Perspectives on Hope

Scriptures for the
First Sunday of Advent
Jeremiah 33:14-16
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36

"New hope" is the general theme of this Advent study, and we are a people in need of new hope. We find ourselves facing new challenges, and no one can suggest that there are easy answers. In the midst of such enormous struggles as international conflict, terrorism, climate change, immigration and racial tension — to name a few! — we also have our individual lives to lead, and we need hope there if we are to play any useful part on a larger stage. Some of us may, for various reasons, have strength only for our personal challenges. There are surely times when we can be excused from constant concern with the headlines. Also, if our personal lives lack confidence and hope, we can be of little use to others.

The lessons we have for this first week of the Advent season provide three radically different perspectives on the hope that anchors our faith. The prophet Jeremiah is calling his people to repentance and renewal in the wake of defeat and disaster. In the midst of overwhelming catastrophe, he holds onto a vision of a future filled with hope. However despondent we may be about our national challenges and failures, our role as people of faith is to cling to our knowledge of what God is able to do even through national disaster. The centuries since Jeremiah's time enable us to hold hope with even greater confidence, since we can see how God has worked through other times of crisis to give the church an ever broader vision and renewed strength.

Paul's letter to the Thessalonians is more personal. He writes to friends to speak of the joy that pervades his life and theirs. That joy came to them as they came to know Christ as Savior, and they awaited his return with joy. We surely can share that same joy knowing Christ is already at work in our lives with a strength that cannot be overcome. Paul would encourage us, I believe, to find our joy in the local community, in the immediate challenges that we can face with friends and fellow workers. Joy begins where we are.

The Gospel reading sets our hope in the broadest possible perspective and asks us to think of God's final purpose. It shows us a terrifying vision of ultimate disaster, but even here there is a call to stand up and be confident because, whatever may come, God is at work within world events. As Christians, as the people of God, we can find new hope in knowing what God has done before and knowing also that the best is yet to come.

JEREMIAH 33:14-16

Advent has to do with coming, and coming involves change. However close the relationship, however joyfully we look forward to the visits of parents or children or close friends, when someone else comes into our lives even briefly, our lives are changed by the event. We may need to clean out a spare bedroom, lay in more supplies of food, and cancel other events because our lives will no longer be ours alone to direct. There is joy in looking forward to such reunions, but we also need to prepare for change and take another individual's interests into consideration.

Jeremiah speaks of a life-changing "coming:" a "righteous branch," a descendant of David, a ruler who will do what is "just and right." That will definitely change things.

Something we should have learned in recent years is that leaders seldom feel free to do always what is "just and right" even as they understand it. They are subject to the influence of individuals, pressure groups, and "circumstances beyond their control." President Reagan promised to reduce bureaucracy, but the bureaucracy continued to grow. President Obama promised to withdraw from the Middle East, but found himself drawn back in. What would happen if God sent us a ruler who always did what was just and right without fear or favor? Certainly things would change! But is Jeremiah's message a threat or a promise?

At the time and in his context, Jeremiah's overall message was a threat. He knew that God, unlike human rulers, always does what is just and right. What Jeremiah saw all too clearly was that the Hebrew people were in danger for precisely that reason. God's people had turned away from God in pursuit of their own interests. What Jeremiah understood was that God is just and cannot tolerate injustice. If God's people acted unjustly, God would make no exceptions for them: They would face defeat and exile.

This was not a message Jeremiah wanted to deliver. Jeremiah can be called "the prophet of 'my people.'" His message of judgment is not of doom for others but for his own people, "my people." He does not point a finger to say, "God condemns you," but rather he says, "my people have exchanged their glory for what has no value" (Jeremiah 2:11). "If only my head were a spring of water," Jeremiah writes, "and my eyes a fountain of tears, I would weep day and night for the wounds of my people" (9:1). When he was first called to speak for God, Jeremiah did his best to avoid the calling and to keep quiet when God commanded him to speak. He had no desire to speak of the judgment facing his own people. But God's word, he said, was like a fire within him that could only burst out:

I thought, I'll forget him; I'll no longer speak in his name. But there's an intense fire in my heart, trapped in my bones. I'm drained trying to contain it; I'm unable to do it. (Jeremiah 20:9)

Rabbi Abraham Heschel said that Jeremiah not only heard God's word but personally felt in his body and emotions the experience of what he prophesied. Jeremiah saw all too clearly the consequences for his people, "my people," if they continued to ignore God's justice, and therefore Jeremiah wept. He saw vividly what was coming. And, of course, he was right. As surely as one plus one equals two, a righteous God plus an unrighteous people equals destruction.

Jeremiah's ministry spanned the last forty-some years of Judah's independent existence, years that led up to destruction and exile in 587 B.C. He saw his prophesy fulfilled. He continued to speak even as the Babylonians were besieging Jerusalem, his beloved city. He went into exile himself, going to Egypt in the aftermath of Jerusalem's destruction. But the text we are given today tells us something else about the God for whom Jeremiah spoke. God judged "my people," Jeremiah knew, because God cares. We set a much higher standard for our own children than for others. If we judge our children and discipline them, it gives us no joy. We weep over their failures even as we judge them. But where there is that sort of judgment, there is also the possibility of mercy and forgiveness. We look for the opportunity to welcome our children back into the family circle. God waits for the opportunity to offer us forgiveness and renewal.

If, then, judgment is coming, so too is a time of renewal and promise. Jeremiah imagines such a time...