Fourth Sunday of Advent – 2021
The season of Advent that we have been celebrating in the time leading up to the celebration of Christmas this week is a season characterized by hope.
It has often struck me that in Australia we have our own experience of hope. From penal settlement and convict experience, through to the mythology of the pioneer farmer, and to the shores of Gallipoli, and extending even to our fascination with sport, Australians, historically, have defined themselves as those who often find themselves pitched against an overwhelming odd with every prospect of defeat, yet discovering there a new sense of solidarity with one another. As Joachim Dirks once commented,
The preoccupation with struggle against overwhelming odds is surely a significant component of the Australian national psyche in so far as there is a marked tendency for Australians to see themselves as strugglers or to identify themselves with those who struggle to survive or to improve their lot . . .
Indeed, every summer we play out this sense of hope as we fight against the threat of bushfires which is never far removed from us. We are brought together in hope as we pitch ourselves against an overwhelming threat.
Such an experience of hope, like other forms of hope, essentially arises from what we do not have. We do not have security. We do not have peace. We do not have all that we wish for ourselves and for our families. Hope begins when our spirits come to a limit and stretch out beyond ourselves in expectation and anticipation.
Human hope, however, stands in need of receipt of another hope – that which we know as theological hope. Theological hope is born, not from what we do not have, but is born, rather, from what we have been given. This type of hope is more than the realization of our own human aspirations, no matter how ardent they might be, and no matter how passionately they stretch out beyond us. This new type of hope has its genesis, not within us, but outside of us. We have been given a word of hope. That hope is faith in a promise given (Gen 12:2-3; 13:15; Ex 6:5-8; Is. 65:17).
Christian hope breathes on the irrevocable nature of this promise. We have been promised something. We are the people who live by this promise. It is a promise that life in all its fullness awaits us, and that it will be ours, as our faith in the story of Jesus comes into its realization. It is a promise that in every end there is a beginning.
This promise that we have received from outside of ourselves changes the way in which we see our life and it changes the way in which we do things. It is that promise that opens for us new possibility even in the midst of what might be extraordinary limitation. The promise we have been given, and the hope that springs ever new from this faith, enables us to celebrate even in the face of frustration, distortion or limitation.
Such is the paradox of genuine Christian hope that it is most keenly experienced in the face of all that would seem to deny it. Genuine Christian hope is, therefore, exercised in the midst of evil: it is the projection of the Promise, given and received, over the absurdity of evil however it might be experience in our life such as at times of failure, at times of sickness, at times of great disappointment in our lie. None of these experiences negate the promise by which we now live as followers of Jesus. In every end, there is a beginning.
In Christian life, hope meets hope. The hope that arises from our hearts in our struggle to find meaning in the face of all that threatens to overwhelm us, meets a hope that is the celebration of a Promise given to us.
As Christians, we are the people who live in this intersection. As those full of hope, we are the people to whom another hope has been entrusted. We are custodians of this hope received, and we are called to celebrate that hope. This new hope received, meeting the hope that rises from our hearts, means that we can celebrate even in the face of the world’s darkness. It is a celebration of the freedom we have now because of that hope, of the beauty that we can create now because of that hope, and of joy that we can share now because of that hope.
As for the child in Elizabeth’s womb, so our own spirits quicken into new life because of the promise that greets us and that we receive. Yes, blessed are all of us who believe that the promise made us by the Lord will be fulfilled.