ADVENT COMMUNION 1

Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that 1 will restore to you double. (Zecd. 9:12)

Prisoners of Hope

This is a time of longing. It is a time of expectation. Advent hymns express the mood well:

Come, thou long expected Jesus,
Born to set thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in thee.

Come, come, come.

One Advent hymn has a dialogue going on between the watchman and the traveler:

Watchman, tell us of the night,
What its signs of promise are.
Traveler, o'er yon mountain's height
See that glory-beaming star!
Watchman, does its beauteous ray
Aught of joy or hope foretell?
Traveler, yes; it brings the day,
promised day of Israel.

They were watching and waiting and asking each other what the signs of the times meant. They were hoping against hope that it might be the "promised day of Israel."

Another Advent hymn is a plea that Emmanuel (which in English means "God with us") should come soon:

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.

... Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death's dark shadows put to flight....
... Bid envy, strife and discord cease;
fill the whole world with heaven's peace.

The people of the Old Testament were aching for the coming of the Savior, for Emmanuel, God with us. They wanted things to change. They wanted a new beginning. They were ready for a conversion experience, so that they could go in a different direction. They knew that something was wrong with their world and, in particular, with their lives. They felt as if they were captives, and so they called out to Emmanuel to come and "ransom captive Israel," to come and set them free.

They felt like prisoners. They wanted out, but they could not get out. They wanted a better life, but they could not find a better life. They knew that life was meant to be more than it was for them. Somehow they felt that life was meant to be abundant, but they couldn't seem to find the door to enter into that abundant living. They felt cornered, limited, captured, imprisoned. Zechariah, in our text, picked up on that frustrated feeling of wanting to be more than he was, but he did not know how to change his present existence, and he referred to the Israelites as "prisoners."

North Americans know what it is to be "prisoners." Oh, I don't mean that we have literally been inside a prison, behind barbed wire and high walls, with metal bars on the windows. I mean that we have often, even Christians in the church, found ourselves prisoners of our possessions, captives of our culture, and handcuffed by our habits. We have been "in the world," and "of the world." You doubt this? Play this little mind game with me.

Ask yourself what it is you fear the most. What do you worry about the most often? Around what issues do you lose the most sleep? Are the answers to these questions all related to material possessions? Or are you lying awake at night, worrying about the homeless and starving? Many affluent Christians are prisoners of their abundance. They can't live without it. They can't stop acquiring it. They define themselves as people who have many things, and they can't share them with others, for to share in any significant way means that they would have less with which to define who they are. They are caught; they are captive; they are prisoners of their things. They are compulsive buyers and spenders and acquirers and getters. They are not giving people; they are consumers. Ever shopped at a discount store? "Attention K-Mart shoppers, the blue light special...." That's all they think we are—shoppers who are excited about "blue light specials," prisoners who can't escape. You don't have to be in jail to be a prisoner. All you have to be is controlled by something or someone else. You are not in control of your life. When Zechariah called the religious people of his day "prisoners," they knew, and we know, what he meant.

But it wasn't all bad. They were "prisoners of hope." They were locked into hoping, to yearning, to desiring, to pleading. They were people who daydreamed about a new way of life. They dared to hope.

The theologian Emil Brunner has written in his book Eternal Hope: "Hope is the positive ... mode of awaiting the future.... What oxygen is for the lungs, such is hope for the meaning of human life. Take oxygen away and death occurs through suffocation, take hope away and humanity is constricted through lack of breath.... No work of (humankind) ... can be successfully performed without hope."

The psalms remind us of how the Israelites had only hope. They had to wait for a better future, as they yearned for a better life:

Truly the eye of the LORD is on ...
those who hope in his steadfast love,
to deliver their souls from death,
and to keep them alive in famine....
Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us,
even as we hope in you. (Ps. 33:18-19, 22)

All they had was hope, a yearning for a better future.

Again, the psalmist asked:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God. (43:5)

So the bad news/good news is that they were "prisoners," but "prisoners of hope." Well, actually that is only bad news, for that is not enough in this life. To be locked into hope is fine, but it is not enough. To be looking for a better tomorrow is admirable, but that is not enough. When you know that you have been created for greater things, it is not enough to live for lesser things.

I suppose it was enough then, for it was all they had before the first Christmas. But Paul, when he wrote to the church in Corinth, caught the biblical vision, for he said that if we have only hope, we are "of all people most to be pitied" (I Cor.15:19). Hope is fine, but it is not enough after Jesus Christ has come, for our hope has now become a reality.

This is why we have arrived at his holy table as we begin the Advent season. He fulfills our most ambitious hopes. He sets the prisoners free. Jesus Christ exemplifies our most optimistic religious dreams. He is the hope of the world. God sets the prisoners free by...