The Advent of Hope

This year’s Advent series is called ‘Coming Soon’. We’ll be looking at this season through the lens of the four themes of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love, which are the four themes most commonly associated with the Advent Wreath. Today we’ll be looking at the theme of Hope, something which seems to be in short supply these days, and is therefore pretty timely.

The theme of Hope has come up often here over the years. If there’s one thing that has stuck out to me about it, it’s that hope is hard work. If it isn’t difficult to have hope, then what you have isn’t hope. Hope is only really hope in a hopeless situation. It’s about maintaining an idea of a positive future even in the midst of a challenging present. For us as Christians, Hope is not just about our outlook on the world, but is rooted in our faith: not that God will come and fix all our problems, but that God is with us in the midst of them. This is the hope of Immanuel, God-with-us. We must remember that the Immanuel oracle was uttered to a people besieged by enemy armies, and perhaps worse, an enemy largely comprised of tribes of its own people. In a hopeless situation, Jerusalem’s hope was that God had not and would not abandon them. God was with them. And yes, the crisis passed with Jerusalem intact. Even in the later disaster of the Exile, when it had seemed God had abandoned them — the Temple had been destroyed, Jerusalem razed, and Judah’s upper classes forcibly removed from the Land — the Isaiah tradition still insisted that all was not lost: Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you” (Isaiah 35.4). And yes, when it looked like they’d be stuck in exile for ever, Babylonian power collapsed and the new empire in town, Persia, sent the exiles home to rebuild.

Of course, for us as Christians, the ultimate manifestation of God’s presence is the Incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth: God-with-us in the flesh. And it’s this coming we commemorate and anticipate during Advent every year. But this too was the coming of Hope in a hopeless situation. For God’s people were still under foreign domination, their petty kings under the thumb of Rome and much of their ruling class willing collaborators, and wracked b y internal division. Into this mess, came God’s word of Hope, the same word of Hope uttered throughout history: God is with us.

And so it remains for us today. I’ll spare you with the litany of impending threats facing us all right now — we all know them all too well — but suffice it to say, it’s easy to lose hope in our damaged, divided, and increasingly heartless and graceless world. And still, God is with us. Christ for us still remains the advent of Hope.

And yet, even with all this in mind, I can’t help but think of a further facet to hope that psychologists have pointed out. They would insist that Hope is not a passive trait. It isn’t about quietly waiting for good things to happen, but about seeing the future as uncertain and therefore malleable, rather than fixed and predetermined, and having the courage to act in ways to make a positive vision of the future come to pass. So genuine Hope is linked with faith and trust, yes, but also with creativity and action. This side of Hope keeps us moving and prevents us from giving in to cynicism and despair. This can’t be missed in any Christian understanding of Hope. Sometimes there can be a sense that if we’re trying to make life better for ourselves or our loved ones or neighbours, we’re not trusting God. But this is a false attitude. Faith is a double-sided coin: trusting in God’s faithfulness, we too show up faithfully in all our relationships. Jesus didn’t just come, teach, die, rise again, and leave us to our own devices. No, he built relationships, made disciples, and empowered his followers with the Holy Spirit to live out his new way in good faith. In this way, we are fellow-workers with God, manifesting the truth that God is with us in the world in our own lives, families, and communities. And this too is Hope in action in the world.

Advent is a season of waiting and watching for God to show up, but it’s also a season of preparation, of showing up ourselves. And this is what Hope is all about. At the end of the day, in the midst of all life’s challenges, from minor annoyances to major catastrophes, Hope says that showing up matters, that the future is unwritten and we are its co-authors. As daunting as this is, we act firmly trusting that God is with us. And there is no greater reminder of this than Christmas, the Advent of Hope.

Hope — Coming Soon.