Second Sunday in Advent

Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12

I’ve heard that Advent is the season of hope.  And we hear a lot of hope in the Scriptures for this time: hope of healing, of peace, of justice, of abundance.  But hope is not simply wishing, or even anticipating that things will turn around or improve.  Hope is its own rare bird.

Paul writes of “steadfastness and encouragement” as the sources of hope, and prays that the “God of hope” will fill us “with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 15:13).  Hope is something Paul seems to know about, to long for, and to glimpse.  Elsewhere in the letter to the Romans he says that we need not fear suffering, because “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (5:3-5).  He doesn’t write this as a stranger to suffering.  Somehow, for him suffering has become the gateway to something more powerful than simple ease or freedom.  These are subject to the whims of nature, or other people or groups; but Paul finds hope beyond all those, through the Holy Spirit working in our hearts.  Steadfastness.  Encouragement.  Character.  

In these uncertain days, we are reminded more than ever that our hope rests on the interplay between God and our hearts.  God will enter into our hearts, but we have a role to play.  Our job is to endure, to stand fast, to encourage one another.  And all around me, I’m seeing people doing that.  People are finding new resources within themselves, and among themselves.  They are reaching out and calling out.  And as they do, they rekindle hope.  

Jesus has already come.  The one whom we await is already here.  That is the irony of Advent, the mystery of Advent.  We hope not so much for God to come among us, as for the ability to recognize Her as already here.  The path to that recognition is often not the way we want to go; it can seem threatening.  We may experience the winnowing fork and the fire.  But the one who endures to the end will be saved.  Hope, that strange bird, will fly again.  

Come, Lord Jesus!