(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on November 27, 2016, Advent I)
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The Hope of a Christmas List
Today is the beginning of Advent; it is also the day on which many children will begin that hallowed countdown ‘til Christmas. I remember counting down the days with the aid of one of those Advent calendars that rewards your daily patience with a bite of chocolate. Perhaps you have another tradition for counting down the days.
Today also begins that time of year when many children will write that venerated list and send it off to Santa.
When my brother, Curt, was younger, he acquired quite a reputation for his lists to Santa. The story goes that his first few Christmases, his hopes were quite modest. One year he asked for a soccer ball. The next year he asked for a movie. And each year, he got whatever he hoped for. So the little gears started turning in little Curt’s head. These requests, it seemed, were little more than a formality. Whatever he hoped for, he got. His Christmas list was a sure bet. And so the next year, little Curt shot the moon…and sent my parents into a veritable panic! The latest game console, a collection of soccer gear, toys—anything he could think of that he wanted, went onto that list.
I won’t go into the details of how that Christmas ended, other than to say that my parents had to sit my brother down for an honest little chat about Santa Claus and the virtue of modesty—after all, Santa has millions of children to take care of.
Two “Hopes”
My brother had such high hopes. He knew exactly what he wanted. If everything went according to his plan—and he had no reason to think it wouldn’t—then his hopes were a sure thing.
This first Sunday of Advent, we light the candle of “hope.” Why? For what do we hope?
The risk of talking about “hope” during this season, is that we may confuse two different hopes. According to much of the world, hope is simply knowing what you want and having a reasonable expectation that you can get it. This is the hope of Christmas lists. This kind of hope can see the future. It is calculating. It often makes plans, or campaigns, to achieve what it wants. It wasn’t too long ago that one of our presidents ran on such a campaign, using this word, “hope.”
When my brother wrote his Christmas lists, he could already see that portly man in red and white coming down the chimney; he could already see the desires of his heart, lying underneath the tree on Christmas morning. The hope that inspires much of this world is a hope that has clear designs on the future.
The hope that we see in today’s Advent scriptures, however, looks quite different. In the first scripture reading, Jesus says, “No one knows about the day or the hour.” For Jesus, hope is not about seeing the future; it is about receiving the future. For Isaiah too, hope means not knowing what’s next. In his vision, all the nations of the world say in unison, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord…that [God] may teach us [God’s] ways and that we may walk in [God’s] paths” (2:3). In other words, Isaiah dreams of a crazy world where all the nations drop their best-laid policies and plans, throw up their hands, and say, “We don’t know.” For Isaiah, hope is not a sure bet or a careful campaign or a vision of dancing sugarplums. The people’s hope is not in what they know but in what they don’t know—in what God will teach them, in the decisions and judgments God will make.
Relinquishing Certainty for Hope
Today’s scripture from Isaiah is most famous for its image of swords and spears beaten into plowshares and pruning hooks. It’s one of those images that seems to tap into a universal human desire, a feeling that, yes, it would be a better world if weapons were work tools. Plenty of folks within and without the Christian tradition have drawn inspiration from Isaiah’s vision. National icons, from Ronald Reagan to Michael Jackson, have used this image to talk about world peace. I know of musicians who have had guitars crafted out of AK-47s. And did you know that nitrogen mustard, which derives from the horrific weapon used in World War I, mustard gas, was developed into one of the first chemotherapy drug treatments?
But I wonder if we’re selling the plowshares and pruning hooks short, limiting them only to an icon of peace. On this first Sunday of Advent, as I consider the plowshares and pruning hooks, they strike me also as a robust image of hope, of not knowing.
