Isaiah 65.17-25; Luke 21.5-19
Isaiah’s stirring words of hope are written to a people who have known more than their fair share of disappointment and loss.
Across the ancient land, years of warfare, deportations, death and destruction, a great lament is heard … faith trembles, faith weakens, faith falls to its knees … anger, despair, frustration grow like weeds in the lawn … hope takes flight, leaves town … the human spirit is battered … who can believe in the God of Abraham and Sarah any more? … who can believe in the covenant promises of a king “always on the throne,” a land always safe and secure?” Who can believe that any more?
To the weary hearts of a weary people, to those who have suffered untold loss and grief, the stirring words of hope.
For I am about to create new heavens, and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind … for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.
I have no doubt that Isaiah’s words of hope were met with catcalls and blistering laughter … How dare you speak of hope in such a time as this? Look at us Isaiah. What can come of this? We’re beaten. We’re defeated. It’s all gone; it’s all lost.
What’s going on?
I do not presume to know the mind of God … but the promise of God to be at work, in all things … in ALL things for good … is the anchor of our faith …
A faith that has withstood enormous tragedy and loss … a faith that speaks to our hearts, encourages us to push on, to push ahead … to not be afraid, and if we are afraid, well, that’s ok, too … God understands.
Call it hope.
Hope is a deeply personal element … best experienced through the community of faith … through one another … none of us has enough hope all by our lonesome … what hope we have is good, but hope joined to hope is better still …
When I can’t sing of the love of God, someone else can … and one day, when they can’t sing, I will sing for them.
We do this for one another … this is the power of the church!
In this moment, in this place, we’re surrounded by history … the voices of those who trod this way long before we showed up … they raised this building to the glory of God … they gave us the windows through which the light of Christ shines upon us all …
Hope … but let’s be wise in matters of hope … hope doesn’t always pan out for us … at least as we had hoped. History makes that clear … Israel in Egypt 430 years … how many prayers were offered, how much raised to heaven, and how much hope lost in sorrow and tragedy?
Hope needs the cautious words of Christ … we cannot hope beyond reason … hope has its limits … we know that, and we don’t like it, one bit … which is why religious charlatans will always have a job … we’re desperate for hope, and hope ginned up by pundits and preachers promising the moon has tremendous attraction - but all that glitters isn’t gold.
Fr. Greg Boyle says: “I do not think it is preposterous to believe in God. I am just hoping people stop believing in a preposterous God.”
Here in this place, we’re Presbyterians - grounded in Scripture, mindful of the wide traditions of our story, restrained in our emotions, and determined to do what’s right.
God is a god of miracles and wonders … but God is also the god of silence and sorrow … all our prayers are heard, all our prayers answered … but often in ways we cannot fathom, in ways we’d rather not …
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
Jesus speaks of suffering and death, and then adds, … not a hair of your head will perish.
A proverbial expression throughout the ancient world, a proverb of eternal hope … hope transcending time, hope beyond the boundaries of our days and months and millennia … eternal hope to give a finish to time … not a hair of your head …
What is greater than death?
Is it not Christ?
Christ for us … Christ for humanity … Christ for every creature, great and small … none shall be lost; all shall be saved … the eternal hope is the capstone of time.
Paul the Apostle writes: If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
Eternal hope strengthens moral hope … we have to work, of course, and work hard, to bring about the kingdom of God.
We can’t sit back and hope that God will do something about climate change, the homeless challenge, the anti-Semitism again rising again like a poisonous fog.
We cannot sit back, we cannot ignore our calling - to love one another, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
We cannot stand idle …
The German pastor, Martin Niemöller, after WW2, spoke often of his quietness in the face of Nazi evils … his famous quote:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Pastor Niemöller made it clear: … through silence, indifference, inaction, Germans had been complicit in the Nazi imprisonment, persecution, and murder of millions of people. The silence of Protestant church leaders, including his own [silence], was particularly egregious because they were in positions of moral authority.
“The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.”
The Apostle Paul writes: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God - what is good and acceptable and perfect.
This day, whatever the world will give to us … weal or woe, I pray that all of us will stand by one another … if we can sing the songs of Zion, let us sing with all our heart … if we can’t sing today, others will sing for us.
The ancient stories of faith, hope, and love … stories enshrined in our windows, and the cross of Christ centered in our chancel … beams of light reaching to the four corners of the world …
To the glory of God. Amen and Amen!
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