A Hope That Draws Near

Third Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 35:1-10

There is a delicate purple flower that grows in the tundra so far from the sun's warm rays that it could not blossom if it had to start its life cycle from seed each spring. With this plant, the cycles are reversed: The flower remains fresh beneath the snow during the 10 months of winter. It promptly withers and dies as soon as the snow melts, leaving room for new life to spring forth from the old.

That flower has always spoken to me of two key themes that come to us with particular force in the Advent season. First, in that the flower lies buried under mounds of snow and ferocious winter weather, it speaks of the hiddenness of the kingdom of God. The life remains, coursing through the delicate plant, even though no eyes can see its beauty during the long arctic winter. At the same time, that flower has always reminded me of the promise of God for the creation. No matter how difficult the circumstances now, they do not exhaust the possibilities of life because God draws near, bringing the promise of completely transformed circumstances.

This passage in Isaiah draws on those same themes. It celebrates the life the people of God anticipated when his reign among them had broken into the open, spreading unchecked and working its healing power. What is striking about the description is its emphasis on free and heightened activity, rather than the static sense often conveyed by the word "kingdom" by itself. The land that had been dead will teem with new life; shouts of joy and laughter will fill the air; water won't simply flow--it will gush from the desert itself; and lame people will spring to their feet and prance about like deer. The apparent limitations of the desert, the wasteland, and the handicapped person are limiting only until they encounter the active reign of God, who breaks into their lives, opening new possibilities for both the people and their land. In those possibilities lies their hope.

For the moment, such a hope defies all logic and common sense. Who would look for springs of water to gush out of the desert? Who would listen for the songs of the dumb? Who could hope for the liberation of a whole new order when real life is full of disorder and failure? Only those who live in anticipation of the kingdom of God drawing near, bringing grace and judgment to their current circumstances. The judgment breaks the power of the current circumstances; the grace opens the new possibilities.

It is as difficult to live with such hope in our time as it was in Isaiah's, in part because the suffering of people in our world is so monstrous. But it is also difficult because ours is a world in which we have been able to create the most incredible machines and processes--tools which promise to create a whole new order for humankind--yet we have most often turned that power into instruments of destruction.

Consider the solar collector, symbol of the age of the sun, of the conserver society, of the end of the oil economy, of the opening up of energy resources to everyone, not just the owners of the oil. But what of the proposal for a solar collector orbiting the earth? Who would have believed that such a possibility might exist even a mere decade ago? And who would have believed that someone would actually suggest in all sincerity that such collectors become part of a military arsenal, providing a nation with the power to direct the sun's rays on an enemy population, frying everyone they touch?

What hope can there possibly be in this Advent season for a world in which such ideas are seriously entertained? Not only does the earth appear to be striking back for the abuse it has taken, but we appear to have turned on ourselves, twisting our creative powers into the weapons that will destroy us. What hope can there possibly be?

Only the hope of Isaiah: "Courage! Do not be afraid. Look, your God is coming. Vengeance is coming; the retribution of God; God is coming to save you."

God draws near. God will reign actively, passing judgment on the death-dealing forces in our world and empowering the life-giving forces. We, who have not been able to create a whole new order despite our genius and power, will see that order emerge despite ourselves as God draws near us secretly.

Although we have no sense of the timetable, we can hope knowing that the promises have been made by the source of all truth, by the one who has respect for our limitations and has called us to live in anticipation of the future. Here and there we are left with signs of God's drawing near to us, as in the flower that blooms under the ice and snow of the tundra. Or, as in the baby born in wretched circumstances but recognized by the humble whose only hope lay in God.

Fourth Sunday in Advent
Matthew 1:18-25

This brief story of Joseph's response to a call from God is among the most celebrated in the biblical record. Yet the "miracle" aspect of it tends to mask an important theme for Christian discipleship. That theme revolves around the concrete, historical response of people to the call of God to a task in this world in their time.

Perhaps it is our own inhibitions that encourage us to focus on the romance side of this story. Probably it is our sexism that leads us to marvel at Joseph's willingness to discard his plan to repudiate Mary as a fallen woman. Yet, these aspects aside, this story is full of nothing but ordinary people doing ordinary things in response to the message that God took our history seriously enough to enter it and claim it as God's own through the birth of Jesus.

Matthew recounts the tale in a dispassionate tone, leaving the high drama for the historian's note which he inserts near the end of the story: In the birth of this child we are to recognize that God has indeed drawn near to us; so near that the child's name is to be "God-is-with-us." Not out there, in a supernatural world, but here, with us, sharing the grubbiness of human life. And it is this same person who will show us the way to the kingdom.

To Joseph, the call to discipleship came through an angel who asked for nothing extraordinary. Joseph was merely to carry out his original plan to marry his fiancee and raise their family. But as people who can see further into Joseph's future than he could at the time, we recognize in his call the patterns of discipleship as Jesus laid them out during his adult ministry:
• following him as he announced the approach of the kingdom of God and called others to walk with him on the path that led towards it;
• embracing the scandal such a life involves as it denounces those who hold religious, political, and social power over everyone else until the powerful close in on the rabble rouser and execute him or her to maintain order and proper reverence for their god; and
• choosing to put one's strength to the service of the reign of God, to the good order that would end the abuse of one person by another or of the many by the few.

The consequences of such discipleship may not appear to be very great, but we should recall that it was Jesus who warned his disciples to count the cost. That the cost seems rather low these days probably says something about the unreality of our discipleship and perhaps about the Christ we follow. The people of the early church were not turned into political martyrs simply because they "believed in Jesus in the quiet of their hearts," cultivating a mature vertical relationship with God. They became marked because they cooperated with the emerging reign of God as Jesus had preached and lived it in real human history. Thus they became a threat to the existing order.

At the moment, the best-seller list here in Canada carries a biography of James Endicott, a missionary to China in the '20s and '30s who was ostracized by his church as well as by most people in Canada after he stormily resigned from his missionary post.

Endicott quit because of his utter dismay at Western missionaries who generally ignored the suffering of the millions of Chinese peasants dying of a horrible starvation directly caused by political interests. He could no longer associate with other missionaries who de-emphasized preaching and social service, which they said inflamed young Christians and encouraged them to agitate about the conditions of the people.

Endicott saw that the word for his time in China could only emerge from a strong sense of the immanence of God. The need was to recognize how seriously God took real, human affairs, requiring us to make concrete choices about how to respond to human needs. Only now, 40 years later, are Canadian churches beginning to see that Endicott had a point when he claimed the church was departing from the way of Jesus in its emphasis of creed and liturgy over behavior.

Endicott seems to have been part of a long line of people who have heard the call of Jesus to follow him in the way he modeled as the behavior of a disciple; people whose task it was to throw every ounce of their energy into the service of the God who cares deeply about this world and its people. Much of the time such people have done very ordinary things. At key moments, however, they have revealed that in embracing the scandalous Jesus, they recognize with Joseph that in Immanuel, God is indeed with us and with all who suffer.

Bonnie Greene was staff officer for Human Rights and International Affairs of the United Church of Canada, and a contributing editor for Sojourners when this article appeared. Her meditations for the first and second Sundays of Advent appeared in the November, 1980, issue.