Hope. In these times. [Advent 1A - Isaiah 2:1-5]

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The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Isaiah 2:1-5

 

Hope. In these times.

 

If I had to describe hope, I might say that it is like a ghost.

Caught in glances but never really caught

And that it appears much more fragile than everything around it

And that when I most need to hold it tight against my soul

Against my body

My arms feel emptier than I wish they would.

 

It always feels like there is less of it than there should be.

But especially this week.

When a news report about our shooting

Is interrupted by a news report about a city in Virginia

A shooting in Virginia

That, in time, will be interrupted by another shooting and another

Wounds upon wounds

More dead.  Too many.

Tremors of grief

and the terrible aftershocks that threaten to throw the world off its axis.

This world haunted by violence.

And despair.

And death.

But not hope.

 

What will come of this Advent?

This new season?

What will it bring?

 

What I fear it will bring is more bad news

More spent shells

More candles, bells, and names

Names read through tears

Names read because the past cannot come untrue

Lives that bump up against

Periods. not commas,

Life stories with premature endings

The ones that

Who

Were never meant to be short stories.

And time marches on

And leaves dust on lost lives and on the memories of the living

 

What will come of this Advent?

This new season?

What will it bring?

 

What I hope it will bring is

Something else

Something new

Something better

 

I am afraid to hope for that something

But still I am trying to hope

 

I hope

I hope

I hope to see those old prophetic dreams

But come true

In the world

Our world

Swords to plowshares

Spears to pruning hooks

No more swords cutting through precious lives

No more war in our streets

Our schools

Our stores

Our clubs

Our churches

Our cities

 

I am trying to believe it so hard that I see it

And I am well aware

This isn’t Heaven

But Jesus is praying it will be

And so maybe dreams can come true

 

The truth is: Hope is holy hallucination

Seeing something that is not really there

Or maybe,

hopefully,

something that is not really there yet.

 

With a vision like Isaiah

Who saw peace through the thick fog of the future

While his nation trembled with the beat of war drums.

While his nation choked on the dust of devastation

And on despair

In towns populated by terror

In towns unpopulated by life.

 

And still he managed to glance a glimmer of hope

Enough hope to speak it

Enough hope to say it

Enough hope to dream it

Enough hope to believe in the impossible

 

Enough hope to write poetry

By the light of his enflamed nation.

Enough hope to write poetry

In the ashes

That filled the air

And filled his lungs

And polluted his tears.

 

His words, words in a war zone

The delicate resistance that inspired a resistance

In souls thirsty enough to drink in the intoxicating enchantment.

Precious dreams gilding broken hearts like gold leaf,

Paving the way to a Heaven that feels forever away

A Heaven that leaps the chasm to brush away tears with angels’ wings.

 

And it was a poet

(It is always a poet)

Who said to me

And to this nation, our nation, a nation riddled with layers of grief:

 

“We lay down our arms

so we can reach out our arms to one another.

We seek harm to none, and harmony for all.

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:

That even as we grieved, we grew.

That even as we hurt, we hoped.

That even as we tired, we tried.

That we’ll forever be tied together. Victorious,

Not because we will never again know defeat,

but because we will never again sow division.

 

Scripture tells us to envision that:

‘Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree,

and no one shall make them afraid.’

If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory

won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.”[1]

 

What will come of this Advent?

This new season?

What will it bring?

 

Perhaps peace? Is that too much to hope for?

And healing? Is that too much to hope for?

And a swell of love vast enough to soak us all? Is that too much to hope for?

 

With this reckless hope

And the ways in which it puts our hearts in harm’s way

Does it just set us up for disappointment?

 

I suppose it does

 

But tonight when we fall asleep

In the thick darkness of the long night

The ghost I call Hope will haunt our dreams

And we might finally learn that hope is not something we can hold

In our arms

But only in our hearts

 

Still we will wake to a world

haunted by violence.

And despair.

And death.

 

But we will awake possessed

Shining from the inside out

Poets with impossible dreams

Prophet of an impossible God

Filled by a hope that we cannot hold

But instead holds on tight to us.






[1] Amanda Gorman, “THE HILL WE CLIMB,” Call Us What We Carry, 207-8.


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