|
When I read this passage, I always see
Nellie Forbush. Remember her? She is the “cock-eyed optimist”
from Rogers and Hammerstein’s classic musical “South
Pacific.” She sings the exuberant song of Advent:
“I’m stuck like a dope with a thing
called hope
And I can’t get it out of my heart!
Not this heart.”
Can’t you just see her eager response to
the call of the Old Testament Prophet Zechariah:
“Rejoice greatly, daughters of Zion
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem
Return to your stronghold, O
prisoners of hope.”
-Zechariah 9: 9-14
This joyful image comes from a difficult
and turbulent time in the history of Israel, the sixth century
BC. After 70 years of Babylonian captivity, the people
returned to the land to find it despoiled, depleted with
destruction everywhere. The first half of Zechariah’s writing
comes during a major renovation program to rebuild the Temple
and the city of Jerusalem. Then, in the second half,
Zechariah delivers a word of joy-infested hope for the
future. He holds out a vision of the coming of a Messiah,
when they will live in peace. He sings a song of radiant hope
and calls the people to live into God’s vision for the
future. Writing to a people who had just come out of 70 years
as prisoners of Babylon, Zechariah now calls them to be
“Prisoners of Hope.”
So for me in Advent, Nellie Forbush and
Zechariah dance together...
Stuck like a dope with a thing called
hope,
and I can’t get it out of my heart.
Rejoice greatly, daughters of Zion
Shout aloud, O daughters of Jerusalem
Return to your stronghold, O prisoners
of hope
And their joyful dance has two movements,
the first looking back and the second dancing forward with
confidence in the future.
I. PRISONERS OF HOPE
LIVE THE PRESENT OUT OF THE PAST
Zechariah begins with a call to return: “Return
to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope.”
Look back and see what God has done and
discover there your anchor, your stronghold.
Luke’s Gospel begins the Advent story with
the uncomfortable and somewhat shocking phrase: “In the
days of King Herod...” (Luke 1:5). For his readers that
was like saying “In the days of Hitler,” “In the days of
Saddam,” “In the days of apartheid,” “In the days of slavery.”
Luke firmly plants the Christ story in the context of real
human time, in all of its ugliness and brutality--even in the
days of Herod, and forevermore we live out of that historic
moment; we live the present out of the past. Frederick
Buechner writes:
Christmas is not just Mr. Pickwick
dancing a reel, or Scrooge waking up the next morning a
changed man. The claim Christianity makes is that at a
particular time and place, God came to be with us...himself.
A child is born, and history itself falls into two.”
--Room Called Remember, page 61
So our hope is not just “cock-eyed
optimism,” but rather it is based in the historical moment
of God’s activity in human history. It is shaped in the
caldron of the real world. It is rooted in the soil of human
suffering. It is dated by the days of Roman rulers---even in
the days of Herod--and forever more we live out of that moment
in time.
When I was in junior high school, my friend
John Caldwell and I tried playing chess. The problem was he
was brilliant and quick-minded. Today I am sure we would call
him “gifted,” but back then he was just smart. John understood
chess. He could see what was happening in the game, and he
always knew that the time would come when one strategic move
would be made--and he usually made it. And John knew that at
that moment, the game was over. Even though we might go on
playing for hours, and he would play out the rest of the
moves, based on that one move the game had already been won.
So the Gospel says the strategic move
of human history has been made in Jesus Christ.
God’s plan of redemption is complete.
Though we still have to finish the game with battles won and
lost along the way, that divine one move, that one moment in
time, has shaped the future, and we live the present out of
the past. “Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope.”
II. …AND WE LIVE THE PRESENT IN THE
LIGHT OF THE FUTURE.
To be a prisoner of hope means living with
the future in mind, living the future into the present.
Again, my friend John Caldwell could play out the chess game
with such calm, while I was bouncing around the board, because
he knew where it was all going to come out and he made every
intervening move in the light of that future. In the midst of
the complicated and conflicted reality of his turbulent times,
Zechariah had his eye on the future, and he lived as a
prisoner, not of the present reality, but as a prisoner of
hope.
Another song from South Pacific says
You gotta have a dream
If you don’t have a dream
How you gonna make that
dream come true?
To be a prisoner of Advent is to live with
a vision, a dream, and to allow that future to shape our
present. To be a prisoner of hope means investing ourselves in
lives in ways that will make that future hope a
reality.
One of the great saints of our era is of
course Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. During the years
of struggle against apartheid, he was a symbol of unquenchable
hope in the face of insurmountable odds. Following the change
in South Africa, he led the way in envisioning a new future
for his country. In more recent years, he has been facing his
own personal struggle with cancer and once again, his radiant
hope pervades everything he does. About fifteen years ago the
World Methodist Conference met in Nairobi, Kenya and Bishop
Tutu was one of the speakers. But what was most impressive
was the procession that followed the worship service. The
whole crowd sang and marched out into the streets, following
the drumming and dancing of African worshipers. And there was
Bishop Tutu...a tiny, little man with the weight of the nation
on his shoulders, dancing with the children, laughing his
high-pitched laugh, leading the parade. In the midst of an
incredible struggle, in spite of death threats and rejection,
facing a social structure which at that time showed no signs
of changing, he was able to face it all with overwhelming joy,
with hope. He lived that future into the present, and now in
his present struggle against cancer, he witnesses to the
audacity of hope in the face of death.
One of my favorite pieces of public art is
at Stone Mountain in Georgia, but it is not the huge carvings
of the confederate heroes on Stone Mountain which impress me.
It’s a small statue in a little garden around the side of the
mountain of stone. There you will find a memorial to the
ordinary foot soldiers. The statue is a young soldier, without
shirt or shoes, pants tattered and torn. He holds high a
broken sword. The caption reads:
“Men who saw night coming down about
them,
were somehow able to act as if they
stood at the edge of dawn.”
That’s
what it means to be a prisoner of hope.
That’s
what it means to live as a prisoner of Advent.
Every
time we gather at this table, but especially in Advent, we not
only look back to what God did in the past—returning to our
stronghold “in remembrance of Him,” we also look
forward and claim our hope “until Christ comes in his final
victory, and we feast at his heavenly banquet.”
“Stuck
like a dope with a thing called hope. Rejoice greatly,
daughters of Zion. Return to your stronghold, O
prisoners of hope.”
|
