Hope is the Holy Disruption

Matthew 24:36-44(51)

Advent 1

December 1, 2019

William G. Carter

Jesus said, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

Today is the beginning of the Advent season, so I want to talk about hope. Hope is a big word, so it will take a while; four weeks, in fact.  For such a time as this, there is no better word than hope.

But what do we mean by that word “hope”? What exactly is it?

Some define hope as optimism, looking on the bright side, the expectation that all will turn out well. Left to my own devices, that’s what I have commonly thought.

·        I hope the snowstorm doesn’t keep us here overnight; I can’t say for sure, but I hope to get home.

·        I hope to get everything on my Christmas wish list; to tell the truth, I haven’t bothered to make a list, not yet, but if I do, I hope to get everything on it.

·        I hope the final Star Wars movie turns out ok, that good wins over evil; that’s a reasonable expectation for the ninth and final episode of a film series that has continued through most of my adult life.

Be positive – that’s the message. It is a peculiarly American message. 

There are a lot of preachers out there who have turned the Gospel into a success story. Believe it and you can become it, they say. It’s a message that sells pretty well among the poor. See some guy in a white suit and white shoes, flying around in his own private jet, in an arena full of people who want what he has. And he smiles and says, “You can have it.” He’s selling hope; except that’s not what the Bible calls hope, and it's not for sale.

What is hope? Is it wishing for something, even if you can’t be sure if it’s going to happen?

·       When you blow out the birthday candles, make a wish, and maybe it will come true.

·       When you’re finished with the Thanksgiving turkey, extract that Y-shaped bone, the wishbone; two of you tug on it, and the winner may get what she wants. Is that hope?

·       See the scenes of people risking their lives to save their children at wartime, or to cross a well-guarded border to pursue a better life for their families. They might not make it, but they hope so. It’s a form of wishing.

I remember the Scottish proverb from 1628, when I was a little boy: “If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.” Or the wisdom of Perry Como, 1951: “If wishes were kisses, I’d still be kissing you.” Or Frank Herbert, the science fiction writer: “If wishes were fishes, we’d all cast our nets.” Sadly, wishing doesn’t make it so. It falls short of what the Bible calls “hope.”

So what it hope? Listen to Jesus describe the coming of the Son of Man, not the first coming, nor the intermediate arrivals, but the final coming: “It will come like the flood of Noah, a total surprise; people will be eating and drinking and going to weddings – and BAM, then it comes.”

“So will it be with the coming of the Son of Man,” he says. Two folks will be picking vegetables in the field; one is taken and the other is left. Two peasants will be grinding out the grain. One will be taken and the other is left. Which one do you want to be? The one who is taken or the one who is left? I don’t know. If it's like a flood, I hope to be left. Either way, that’s missing the point. Hope is not a preference. Nor is it a privilege.

No, do you know what hope is? Hope is a punctured sky. Today, that’s my definition. Hope is when we are going about our business down here, doing our chores, living our lives, thinking this is all it’s ever going to amount to anything – and God sticks a finger through the dome above our heads and we discover there’s something so much more.

Hope is hearing the Son of Man is coming. Suddenly you realize the world is not going to stay the way it is. The systems that demean and defraud are not going to stand. The flattening of human relationships into use and abuse will no longer be the rule. The reduction of human life to empty consumerism will not abide.

Here’s the real question for Black Friday: did God create us in the divine image and blow Holy Breath into our lungs, so that we could get another half-price flat screen TV? I hope not.

Christ is coming. That is the truth that punctures the sky. It rips the lid off the closed systems of human operations. It is light that floods the darkness. It is love that exposes all the hurt that God’s people have done to one another. It is the announcement that cruelty, greed, ignorance, and rebellion have run their course; now it is God’s turn to rule over human life.

If all we hope for is a pair of socks and an air fryer for Christmas, it’s not much of a hope. But if God has broken in somehow, if the Living Christ has spoken a word we can no longer ignore, if the Holy Spirit is stirring the pot and something new is bubbling up, that’s where hope comes to us. Hope is a gift from God, a summons to wake from sleep and embrace God’s future.

That’s how the prophets of Israel understood hope. Isaiah is the one we hear today. God gives him a glimpse of the day when people will take hammers and pound their weapons into farm tools. They will bend all their spears into pruning hooks that they can use to tend their vineyards. The vision punctures the status quo.

Somebody I know worked for a company that made armaments, heard Isaiah’s vision, and said, “That wouldn’t be good for business.” All I could remember was Charles Dickens and the words of Marley’s Ghost: “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business.”

He pushed back and said, “OK, but do you know how disruptive that is?” Sure do; and when Jesus Christ comes in power and glory, do we really think this tired old world is going to keep going on the way it was?

This is our hope, our disruptive, holy hope: that Christ is coming, once and for all. While we wait, Christ remains with us, invisible but frequently noticeable, silent yet still speaking, comforting while yet agitating. He is like a prophet of God who is not content to let us sleep. And he is so much more than a prophet.

So take heart, my friends. Keep your heads up high. Sink your confidence into what God reveals among us. Trust what you have heard but cannot yet see, for every word is true.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.