they’d come to their senses and come to an effective and binding agreement in Copenhagen. We wish for things; for new circumstances, for better relationships.

But wishing is not actually the same thing as living with hope. Hope is more a demeanor a stance; a living toward the future with a certain quality that is realistic about what is but not embittered by despair. Hope is about anticipation while living with the reality of what is.

It’s about living with in the knowledge that Father Christmas may not bring us an iPod for Christmas. That those we love may not patch up their differences but suffer irreconcilable breakdown in their relationship. That so-and-so may not get better. And that things may not turn out very well in Copenhagen; despite the best efforts of so many.

The question is: how do we respond when we long for something but don’t get what we long for. Maybe in reflecting on the way in which we respond to not getting what we long for is the clue to whether we are simply wishing or actually living with hope. Usually when we wish for some-thing and things don’t go our way we can be inclined to slip into despair. And if we are wishers rather than hopers are lives are probably littered with a host of unresolved disappointments – and our being tainted with an underlying bitterness about life. But when we live in hope the basis of our hope is not rooted in our anticipation that we will get some-thing but in something much bigger; bigger than ourselves; bigger than the thing we long for.

One of the psychological patterns which is involved in our rampant consumption in the developed world is behaviour which sooths or diverts our emotions. Diversionary behaviour. We have a whole culture which has been reared so that when we don’t get something we wish for we sooth our selves with some-thing. Some people make no apology about this; quite openly referring to their shopping as retail therapy; when they are down they shop. It strikes me that there is a certain sort of despair in this; a satisfying of an unrequited, an unrequitable, longing. We might well ask ourselves when we find our selves engaging in soothing behavior: where is the despair in me that I am trying to mask; what is the place where I am not willing for God to go. The rampant consumption that characterises our lifestyle in the, so-called, developed world is in many ways a yielding to despair. Without hope we have to wish.

In what or who then might  our hope be grounded? Christian hope is grounded in the very desire for God; not even a world transformed and renewed in the longings of scripture for peace, and justice, but ultimately in God’s self. This is where we are invited to place our ultimate hope. So Luke’s audience are encouraged not to lose heart because the city which was so dear to them is destroyed;  this should not be source of their ultimate hope: Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

The challenge for us in placing out hope in God, though, is that we place our trust in what is ultimately mystery and intangible;  no wonder people consider us to be barmy. Yet it is placing our trust in that eternal reality which transcends all other realities we tap into a hope which can sustain us through all the circumstances of our lives. The limited things that we can place hope in are ultimately that: limited. Our national stories – because these are so often at the expense of some other nationality; our ethnic group – because this leads us into xenophobia and the belittling of others’ humanity; family – because families often in the end let us down.

Hope grounded in God causes us to live with our eyes wide open. Sometimes what we see and what we hear is not good but it is the reality of the world and we hopefully see it and our own circumstances with the same compassionate eyes of God. To live with hope is to live in a fully human way, living fully through both the  light and shade of ourselves and so also being able to extend the love we extend to ourselves to others also. And in doing this be agents of hope. This is not always an easy path; Jesus was quite clear that for those who will follow him life could be costly. Paul writes of this to the church in Rome: let us also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

This is the joy found in hope rooted in the life of God though - hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts; the peace of God which passes all understanding.

Jeremiah lives with hope in spite of the presence of the Babylonian troops at the city gate. Later in the book he goes and buys a field so galvanised by hope is he that God can do a new thing -  in spite of the evidence. Hope is a demeanour, an orientation toward God and life in spite of the circumstances which might instead entice us to despair.

 ‘Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.

As we again anticipate the coming of God in the Christ-child we wait in hope. As we affirm the mystery: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again – we do so in hope that in all the places where there is despair the light of Christ may come and shine, bringing healing and transformation and the life of God be born again.
Come Lord Jesus!

Andrew Boyle