Hope Before an Uncertain Future

    Do you remember waiting for Christmas when you were a child? In our Advent Study, The Voices of Advent: the Bible’s Insights for a Season of Hope, Matthew Skinner recalls a particularly maddening part of the wait: Advent calendars! He says, “Whoever first had the idea of making Advent calendars with a piece of chocolate hidden behind each door, one for each day, might have been a cruel person who liked making children suffer. At least, that’s what I used to think. When I was young, I failed to understand why someone could give me two dozen candies as a gift, yet I was expected to obey some kind of unstated consumption agreement that stipulated I could eat only one each day. This was supposed to build character or patience in me?” 
I can relate to Skinner’s frustrations. I found the anticipation of Christmas to be somewhat maddening, but also exhilarating. For me, it began at Thanksgiving, at the latest. That was the day when, after a big meal, my family went across the river to Charlotte, NC to see the Holiday parade. There were marching bands and floats, lots of exciting stuff. But most exciting of all, the parade always ended with Santa waving to the crowd, a sure sign that Christmas was just around the corner. In the coming days, our Christmas tree would go up and, at my grandparent’s house, not only a tree went up, but also colored lights around the porch with a big silver star, outlined in blue lights, perched in front of the dormer. And then there were all the Christmas specials on TV—A Charlie Brown Christmas; Frosty the Snowman; Rudolph—which only served to heighten my excitement. I simply could not wait for Christmas morning! Would it ever get here? Would school ever end and Christmas break begin? What would I get? What would be under the tree? I usually didn’t know what it would be, but I was always hopeful—my family gave me neat gifts. Do you remember or perhaps still fill that kind of anticipation, that kind of longing, that kind of hope?
    This is what Advent is like: a time of watchfulness and anticipation, actively waiting for both Christmas, the celebration of Christ’s first coming, and also for his second coming: a time of longing, longing to feel “God with us,” longing for the coming of God’s just and peaceful kingdom; a time of hope, the confidence that God will be true to God’s word and make all things new.
    Today’s Gospel reading has a lot to say about this Advent anticipation and hope, for it was meant to give hope to people living in times of upheaval and chaos. It does so by pointing readers to God and God’s purposes. Our text tells us that God’s power and authority are ultimate.
    In this passage, Jesus paints a picture of chaos, fear and destruction. In the verses preceding our reading, he has spoken of “wars and rumors of wars,” of earthquakes and famines, and the destruction of Jerusalem. He warns of persecutions of his followers: beatings, trials, betrayals by family members, executions. He uses vivid images to represent a world coming apart at the seams: “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”
    Matthew’s audience could well relate to such imagery. The world as they knew it did seem to be falling apart. Jerusalem was in ruins, recently overrun by the Romans. The Temple had been destroyed, razed so that almost literally “not one stone was left upon another.” Christians were a rejected minority, living with a very real risk of persecution and martyrdom. Jesus’ words had an all too familiar ring to them.
    But they sound familiar to us too, don’t they? Every September we remember that noxious cloud of death blotting out the sun over New York. The threat of terrorism continues to loom over us, perhaps not so much large-scale attacks as isolated lone actor incidents, like the shooting of two National Guardsmen in Washington this past week. We live with war in Ukraine, continuing violence in Israel and Palestine and rumors of war with Venezuela. We have seen wildfires run amok in Los Angeles and across the American west, Jamaica and the Philippines devastated by hurricanes, and Afghanistan rocked by earthquakes. Over all of this, the threat of a changing climate looms large and a new, worse prediction seems to be issued every other month. We’ve lived through a global pandemic unlike any outbreak of disease in a century. Confidence in the economy, seemingly always fragile, has become a roller coaster ride. Poverty threatens millions at home and abroad—a danger only exacerbated by threats to SNAP benefits and cuts to foreign aid; children in our local school district are homeless. Washington has been roiled by a government shutdown and the gutting of many departments and agencies. Sometimes it seems to us that everything is falling apart.
    But to people living in such uncertain times, Jesus speaks a word of good news: “Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. Then he will send out his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” Yes, the wheels seem to be coming off, but God is still God. The kingdom of God is not far off. It will come. You will not be abandoned. Christ will come again and gather up his people into the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem. Evil and death are not the ultimate realities, God is. For God is greater than sin and suffering. God is still at work and will deliver you.
    When will this deliverance take place? When will the kingdom come at last? Jesus does not tell us, saying instead that we should be watchful, expectant, for “about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” But we don’t need to know the hour. We may believe Jesus when he says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away,” for he knew who would have the last word in history. He knew that that word belonged to God whom he served, to the God he revealed. Thus, he confidently declared that he, the Son of Man, would come again and dispatch angels to gather in God’s people. Indeed, as I pointed out a couple weeks ago, when we read a parallel passage from the Gospel of Luke, the one who issues these dire predictions is also the one who died at the hands of the Roman government, but was raised victorious over sin and death on the third day. Surely, this fact—that the one who speaks these words of warning and promise is the Crucified and Resurrected Savior—must have been a source of hope for the original audience of the Gospels…and can be a source of hope for us as well.     
