Where there is hope
Sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Advent, year B
Bible reading: Isaiah 61:1-4,8-11
Where there’s life, there’s hope,
goes the well-known saying.
But is it true?
I’ve known lots of people who were alive, but they didn’t seem to have any hope.
- There was George who lived a life in and out of the psychiatric hospital;
- There was Danny who lived his life off and on the bottle;
- There was Dorothy who lived her life in and out of love and the church.
All lovely people, but all living without hope, living in constant circles of despair.
Where there’s hope, there’s life.
That’s a more accurate saying, especially for Christians.
Martin Luther once said: Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.
But this hope is not just wishful thinking. It is not just crossing your fingers and hoping it will work out all right. This Christian hope is fixed on God and his promises. Psalm 42 says it well:
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
Psalm 130 says:
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.
The Psalmists spoke with such confidence in God, because they had seen God at work. God had kept his promises to Abraham. God had led Israel through the Red Sea into the Promised Land. God had raised up King David to deliver the people. Later God had brought the people back from slavery in Babylon.
When people put their hope in warhorses and chariots, and human leaders and alliances, they are sunk and downcast. When people put their hope in God and his promises, and live according to his word, they are saved.
Isaiah 61 is one of the best known sections of the Old Testament. It brought hope to the people – maybe first when they were slaves in Babylon … certainly later when they returned from Exile and found the land of Israel in such a state of destruction, with the buildings and walls and temple all in ruins.
It is in the time of despair that hope in God proves itself. When the money market is in crisis, and the Murray Darling basin goes from bad to worse; when morality crumbles in the world, and faithful discipleship crumbles in the church – that is the time for hope in God to shine out brightly like a light in a dark place. Hope is like a light in a dark place.
An Indian Theologian has said:
A candle light is a protest at midnight.
It is a nonconformist.
It says to the darkness – I beg to differ.—Father Samuel Rayan
Biblical hope is not wishful thinking … hope is not whistling in the dark; it is a protest at midnight that points to the dawn of a new day.
—James A. Harnish ADVENT, A calendar of devotions, 2008
Hope is a small candle burning in the deepest darkness. Yet all the darkness of the world cannot put out that light.
So the candles of the Advent Wreath are an ever-increasing protest against the darkness of a world without God. With the lighting of each candle our hope in the Light of the World grows, and we put our hope in God, and let our light shine to draw attention to God.
A single candle glowing in the dark is enough to give us hope for that day when the lights will go on again all over the world.
—James A. Harnish
Isaiah is that candle of hope for the people of the Old Testament. And when Jesus steps onto the stage hundreds of years after Isaiah, he takes up these words of Isaiah and says: “today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Jesus is the true hope of the world, bringing good news of God’s favour & forgiveness. Where there’s hope, there’s life.
First Isaiah, and then especially Jesus, bring such hope that people are raised up to live new lives, which bring hope and life to others.
In his book: Long Walk To Freedom, Nelson Mandela speaks of the chaplains who came to take services while he was in prison. He said he went to every service of every denomination and listened to every word the preachers said. Not surprisingly he speaks of this under the heading: Beginning to Hope. God’s word is living and active, raising hope, creating faith, producing endurance.
God anoints and sends his messenger to preach good news to the poor, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives … to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour … to comfort all who mourn.
These words brought some hope to the people of the Old Testament. They returned to Jerusalem. They rebuilt Jerusalem and it’s walls and its temple. But their hearts were not much changed. Their land was soon overrun. Darkness descended upon them. But there were still some flickering lights. Hope was never totally extinguished. There was always hope of a Messiah, hope that God would come and save his people.
And then came the day when Jesus read these words in his home synagogue in Nazareth and declared: today these words have become true.
And the people rejoiced at the thought that the Messiah had come to save them.
They rejoiced, until Jesus said that he had come to save all people, not just Israel. Jesus had not just come for upstanding church members, but for the poor, the broken hearted, the captives in prison and in sin, the mourners who grieve over the death of their loved ones, and over the sins they seem unable to kill off.
Jesus has come to help every outcast of society: the aids victims of Australia, the cholera victims of Zimbabwe, the refugees of Sudan, and all the persecuted Christians of China, India and the Middle East.
But especially, Christ came into the world, and was given the name “JESUS”, because he will save his people from their sins.
Jesus came to suffer and die for our sins, to be killed rather than to kill, and through his innocent suffering and death, to conquer evil, and deliver us from its bondage.
Jesus came to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour
, the jubilee year, the year when the slaves are freed, the debts are cancelled, and ancestral property is returned to its rightful owner. Jesus came with the favour of God, to restore all people and things to the perfection God created.
All who trust in Jesus are born again to a new life, and wait in hope for a new heaven and a new earth. Hebrews says that we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.
We are so certain of the future through what Jesus has done, we can set to work in hope to live like candles in the darkness of this world.
So Isaiah says to those to whom the Messiah comes: they will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord, for the display of his glory. They will rebuild the ancient ruins …
When Jesus comes we delight greatly in the Lord
, and all that he has done for us. But then we join him in bringing his favour to others, telling them all he has done, comforting them, setting them free, giving them hope for today and tomorrow.
Because you’re a Christian, you’re a candle of hope in the world, for today and tomorrow. Where there’s hope there’s life. Jesus is coming to light the candle of hope. We can rise up and live, and bring hope to our families, and to the world, in Jesus’ name. Amen.