Hope in the Desert [Advent 3A]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Isaiah 35:1-10

Hope in the Desert

Hope needs a desert in which to bloom. This is what Advent tells us. Elizabeth and Mary, John the Baptist and Jesus: new life born in impossible places; hope blooming in the desert.

This also reminds us, this season of Advent, that we don't come by hope easily. It is not mere optimism, born of some dishonest naivety, like a cheap salve more likely to bring infection than healing. Hope digs in deep; it has to. Henri Nouwen makes the distinction saying, “While optimism makes us live as if someday soon things will go better for us, hope frees us from the need to predict the future and allows us to live in the present, with the deep trust that God will never leave us alone.”¹ And so, in that sense, maybe the chasm separating the two is filled with trust. Optimism justifies our lack of trust. Hope needs trust to survive.

But like most things in the desert, hope is also dangerous. So while it is far preferable to mere optimism, one can still understand why optimism always wins the popular vote. Optimism is a blueprint for a house that will never be built: ultimately worthless but it helps us sleep at night. Hope is believing, trusting with all your heart that God is paving a path beneath your worn out soles.

I like hope. I like that our Christian hope compels us to defiantly shout Alleluias at the grave, through our tears, when it would be so much easier to fall back on trite sentiments. I like that our Christian hope takes the instrument of our Savior's death and rather than shy away from it calls it victory. I like that our Christian hope can see the Spring through the Winter. I like that our Christian hope is placed in a weak peasant baby instead of in the more logical choice, the powerful Emperor who ruled that world.

I like hope. But I recognize that hope is dangerous. Because hope dreams impossible dreams.

The prophet Isaiah, in our reading today, is peddling those impossible dreams. And his audience is a barren land. His audience is weak hands and feeble knees. His audience is fearful hearts. His audience is the aftermath, the devastation that remains in the wake of war, the broken souls left wandering in the desert, far away from home.

Isaiah is peddling these impossible dreams to exiles – exiled not only from their land, but also from their hope. And I'm not sure that is fair. I'm not sure it is fair to plant in their barren souls the hope that one day their torched earth will bloom, or that their broken bodies will one day leap for joy, or that their despairing hearts will grow strong again. Because isn't surrendered acceptance better than hope unfulfilled and isn't hope just belief in search of a guarantee that will never come? The problem with hope is that it believes in big, big things when low expectations are so much easier to meet.

That is one of the reasons hope is so dangerous: it never knows when to stop. It doesn't believe in low expectations – I guess because it so stubbornly believes in God. Isaiah begins with out-sized expectations. He begins with impossible dreams: the deserts shall blossom. That might sound like a golf course in Arizona, but it's not that. It's healing. It is the dream of new green life after the enemy sets the fields ablaze. It is strip mine scars returning to beauty. It is Eden before the curse. And it was far away, forever away.

But Isaiah dreams bigger. He dreams impossible dreams of war-ravaged bodies restored. The ecological scars, the devastation of the land, that was one thing, but these scars, they are personal. This hope is the kind of hope that touches open wounds, that threatens brokenness, that alters identity. This hope is the kind of hope that feels embarrassing to admit – embarrassing like admitting every week that we believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting, embarrassing like saying your impossible dreams out loud.

But Isaiah dreams bigger. He dreams impossible dreams of a way back home. And he shouts these dreams over the prison walls. This is what is hope looks like in a concentration camp. Hope is always dangerous where it is an endangered species. Isaiah dreams dreams of a future; he dreams of a future in a place where survival is as good as it gets. In a place where hopelessness is a defense mechanism, the prophet lowers his defenses – and dares to ask his people to do the same.

There was no reason for optimism. No more reason than there was when they were slaves in Egypt. Optimism cannot live behind bars. But hope, hope sings behind bars. Hope is Paul and Silas praising the Lord until the earthquake comes. Hope is remembering that the Exodus happened, that the Incarnation happened, that the Resurrection happened, so the impossible becomes a dangerous precedent.

Advent is a dangerous season because it makes us dream dreams; it inspires hope; it rouses us from sleep; it shakes us free from the complacency upon which the powers of this world rely. We are not required to simply accept the brokenness and pain in this world. We do not have to passively stomach the aggressive march of our oppressors, of violence and racism and hatred. We were not created to surrender to the forces of addiction and despair. Our healing is not found in the acquisition of goods. Our salvation is not hidden in our lowered expectations. We are people of hope.

It is easy to look at our world, to watch the news, to read the blogs, and lose hope. The pain and division in our world, and in our nation, seem insurmountable. Tensions simmer, hate crimes escalate, oceans rise. Suicide rates continue to climb; heroine related deaths continue to mount.² We proclaim our hope to world of exiles hopelessly wandering in the desert.

We proclaim our because we know how this story goes. We know that hope needs a desert in which to bloom. We know that God births new life in impossible places. We know that God peddles impossible dreams. This is what Advent tells us: God gives us hope. And “Hope frees us from the need to predict the future and allows us to live in the present, with the deep trust that God will never leave us alone.” Not in Egypt's slavery, not in the pain of exile, not even in the grave. God will never leave us alone. And that is why we dare to hope, that is why we dream impossible dreams, that is why even at the grave we shout our Alleluias. This is the story Advent tells. It is a story of a God who will never leave us alone – who wrapped an impossible dream in baby soft skin to give the world hope.

1 Here and Now, 41.

2 http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-suicide-rates-climb-higher/