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On our journey toward Bethlehem,
Zachariah and Elizabeth invited us to “expect the
unexpected” and Mary called us to “see the unseen.”
Today, Simeon and Anna lift up the vision of “hoping
against hope.”
In May, Studs Terkel turned 95. In 2001
he wrote a book on death called Will the Circle Be
Unbroken, which he probably thought would be his last.
But that book was followed with a couple more—the latest
just this year. Terkel is not a Christian believer. He calls
himself an agnostic, which he said is nothing more than a
“cowardly atheist.” And yet, his 2003 book was called
Hope Dies Last: Keep the Faith in Troubled Times. Terkel
writes, “I thought, if ever there was a time to write a book
about hope, it’s now.” And in his own outspoken way, he
responds to people who call him an optimist:
I never said I was an optimist. I have
hope because what’s the alternative to hope? Despair? If all
you have is despair, you might as well put your head in the
oven.
(The Meaning of Life, by Bob
Abernathy and William Bole, page 105)
And of course, he is right. Even coming
from an agnostic, it’s true. We live by hope. Even hoping
against hope. And of course, that is one of the great themes
of Advent…the promise of hope.
1. Christian hope sees the present and says, “Yes, but…”
I agree with Terkel. Hope is not the same
thing as optimism. To be an optimist suggests that either
you have looked at all the facts and seen evidence of a
promising future, all the signs pointing in the right
direction, and are confident to sing…
We’ll be swell, we’ll be great,
Gonna have the whole world on a plate.
Starting here, starting now,
Honey, everything’s comin’ up roses for
me and for you.
…or it means you have looked past the
facts, chosen to simply ignore the ugly truth, been a
cock-eyed optimist, an unrealistic dreamer.
One way
or the other, that’s optimism.
Hope is exactly the opposite. Hope is not
necessarily based on what we see around us, the evidence at
hand. In fact, Basal Pascal said that hope lives best when
it has nothing in the empirical situation, nothing in the
sociological data on which to rely, only the promises of
God. Neither does hope simply ignore the facts of the
matter. Hope does something else. Hope sees the world for
what it is, looks life square in the face and says, “Yes,
but…” Yes, we see evil for what it is and all the ugliness
of life, but there is a greater truth, another reality which
speaks even louder: the Word of God in all of life.
In this incredible eighth chapter of St.
Paul’s letter to the Romans, he hears the groaning of the
world around him. He understands “the sufferings of this
present time.” He describes the futility, bondage and decay
of all of creation. Yet, in the midst of it all he witnesses
to the audacity of hope:
Now hope that is seen is not hope. For
who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do
not see, we wait for it with patience.
We know that in everything, God works for
good with those who love him, who are called according to
his purpose.
(Romans 8:24 and 38)
Christian hope sees the present for what
it is and says, “Yes, but…”
Yes, Caesar is still on his throne
and we are oppressed under the weight of Rome, but…
Bethlehem, there is another word, another story to be heard.
Yes, this world seems bent on its
own destruction and we seem to be tearing ourselves apart
rather than coming together, but…
Yes, there is too much death, too
much poverty, too much hunger in Africa and America, north
and south, and in many ways it seems to be getting worse
instead of better, but…
Yes, it looks like global warming
will bring about the death of God’s good creation and we
will suffocate on our own exhaust, but…
Behind it all and above it all and
through it all and in it all, God is still at work, working
for good in this world with those who love him. So we base
our hope and bet our future on God’s promise made known in
the birth of a baby, his own Son given for the world.
I don’t know if Paul was thinking of
Christmas when he wrote this letter, but it certainly fits
Christmas 2007. He ends chapter eight with the rhetorical
question we all ask when we read the newspapers and look at
the world around us: “What then shall we say to all of
this?”
What
shall we say to all of this? He answers with the resounding
affirmation:
If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us
all, will he not give us all things with him?
Who can separate us from the love of
Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or
famine, or nakedness, or peril or sword? No! In all these
things we are more than conquerors through him who loved
us.
For I am sure that neither death, nor
life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present,
nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else
in all creation can separate us from the love of God which
is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Now
that’s hope! Against, all odds, hope sees the present as it
is and says, “Yes, but…”
If you want to know what hope looks like
in personal terms, I wish you could have been here for the
Longest Night service on Thursday. For pastors who look out
across the congregation, who know the stories, who have
shared the pain, this has become one of the most meaningful
parts of our Advent journey. This year we heard from three
witnesses, all of whom have faced loss and difficulty in the
past year. But the service wasn’t depressing at all, because
each story witnessed to the power of God in our midst,
against all odds, in every situation, bringing promise and
hope for the future. The resounding, “Yes, but...”
2. And Christian hope glimpses the future and says, “Yes,
Lord.”
This brings us to the story of Simeon and
Anna. I realize we are jumping ahead in the Christmas story.
