Advent 2                        Is. 11:-10, Rom. 15:4-13, Matt. 3:1-12                

                                                              “Hope” 

It’s no fun to be a prophet.  You usually have to proclaim some kind of doom and nearly always tell people things they don’t want to hear and call them to do things they don’t want to do.  As a result you are often disliked (especially by those in power) and sometimes have to run for your life.  You may live in unpleasant or even scary circumstances – disliked by both outsiders and your own people. 

Such is the case with the main character in each of our lessons today.  Isaiah of Amoz (actually one of at least three “Isaiah’s” giving the prophesies in the Book of Isaiah) lived at a time when the Assyrians were trying to conquer Israel.  As Isaiah knew, the Assyrians were actually a part of God’s plan.  The people of Israel, and particularly Jerusalem, hid tremendous greed and wickedness under a veneer of religiosity.  Isaiah’s call includes calling God’s people to account and giving them a warning of what God is planning to do, namely allow the Assyrians to win the war and take Jerusalem captive. 

But, Isaiah does have a message of hope as well.  After a time, a new leader will arise who will have the qualities of David and Solomon combined.  He will be a good king (this after some real monsters) and will bring about a time of great peace for Israel.  This is to be the hope for those who remain faithful to the Lord. 

Three hundred years later, John the Baptist is also called (even before birth) to be God’s prophet to the people of Israel.  It is his call to tell the people, especially the religious leaders of his day that the thin veneer of religiosity that covers their sinful legalism is also not acceptable to God.  He calls people to turn from their wrong-headed ways and bear the fruit of repentance by admitting that they can’t save themselves by following the law.   

These were hard times for a prophet too.  In addition to the difficulties of living under the repressive Roman government, John knows that the Pharisees and Sadducees are out to get him.  As it is John’s lot to call these religious leaders to account, so he knows, it will be his lot to suffer and die for the sake of conveying God’s message. 

But, John also offers a word of hope.  He proclaims the coming of a leader greater than he who will purify God’s people with the Spirit and fire, and who will gather the faithful to Himself after separating them from the chaff – those who will be rejected because of their refusal to believe. 

About six decades later, Paul writes to the Roman Christians, trying to help them straighten out the problems of their church.  We might not think of Paul as a prophet, but indeed since what makes a person a prophet is the fact that God’s word is proclaimed, Paul and all who preach are prophets.  Paul writes of his desire to come and visit the Roman church – one he did not found, by the way, so he can speak God’s word to them personally.  Little does he know that that visit will be made in chains as a prisoner and that it will end with his death. 

There is much to dismay a prophet in Paul’s day too, but Paul also speaks words of hope.  He proclaims that our hope is in Christ.  Paul indicates that Christ is that root of Jesse, promised by Isaiah, and that believing that gives his followers hope, joy and peace. 

There is much to dismay the people (and prophet) of God today too.  We are surrounded by a secular culture that increasingly, not only doesn’t support Christianity, but all too often now tries to push it aside, declare it irrelevant and unnecessary, suppress its expression.  Unchurched friends, family and co-workers that we invite to church may treat us as a bit peculiar that we would waste our precious time “there”.  Still we try to be faithful, and continue to invite people.  And we try to invite people not to satisfy our need for more contributing members, but because that is what we as the Church are called to do. 

Today, at our congregation meeting we will vote on another bare bones budget and even with the wonderful response received to our stewardship program it looks like there may still not be enough income to meet all our needs. And we may worry how much longer “our” church will be there because costs regularly outstrip giving.  We look toward the future and may wonder, “where is our hope?”   

We don’t know what will happen in the future, but we do know that our hope is in Christ.

Just as God brought new life out of the stump of Jesse in the time of Isaiah and ultimately gave us all eternal life through Jesus who was became that branch from the stump for later believers, so can we rely on Him to give us new life today.  The kingdom God promised through Jesus has begun already and resides in our hearts.  Each of us then becomes an extension of that branch offering hope to the world. 

  God has not stopped speaking to us or to the world yet.  He still calls us to proclaim, to trust and to hope.  He tells us not to become so fixated on the bleak view we may have of the future that we fail to hear His voice telling us that He will give us the means to move forward and the way to do so.   

God’s voice probably will not be loud or distinctively godlike.  It may be little more than a whisper.  It may be just a number of small incidents that only when seen together tell us God has spoken.  When this happens it is called synergy.  

 I had one of those synergistic moments just this past Friday.  I had been feeling stressed out and down about our problems.  I randomly picked a psalm to read as part of my morning prayer.  It was a psalm of hope.  I read a verse from Romans and it spoke a word of hope to my deepest point of anxiety.  I read from the Advent devotional I’m using and it gave me hope.  At the very end the devotion was illustrated with a single free-form gold star – a symbol that was a message I’d received before when I was feeling hopeless and that now symbolizes for me that God remembers and loves me...and always will.  God always offers hope if we can be open and listen for it. 

This week during my sermon preparation, I read a quote by William Frey from his book, The Dance of Hope.  I keep being drawn back to it. I think it may even be part of that synergy I spoke of above.  It reads, “Hope is the ability to hear the melody of the future.  Faith is the courage to dance to it today.”

 If we can quiet the clamor of voices that say things like, there is no hope, and listen for God’s voice, we can hear the melody that will tell us what God will yet help us become.    God has promised to be with the Church and with His people to the end of time and we can place our hope in that.  No church has ever died that kept its focus on doing God’s will in ministry and mission.  We do need to both hope by listening for God to play His melody for us - tell us what form His ministry and mission will take in this time, - and we need to have the faith that gives us the courage to dance today to the melody God plays.  If we listen for the God’s melody and let ourselves dance to it we can have a ball.  Yes, in this season of Advent and in every season, with God there is hope.  Amen