The spear and the sword are not only instruments of war. At their heart, they are instruments of certainty. To pick up the spear and the sword is to see the world in black and white, to be sure about things. When Isaiah imagines all the people of the world beating their weapons into work tools, he is dreaming of a world that has relinquished certainty for hope. He is praying for a world that says, “We don’t know. Let us go up to the mountain of the Lord…that [God] may teach us” (cf. 2:3). He is thinking of a world where people are humble instead of haughty. Listen to the way he describes this dream-world in the verses that follow our scripture today: “For the Lord…has a day against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up and high…. The haughtiness of the people shall be humbled, and the pride of everyone shall be brought low” (2:12-17). And then he says that all the idols—which are a symbol of our certainty—shall “utterly pass away” (2:18).
It is difficult to stress how unorthodox and strange is this hope, this not-knowing. Indeed, it is foolishness and weakness to our world. Our English language itself cannot understand it. Our primary word for “not knowing” is “ignorance.” And ignorance is an undesirable and unwanted trait. It is a negative attribute.
Something Is Coming
But this season of Advent is all about not knowing. It is all about a sort of holy ignorance. Or let’s call it “hope”—but let’s be sure to remember that this hope isn’t the calculating and self-certain kind. Advent comes from the Latin word, advenire, which means “to come.” At the heart of Advent, then, is something that is coming, something that we don’t know completely. If we knew it completely, it would already be here. It could not “come.”
So what are we to do in Advent? Simply wait? That would be the opposite error to certainty. In other words, hope is like a tightrope; on the one side one may fall off into certainty, and on the other passivity.
The images from our scripture today suggest that hope is active and seeking. When Jesus says that “no one knows,” he doesn’t then say, “Tough luck,” or, “You’ll just have to wait it out.” He says, “No one knows…so keep awake!” (cf. Matt 24:36, 42). Keep your eyes open for what is coming. And Isaiah envisions a worldwide quest, a universal search that leads all the people to the mountain of God. So hope is wide-eyed and walking, curious about what lies beyond the corner, beyond the horizon, in the shadows.
Hope: A Luxury or Life Itself?
Many of you know Stuart Wilkinson—who by the way sends his greetings to everyone. Stuart is the grandfather of the fleet-footed Sean, who once infused our youth group with copious amounts of energy. Stuart is bound to a wheelchair and severely limited in his ability to move about. His days look much the same from one week to the next: physical therapy, lunch, television, sleep.
For many of us who enjoy the privilege of being able to plan out our lives for ourselves, who always have a list of things to look forward to, who virtually design our own future, hope is a casual thing, a luxury. We have little need for what we don’t know, for what we cannot see coming. For Stuart, though, hope is woven into the fabric of his life. When your schedule, your meals, and your recreation are already decided for you, it is in the things that you don’t know, the things that you cannot plan for or expect, that you find salvation. One day when I was visiting with Stuart, and we had very little to say, his grey cat, Titan, came waltzing into the room without a care. Rubbing against both our legs, she then hopped up beside Stuart and curled into a sleeping ball. Stuart smiled and shook his head, “That Titan…she’s a good cat.”
I don’t mean to diminish hope to little moments of chance, to spontaneous serendipities. Rather, I’m wondering if these small, offhand moments are not in fact the sacred cracks through which hope enters our lives. Whether it’s Titan’s unplanned afternoon visit, or an unexpected treat in his dinner, Stuart has come to find the abundance of life in the things that he does not know or cannot plan for.
“No one knows about the day or the hour,” Jesus says. “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,” say the people in Isaiah’s dream. “Look—” says Stuart, “something I never would have expected.”
Welcoming an Unexpected God
If the season of Advent and Christmas teaches us anything, it’s that God makes the most unexpected entrance. Two teenagers. A pregnancy out of wedlock. A little baby born in a manger.
Only with a holy ignorance that wonders what’s around the corner can we truly seek God. Otherwise we’re only seeking ourselves—what’s already on our list, what we already “know”, what we want for ourselves. Only a hope that cannot see what’s coming, can welcome an unexpected God.
Prayer
God who is coming,
Whom we cannot see coming—
Relieve of us our certainty,
Our swords and spears,
And spark within us
A humble hope
For what is far different
And far better
Than we can imagine.
In the name of your unforeseeable gift, Jesus.
Amen.
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