Stewards of Hope [Baruch 5:1-9 - Advent 2C]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Baruch 5:1-9

 

Stewards of Hope

 

More than 2500 years ago, the prophet Isaiah offered a beautiful word of hope to a community living in exile, to a people watering the shores of the rivers of Babylon with their tears.  500 years later, the author of Baruch, repackaged and reused that same word of hope for the communities of the Diaspora struggling to survive the pressures of isolation and Hellenization.  More than century after the composition of Baruch, the author of Luke’s Gospel speaks Isaiah’s word of hope to a faith community living under the oppressive rule of an Empire that lined their streets with bloody crosses.  And then almost 2000 years after the composition of the third Gospel, a 23-year old seminarian preached his first sermon about that same ancient word of hope to the one grouchy, old man who was willing to drive to church in a snowstorm for the 8 o’clock service – then for another 100 or so who came at 10, once the roads were plowed.  And I guess that first sermon, the sermon I preached 18 years ago on the second Sunday of Advent, burrowed into my soul, found a place in my spiritual DNA.  Because to some degree I have been preaching that same sermon ever since; I still can’t stop talking about hope.  I even named my son after the prophet whose poetic word of hope continues to shape the Gospel message.    

 

We didn’t even read from the book of Isaiah today and yet every portion of Scripture in this service is an echo of the message of hope he spoke against the forces of despair some twenty-five centuries ago.  This morning, this season, this space: each are saturated with this ancient hope, a hope passed down through the ages.  From the flames that dance upon the Advent candles this morning, that burn as symbols of the prophet’s hope, that glow with a holy light that casts out the shadows of this age to the circle of bread you will cradle in your palm today, which will give you a taste of a promised future, a future for which we now only dare hope, in which no one is hungry and no one is alone: all are reminders that we are Advent people, people of undying hope.  It is in our tradition so that it will seep into our souls.

 

In a disposable age, we possess, or are possessed by, something timeless.  The prophetic message is now ours to share – with a world haunted by despair, to give the people of this age a vision of a better future.  We are stewards of hope.  Just as the authors of Baruch and Luke preserved and promoted the hope that sustained their ancestors, so now is this our work in the world. 

 

It is, of course, a choice.  Each new generation must decide whether to silence the message or give it a new voice.  Our forebears have, for centuries, shared the old message in each new time and context.  Because of them, because of their vision and investment in a world they would never see, we are here today, saying the prayers of the distant past, feasting on the bread of the distant future, watching the flames of hope dance. 

 

Hope is timeless but we should never take hope for granted.  Hope is powerful but it is delicate.  In a sense it is inevitable and yet it needs us: to give it flesh and to give it words and to give it life.  Hope is our responsibility.  If we don’t shout it into the world, who will?  Who will speak against the despair?  Who will tell the stories of the dreams of God?  Who will dream of a future more powerful than the nightmares in which too many children of God are living?  If we fail to be the stewards of hope, what will become of this world?    

 

The people to whom Isaiah prophesied, they didn’t have the blues; they weren’t just a little bummed out.   Isaiah’s message of hope wasn’t intended to lift some sagging spirits.  They were devastated, beat down by life.  They had lost hope.  They had given up on the future. 

 

Only God hadn’t given up on them.  God never promised that their future would be easy, only that the future was possible.  God cleared a path into a better future but they still had to stand up and start walking.  Hope doesn’t make everything OK.  Hope is not a lie we tell ourselves to make it through the day or some kind of naïve optimism.  Hope is a flamethrower in a world of frozen hearts.  Hope is a dream in a land of nightmares.  Hope is an alleluia in the valley of dead, dry bones.  Hope is the divine defiance of Easter morning.     

 

More than 2500 years ago the prophet Isaiah spoke a word of hope and that hope still resounds today – of mountains made low and valleys exalted, of rough ways made smooth, of a cleared path into the future of God’s dreams.  Back then, when the words first left his lips, this word of hope disrupted the despair of an exilic community.  It has power to disrupt despair still today. 

 

You know the thing about hope is that the impossible dreams it inspires actually do come true.  The exiles found a road back home.  The communities of Diaspora found a way to keep the Jewish faith alive.  In Jesus, all flesh did see the salvation of God.  And that means the stubborn dreams we dream today – of justice and peace, of a love that heals all the broken things, of on earth as it is in heaven, of a time in which there is no more crying and no more pain and no more death – can come true too.  Hope is worth hoping. 

 

More than 2500 years ago the prophet Isaiah spoke a word of hope and that hope still resounds today.  We are now the stewards, the guardians, of this ancient hope.  In a disposable age, it is our timeless message.  Our work is to dream dreams for a people who have forgotten how to dream, who are too wearied by this life to imagine anything better.  Hope is the ancient story we get to tell the world.  Hope is the ancient story we hold up to the forces of despair.  Hope is the ancient story that makes a way into a better future, the future God wants for this world, a future much more like heaven.