Hope in God
Hope in God
Reflecting on the Third Sunday of Advent: One Day after Sunday (Year A)
Scripture
Psalter: Psalm 42
Old Testament: Isaiah 29:17-24
Epistle: Acts 5:12-16
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Prayer
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility; that on the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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Reflection
As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God (Psalm 42:1-2a, 11).
St. Augustine says that hope has two beautiful daughters: Anger at the way things are and Courage to see to it they do not remain that way. It is out of hope that our critique of the present order arises. It is healthy to be outraged—and then to get busy working for something just because it is good and needed.
Hope also seems to be the parent of patience. Hope gives us that persistence and determination to keep working on the world. One person once said, “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime.”
Wherein is our hope this Advent 2022? We live in a world of failed gods—the god of greed, casual sex, drugs, and intoxicants. They have failed, although plenty of people are still chasing after them. They have failed; and failed gods lead to failed hopes.
We live in a time of pervasive cynicism, of widespread despair. Here in Advent, we call it lack of hope. In our modern culture we have invented a closed universe, safely sealed from incursions from the outside. Our actions are the only actions possible. The God we have invented is a God who is empathetic, but mostly absent and inactive, who cares but doesn’t really do anything about it. Whoopee! Now there’s a God to get excited about.
A church that worships a little, inactive god is in peril of losing hope; a church that worships a little, inactive god commits idolatry because it worships a false god, and not the God of the Bible.
In 1943 after being arrested by the Nazis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian, who was arrested for his involvement in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, sat in prison during a cold, dark, lonely Advent. In a letter to a friend, Bonhoeffer compared his situation in prison to our situation as Christians in Advent. He writes, “One waits, hopes, and does this, that, or the other—things that are really of no consequence—the door is shut, and can be opened only from the outside.”
A door that can be opened only from the outside—that is a vivid image for the God that Isaiah proclaims today. Here is a God who comes to open our locked prison doors behind which we languish. This God does for us that which we cannot do for ourselves. Of this God Isaiah says, “Here is your God… He will come and save you.”
It takes a great deal of faith, as days grow shorter and nights longer, as one year ends and another begins—endings and beginnings still filled with war, violence, disease and despair—it takes a great deal of faith to proclaim the presence and the reign of God.
It takes a great deal of hope to be able to be honest about our situation in exile; for we are in exile. We find ourselves in the exile of sin, and the prison doors can only be opened from the outside. It takes a great deal of hope during Advent to sing songs of honest yearning and unfulfilled dreams waiting to come true. It takes a great deal of hope to sing, “O come, o come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel.”
We can be honest about the darkness in our world, we can be honest about the defeat and the pain and the despair, because we have an honest hope. In a world where we have surely messed up the present, we can admit that we have done so and that we need a future not solely in our hands. We can be honest about the truth of our condition because, like Isaiah, we believe that God has made our situation his situation; God has made our problems his problems. We believe in a God who yearns to be near us, to come to us, to save us.
In his despair, the Psalmist puts things in the right perspective, and we should heed his wisdom.
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God
PRAYER: God of joy and exultation, you strengthen what is weak; you enrich the poor and give hope to those who live in fear. Look upon our needs this day. Make us grateful for the good news of salvation and keep us faithful in your service until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives for ever and ever. Amen.
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