    That is why this is not some escapist, pie-in-the-sky fantasy with little connection to or concern for this world. In fact, I think that when Jesus tells us to stay awake and alert he is connecting this hope firmly to life in this world. These words of hope are meant to encourage his audience so they can live as Jesus’ disciples in the here and now. I’m reminded of the film The Shawshank Redemption, one of my favorites, as many of you know. Andy Dufrense is wrongly convicted of double murder and sentenced to life in prison. For 19 long years, in the face of the brutal realities of prison life, Andy is sustained by hope. Andy dreams of living in Mexico, on the shores of the Pacific, an ocean so vast that “it has no memory,” a place of redemption where the evils of the past are forgotten and a new and better future awaits. After an occasion when he served a 2-week stint in the hole, a small dark cell where he was cut off from human contact, he tells his friends how he survived: “There’s something inside that they can’t get to; that they can’t tough; that’s yours.” That something he says is “hope.” “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” 
    And it is precisely that hope that allows Andy to transcend the drabness, the depression of the prison. Because he has hope, he is able to live differently from so many of his fellow prisoners. He does not fall into despair, embrace violence, accept prison life as he finds it, or even simply try to get along. Instead, he lives with purpose; indeed, he thrives— because, despite all the difficulties, despite all the setbacks, he has an eye toward the future with all of its promise and possibilities. He has hope, so he seeks to better life for his fellow inmates. He devotes himself to improving the prison library, pestering charities and government officials for several years with letter after letter in order to gain funds and new books to update the library. And he works to help fellow inmates learn to read and earn high school diplomas so they have a chance when they get out. Andy Dufrense sees a better future, and he helps others prepare for it.
    So too, our hope in God’s future victory has direct effects upon how we live in the present moment. Stay awake, the scriptures urge us. Be alert, not just for the second coming of Christ, but for his daily coming to us in circumstances and people: in the uplifting words of a parent, in the challenging words of a friend, in what Mother Teresa called the “distressing disguise of the poor”—for whatever we do to one of our outcast, ill, needy brothers and sisters, we do it to Christ. The hope we have in God’s future should affect how we live in the present. It has been observed that, “Hope has two beautiful daughters: anger and courage. Anger at the way things are and the courage to change them.” Because we have hope, we cannot rest easy. We have to act. We have to do the work of God’s kingdom, to share the good news in word and in deed. We should reach out to others in love, not so we can escape God’s coming wrath, but in order to reflect God’s present love. Because we hear the promise of God’s better future, because we catch glimpses of it in the life and ministry of Jesus, we should help others prepare for it. It is no easy task, to be sure. But when we find it difficult to do good or act ethically because the evils of this world are so large and our efforts so small, we can take hope in the knowledge that the God of good and right will eventually carry the day.
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote of such hope in his poem “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” On Christmas Day 1864, while the nation was rent in two and the ground blood soaked by the Civil War, Longfellow heard church bells playing old familiar carols which “wild and sweet the words repeat / Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.”
    But in his mind, he heard the loud, chaotic clamor and din of battle, and it threatened to overcome the bells’ peaceful song: “Then from each black, accursed mouth / The cannon thundered in the South, / And with the sound the carols drowned / Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.” Have we not experienced this: the hope of Advent, the peace of Christmas drowned out by war drums, hateful speech, bad news about the economy and environment, or the latest soundbite or Tweet? Perhaps, overcome by fear and anxiety, we feel as Longfellow did, that the future is less than attractive: “And in despair I bowed my head / ‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said, / ‘For hate is strong and mocks the song / Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.’”
But despair is not the end of the story. As if swung by some unseen, divine hand, the bells reply to the poet’s fears. “Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: / ‘God is not dead, nor doth he sleep; / The wrong shall fail, the right prevail / With peace on earth, goodwill to men.’” Longfellow had caught a glimpse of the truth Jesus knew so well. The last word in history does not belong to war, it does not belong to economic chaos, it does not belong to environmental disaster, it does not belong to evil, it does not belong to human beings, it does not even belong to death. The last word in history belongs to the God who was in Christ reconciling all things to God’s self. The last word in history belongs to the God who has said, “See, I am making all things new.” The last word in history belongs to God and that word is “Love.” 
We must also see this and believe it to be true, for this knowledge shapes how we live. Believing that God is awake and at work and that God will be triumphant gives us the strength to love our neighbors and even our enemies. It empowers us to do justice and act with mercy as we walk humbly in the light of the Lord. It keeps us awake and alert for signs of Christ’s presence and his coming. It gives hope in the dark and trying times of life.
So let us not cower fearfully, anxious about what the future will bring to our doorsteps. Let us be like children waiting for Christmas morning. Let us wait with anticipation, with longing, with confidence, with hope for the coming of Christ and the inauguration of God’s just and peaceful kingdom. Amen.