RCL Advent 1C
1 December 2024
The Anglican Parish of the Church of the Epiphany
Surrey BC
Before he became the professor of Hebrew Bible at my seminary, Fr Joseph Hunt had been a Benedictine monk of Mount Angel Abbey in Oregon. In those days, the 1950’s and 1960’s, monks almost always wore their habits even when travelling out in the world.
Trains were the most common trans-continental means of travel, and Brother Ignatius, as Fr Hunt was as in those days, once found himself on a late-night train in a car with only one other passenger – an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. The two men, destined to be together for many hours through the night, began to talk about the subject they most had in common – their love and knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures.
But after an hour or so, they reached an impasse – the topic had turned towards the coming of the Messiah, a topic that quickly brought their differences into their conversation. Fr Hunt told us that the rabbi and he sat across from one another in silence for a long time. Now, when a Benedictine monk tells you it was a long silence, you can be sure that it was very long indeed, possible even hours long.
But at some point the rabbi looked at Fr Hunt and asked him, ‘Do you live in hope?’ ‘Yes,’ Fr Hunt replied, ‘I live in hope.’ For the rest of their journey Fr Hunt and the rabbi talked about their shared hope in the coming the Promised One, ‘the branch of David’ as Christians have interpreted Jeremiah’s words to mean over the centuries.
‘Do you live in hope?’ Fr Hunt told my classmates and me this story more than forty-five years ago. And for all those years, it is the question that I keep returning to again and again. When Paula and I lost our first child to a miscarriage in the summer of 1985, this was the question. When our son David was born with a cleft lip and palate and we, as a family, faced years of reconstructive surgeries, orthodonture, counselling, speech therapy and school-yard bullies, this was the question. And, all through these challenges and many others, I think that our answer has been and continues to be, ‘Yes, we live in hope.’
Today in our psalm we shared in the prayer of an unknown poet who may have written these words in the years following the return of the people of Israel from their exile in Babylon. Their community was under the control of a foreign power, their neighbours were unfriendly and the people were struggling to restore their identity and their relationship with God.
We recited the words as translated in A Liturgical Psalter, a resource of the Anglican Church of Canada, but I’d like to share with the beginning of the Psalm as translated in the Common English Bible: “I offer my life to you, Lord. My God, I trust you. Please don’t let me be put to shame! Don’t let my enemies rejoice over me! For that matter, don’t let anyone who hopes in you be put to shame” (Psalm 25.1-3a). What allows the poet to make this commitment to God?
I believe that what empowers the poet is found in the last line: “ . . . don’t let anyone who hopes in you be put to shame’. Only someone who lives in hope can offer their life to God. Only someone who lives in hope can trust in God. Only someone who lives in hope can look for God’s paths in a world that can be tricky, confusing and cruel.
Hope is fuelled by imagination. Imagination is the ability to look at the world as it is yet to see the world as it can be. Let me say this again: Imagination is the ability to the world as it is as the world as it can be. Remember when you and I were children. A stick found on the ground could become a magic wand we could use to weave spells. A large rock could become our very own car or truck taking us on adventures in the wide world. When we put on costumes, we became what we were wearing.
One of the sorrows of growing older is that we tend to lose our imagination. We begin to look at the world as it is and that’s the end of it. Because we may have experienced disappointments when we’ve dared to see the world as it can be, we cut to the chase in order to avoid the pain. How many of us have been told or have told someone else, ‘Get real! Get your head out of the clouds!’? And when we lose our imaginations, hope becomes more and more difficult.
Some years ago I read an essay on healing by a Roman Catholic theologian named Jennifer Glen (Alternative Futures for Worship: Anointing of the Sick1987). One of the consequences of a serious illness, she wrote, is that we lose hope. The future we imagined before we became ill becomes a casualty of our illness. Healing requires us to be able to imagine a new future, different to be sure from our pre-illness vision, but a future nevertheless. When our imagination allows us to re-envision the future, then we have hope and hope brings healing.
Recovering our imagination and rebuilding hope requires a change in perspective. I remember one of my teachers who spoke about keeping a ‘journal of thanksgiving’. Every day he would write down what he as thankful for, what unexpected blessing had come his way. Some days, to be sure, were sparse, but others were full of reasons to be grateful. Those gifts of grace renewed his imagination and empowered his hope.
As we begin this Advent season in a year which has seen the retirement of a loved pastor and the re-consideration of property development and all the other changes and chances of our lives, whether personal or communally, I have a question for all us: Can we imagine a new future for ourselves as persons and a new future for ourselves as a community of faith? Are we keeping alert for the signs that God is at work in us, through us, around us and, perhaps most importantly for us? If our imagination is renewed, if we’re keeping alert to the signs of God at work, then I believe living in hope is not only possible, it is unavoidable.
I will end with words from the apostle Paul. He certainly knew what it was like to have his world turned upside down and then have to imagine a new future. Yet he was able to write to the Christians in Rome, even as he was on the road that would lead to his martyrdom, these words: “May the God of hope fill [us] with all joy and peace in faith so that [we] overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15.13 CEB)
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