They don’t come on stage until act three, eight days after
the birth, when Mary and Joseph take the child to the temple
and offer their sacrifice of praise for the birth of their
firstborn son. But once again, I would like to stop the
action right here, right now, today. Can you put yourself in
their place the week before Christmas? Can you
imagine what they were feeling before the family appeared in
the temple that day? Can you “flash back” for a moment and
see them waiting:
-
weeks, months, years
before the birth, before Mary and Joseph appeared in the
courtyard
-
weeks, months, years
before the evidence of God’s salvation would come to
them in the form of a child
-
weeks, months, years
of believing and trusting, against all the empirical
evidence to the contrary and with nothing but the
promise of God to grab onto
-
weeks, months, years
of expecting the unexpected, hoping against hope that
one day the promise would be fulfilled
Then
finally the day came. After watching hundreds of babies
coming and going in their mothers’ arms, day in and day out,
we don’t know just what it was, how they knew, what they saw
that made the difference. All we know is somehow they knew,
they saw, they believed. They said, “Finally, our eyes have
seen thy salvation…Yes, Lord.”
Now really, what did they see? Really, not much.
Just a baby in his mother’s arms. Unlike
Zachariah in the temple, or Joseph in his dream, or Mary in
her vision, or the shepherds in their fields keeping watch
o’er their flocks by night, there is no evidence here that
Simeon and Anna saw any angels, heard any “Glorias,” or were
shocked into dumb silence.
-
They didn’t live to
see the adolescent Jesus among the teachers.
-
They weren’t there to
see him baptized in the Jordan, or to hear the heavenly
voice say, “This is my beloved son.”
-
They didn’t observe
the feeding of the five thousand, or the healing of the
blind man, or the raising of Lazarus.
-
They never heard the
Sermon on the Mount, or the Palm Sunday Hosannas.
-
They weren’t at the
table when Jesus broke the bread and lifted the cup, or
on the hillside when Jesus died on the cross, or in the
garden when he rose from the grave.
-
They never saw the
vision fulfilled, but they saw just enough to know they
could die in peace.
All they had was the sight of a baby, and
in that baby, a glimmer of God’s good future. But even so,
their old, feeble and failing eyes caught a glimpse of God
working in everything for good, and it was enough to say,
“Yes, Lord.” And frankly, that’s about all most of us get.
No angel visitants, no angelic choirs, no miracle
encounters, just a glimpse of God at work. But that’s enough
to say, “Yes, Lord.”
Over the past six years, I have always
said that perhaps the most crucial sermon any preacher of my
generation ever preached was the sermon we preached on
September 16, 2001, the Sunday after 9/11. Whatever we said
and regardless of how well we said it, it was probably the
most important sermon any of us will ever deliver.
At the time, my friend Larry Kalajainen
was the pastor of the American Church in Paris—a truly
international congregation made up of ex-patriots from
almost every English-speaking nation in the world. On that
Sunday, to a church filled to overflowing with a global
community in pain, Larry chose to preach on this text from
Romans. He chose to preach on hope. He said:
Hope never means hope in the
popular sense we often use it, “I hope we will be able to
afford a vacation to Spain; I hope it doesn’t rain
tomorrow.” Hope is about the ends, the goal God has
in mind for the whole world.
Hope is about the future of the whole
creation—a future whose shape we can only begin to grasp in
the birth and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In
that future, death will not have the final word. Life will.
To live in the light of that future is to live in hope,
trusting that God has won the victory over death, and that
victory will one day be as openly manifest as it is now
visible only in fleeting glimpses.
(Larry Kalajainen, “Faith
Sees the Glory,”
American Church in Paris, Sept. 16, 2001)
Hope is that deep inner certainty that
God will fulfill what God has promised.
Hope is the assurance that against all
odds, and in spite of everything the world calls evidence,
one day God’s kingdom will come and one day, God’s will will
be done on earth even as it is in heaven.
Hope is the gut-level confidence that one
day we will beat our swords into plowshares and our spears
into pruning hooks, and that one day the promise of the
prophet will be fulfilled—justice will roll down like
waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Hope is that inner calm in the face of
personal loss, personal suffering and deep individual grief,
which causes us to look beyond the shadows to see the light
of the coming of Christ.
Hope is that deep inner awareness that
even though we now have little more than fleeting glimpses
of the vision, those fleeting glimpses are worth living for
and working for, so we respond with the affirmation of our
lives—“Yes, Lord”—knowing that nothing in all
creation can separate us from the love of Christ.
One of my favorite Christmas songs is not
in our hymnal. It comes out of the darkest years of the
Civil War, when this nation was battered and bruised and
there was no certainty about the outcome, no sign of an end
to brutality. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow looked out across a
grieving landscape and all he heard was the sound of a
bell:
I heard the bells on Christmas day
their old familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet the words repeat
of peace on earth, goodwill to men.
But then, as he viewed the destruction,
the devastation of the day, the ongoing agony of this awful
conflict, he was about ready to give up:
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, good will to men.”
But then, out of the darkness, he heard
it again. Just the sound of a bell, just a glimmer of hope,
but it was enough:
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, good will to
men.”
Christian hope sees the present for what
it is and says, “Yes, but…” Christian hope catches a glimpse
of the future and says, “Yes, Lord.” Amen. |
