Alert Hope
A sermon on Luke 21:25-36
[for an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Image: photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash.]
Advent is the season of hope… of waiting, and preparation, and expectation.
But Advent is also the season that challenges common understandings of what hope looks like.
In the cultural Christmas season ambience of soft, twinkling lights and warm baking smells that kicks off the moment the turkey leftovers have been packed away, it is easy to think of hope as something that is gentle and nurturing:
A cozy and uncomplicated time of waiting for approaching joy.
But that is not the hope of Advent.
Advent hope is urgent and eschatological.
It is demanding.
It wakes us up and calls us to action.
As commentator Troy Troftgruben writes, “Amid a world filled with chaos and a future marked by uncertainty, Luke’s Jesus reminds hearers: ‘Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”[1]
This is because Advent hope is specifically Christian hope. It’s not about us just generally getting what we want or looking forward to the alleviation of our particular unhappiness. It’s about a very specific expectation about what all of human history is moving toward: the coming of Jesus… not as a baby in the manger, but as the Savior of all that is broken.
Now, if that bit about NOT waiting for Jesus to come as a baby in the manger surprised you, that’s understandable.
Because… Advent is the season that directly precedes Christmas, when we remember Jesus coming as a baby…
And because it marks the beginning of the church year, so it seems like it should be about the start of the Jesus story.
But the thing about the Jesus story is that it’s a participatory story. It loops back on itself to draw us into the action.
We only learn about the things that happened 2,000+ years ago because they have relevance for what is happening now.
And what it happening NOW is not waiting for Jesus to come as a baby. We are waiting for Jesus to come back… as something a lot let vulnerable than a newborn baby.
That is the substance of Christian hope.
In his book Wishful Thinking theologian Frederick Buechner offers this description of Hope:
“For Christians, hope is ultimately hope in Christ. The hope that he really is what for centuries we have been claiming he is. The hope that despite the fact that sin and death still rule the world, he somehow conquered them. The hope that in him and through him all of us stand a chance of somehow conquering them too. The hope that at some unforeseeable time and in some unimaginable way he will return with healing in his wings.”[2]
I agree with Buechner about the nature of Christian hope being, at its essence, the expectation that Jesus is actually coming back.
The sometimes-seemingly-preposterous belief that the brokenness of the world around us will have an endpoint, because Jesus said it will.
And I understand what he means when he attaches that hope to “some unforeseeable time” and “some unimaginable way,” because scripture definitely warns us against being too confident that we will be able to predict the circumstances of Christ’s return.
But I want to add-on to his description the clarification that the unknowableness of the specifics of our hope cannot be mistaken as an excuse for our passivity.
We cannot turn our amorphous hope that Christ is coming back to fix things “at some point” into a shield against any obligation on our part to be busy now with the preparations for it.
Because hope is a verb. It’s something we do. It’s something we nurture through intentional practices.
That is pretty much Jesus’ point in the three snapshots of eschatological wisdom that we get in today’s gospel reading.
Portentous signs of doom are coming: stand up!
The kingdom of God is near: recognize the signs!
The temptations and anxieties of life will try to distract you: stay alert and pray!
These are messages of hope, but a hope that requires our engagement.
And I think this is a difficult message for us.
It’s not just that true Advent hope is so contrary to the nostalgia pervading this season which wants to lure us into a cozy, nesting-kind-of-waiting, for sweet baby Jesus.
It’s also that we don’t necessarily know what to do with a call to active watching.
Tell us to love our neighbors? Sure. We can be all over that. Tell us who to feed, or who to embrace with affirmation, and we will be there.
But, what does it look like, on a practical level, to “stand up and raise our heads,” or to “look at the fig tree” as a parable for recognizing the signs of Christ’s return, or to “be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place and to stand before the Son of Man”?
In our particular cultural location, we are mostly, and I think rightly, suspicious of end-times obsessions that look for signs of the apocalypse in world events.
The evidence of history is that such obsessions have been universally wrong in their predictions, not to mention the misguided actions people have taken based on those predictions.
And, frankly, that’s what I would expect.
Because Jesus said that “no one would know the day or the hour.”
And, also, because if they were exclusively about the actual end of human history, then these passages would be irrelevant for every generation before the final one.
And I don’t think Jesus would make such a big deal to his disciples about something that wasn’t for them.
But if these calls to active attention for signs of Christ’s coming are NOT about looking for signs of the end of the world… then what are they about, and what do they require of us?
Because looking at the state of the world, just to be aware … is not an activity that brings me much hope.
And I know many of you are in the same headspace right now.
At the Senior’s ministry meeting last month the whole group was talking about how we just can’t watch the news anymore. It makes us too anxious and upset.
So, is Jesus telling us to sacrifice our mental health by staying alert? And if so, why? What purpose could be served?
Well, the commentator I quoted at the beginning of the sermon offers an interpretation that I find helpful. He ties the message of this gospel back to the significance of active, Advent-style hope, and its relevance for our particular moment in time. He writes:
“The gist of Luke 21:25–36 is a message of profound hope—one that is sorely needed today. Our world is riddled with uncertainty, injustice, conflict, indifference, pain, judgment, and condemnation of anyone who thinks differently. However chaotic and uncertain our world is, Jesus promises a day when his return will bring about lasting salvation, justice, redemption, and healing. This changes everything. A sure future hope inspires faith here and now.”[3]
What I take from this conclusion is that we don’t have to believe that Christ’s return is around the corner to believe that it changes our reality.
If Christs promises are real. If he really is coming to put right what is wrong; to disrupt systems of injustice and to redeem the suffering… then the evidence around us of the brokenness in the world is not the end of the story.
And that gives meaning to our small actions of hope and faith, even if we don’t get to see the end.
Even if we cannot, on our own, complete the good work of God, we can still be part of it.
But even more encouraging, it changes the meaning we find in all the signs of brokenness in the world.
Rather than just being cause for anxiety and despair, they also become evidence that Jesus will come back.
Because the state of the world getting worse is what we are supposed to be alert for. “When you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.”
At some point, that “nearness” of God’s kingdom will mean Jesus coming to put all to right. But at all times it means that God’s kingdom is already at work in us.
And that is Advent hope. A hope that is active, and alert, and able to push back against fear because even before he comes back in power, Jesus is already with us in his promise that changes how we live.
Thanks be to God.
[1] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-of-advent-3/commentary-on-luke-2125-36-6
[2] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1973, p. 46-47.
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