St. John’s Lutheran Church
1 December 2024 + Advent 4 (Advent 1c)
Luke 21:25-36
Rev. Josh Evans
Hope.
We throw that word around a lot, don’t we?
“I hope it snows!” (“I hope it doesn’t!”)
“I hope we have pizza for dinner!”
“I hope the Bills win!”
That kind of hope, while indeed expressing a real desire for something, feels more like a magic wish though – like something that may or may not actually happen, and at the end of the day, while we might be a little sad if we don’t get our way, it doesn’t really matter.
That kind of hope is shallow.
Wishful thinking.
Advent hope is something different.
***
In his book Liturgies from Below: Praying with People at the End of the World, Cláudio Carvalhaes offers this prayer, in the spirit of the psalms of lament:
God I am angry, vexed because of the insensitivity, indifference, injustice, insults, and insurrections against your people and against you.
How long, great God? How long will you allow evil to override your good? You hold the whole world in your hands and yet it feels as if you have abandoned me.
I remember when you were once there, now I wonder if you are even near. You once heard my cry, now I wonder if my cries have fallen on deaf ears.
You can hear the anger and despair in these words.
Anger at the state of the world –
at the injustice and inequality around and among us.
Despair over God’s apparent silence and abandonment
in the midst of it all.
These words are honest,
rooted in real experiences – “distress among nations” –
rooted in real feelings – “fear and foreboding.”
Maybe you’ve prayed these words –
after the gut-wrenching and inexplicable loss of a loved one,
or the gut-punching diagnosis and illness,
or the unrelenting headlines that make you want to cry or scream (or both).
“How long, great God?”
Maybe you’ve prayed these words –
when it feels like the world,
or your world,
is ending.
It is in these words, this prayer,
that hope takes root.
The psalm-like lament invites testimony to God’s faithfulness:
“How long, great God? Do you even care?”
Yes.
The fact that we all showed up here this morning,
that we show up week after week,
is itself a testimony:
We show up because we know God cares.
If we didn’t trust in that promise,
there would be no point to all of this – and yet –
We trust in a God who cares so much
that God was willing to enter into our human reality,
in all of its messiness,
to show us just how much God so loves the world.
We trust that God has acted
and continues to act –
that God has broken into human history,
and even now continues to break into our present.
Even when our worlds are ending –
in the gut-wrenching wake of loss, diagnosis, or illness,
in the dizzying swirl of headlines and uncertainty –
when everything we know starts to pass away,
we trust that God’s words will never pass away.
Words of hope for a world transformed.
As certain as the sprouting fig tree, right on nature’s schedule,
so certain and near is the blossoming reign of God.
Advent hope is what blooms against all odds.
Hope does not deny the reality of our present circumstances,
but, in spite of those circumstances, defiantly trusts anyway.
“Some flowers bloom where the green grass grows,”
the song goes.
“Our praise is not for them,
but the ones who bloom in the bitter snow.”
(“We Raise Our Cups” from Hadestown)
Our Advent hope is not a wished-for dream that might happen,
but a reality that has come and that continues to bloom
in darkest night, in bitter cold –
in our gathered assembly,
in hands outstretched for bread and wine,
in generosity and service toward our neighbor,
in every act of love that pierces through the gloom of hatred and indifference.
Advent hope – far from shallow, wishful thinking –
is something different,
something real.
***
Rooted in this hope, Carvalhaes’ prayer of lament concludes:
Forgive me, Great God, I am hurting
but I believe in your time, you will answer,
you will come to my help,
restore justice,
cause wars to cease,
heighten sensitivity.
Replace my anger with your peace.
In spite of everything,
we hope –
trusting in the promises of a God who is faithful,
whose redemption is near,
whose love is here.
