This is the first Sunday of Advent and the theme is HOPE.
Here is one of my favorite quotes on hope. I believe it was originally on the Late Nite with David Letterman Show back in the mid 1980s.
“Life is a sucking, swirling, eddy of despair, bespeckled with brief glimmers of false hope in an ever-blackening universe.”
Some may look at this as being rather cynical or depressing…. But I rather like it. After all, it tells us that there is more than one type of hope. There is “false hope” one that denies reality. That suggests that there must be real hope… hope that affirms what is real or realistic.
That leads me to another favorite quote of mine. A theologian, Jurgen Moltmann stated,
“Hope alone is to be called ‘realistic’, because it alone takes seriously the possibilities with which all reality is fraught. It does not take things as they happen to stand or to lie, but as progressing, moving things with possibilities of change.”
The way I understand it, Moltmann is saying that unlike the false hope of the previous quote, there is a Real Hope. And that Real Hope is not soured by the pain and struggles of life. If things were perfect now, what would we have to hope for.
So I want to talk about two types of hope— false hope and real hope. I believe that the Christmas narrative not only gives us real hope, it also models it.
For many, hope is just wishful thinking. Maybe you hope to win the Virginia lottery… or I hope that the Buffalo Bills will win the Super Bowl before I die. The hope has no basis other than desire. I would suggest this is NOT real hope… but false hope. It is not false because it couldn’t happen— it could. You could win the Virginia Lottery. And the Buffalo Bills… well maybe not that. But this is False Hope because it has no anchor… no foundation… nothing beyond mere possibility.
Real hope, on the other hand, has an anchor… a foundation. Moltmann I think would say that real hope is based on the character of God and what he promised he would do. If God is good, trustworthy, and capable to accomplish everything he has promised to restore all things to himself… renewing all things that are broken… that is something we can rely on. To have that type of hope is not being foolish. In fact, to reject such hope would be foolish.
But it is not always easy to recognize the difference between False Hope and Real Hope. Why? Because we struggle to separate our desires from God’s plans. God may not care about the stuff you want to own, the accolades you want to receive, or the politics you espouse. God values you… but not necessarily the things you value. And it is easy for us to get confused about this.
An excellent example of this confusion is found in the Easter Story. On Sunday… the crowds were outside of the gates of Jerusalem… excited about the approach of Jesus of Nazareth— They shouted, “Praise God! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hail to the King of Israel!” This sounds like real hope. They trusted in God in the sending of the Messiah. But it wasn’t. What they wanted was a warrior king to come into Jerusalem and throw out the hated Romans. That wasn’t God’s promise… that is what they wanted and they assumed that since they wanted it, God wanted it too. God wasn’t interested in poltics back then either. We soon discover what happens when people have false hope. They crumble. Instead of Jesus throwing out the Romans, he continued to teach. The only fights he got into were verbal ones with the Jewish religious leadership. Less than a week after hailing the arrival of Jesus, the people were calling for his death and one of his own was plotting his betrayal.
Falso hope turns away from God when we don’t get what we expect.
Let’s contrast this with the Christmas story. Consider some of the key players. Consider the shepherds. They, of course, were familiar with the stories of the coming Messiah. When the angels came to the shepherds… this sounds absolutely amazing. Consider, however, what they said. The Messiah, the anointed one, has arrived as a little baby and is now lying in a food trough for animals. May I suggest to you that this in no way was what they were picturing in their minds an encounter with the Messiah would be like. We have had 2000 years to come to terms with the weird juxtaposition of Christ the Lord born in a stable… probably a cave for keeping farm animals. They did not have that time to process. Yet they immediately went to see this great event. They then told everyone around what they had experienced. The text said the people were amazed (or it could mean shocked, or confused). There is no suggestion in the text that those listening to the shepherds responded to them.
We have the magi… traveling all the way from Persia or Mesopotamia to celebrate the new King of the Jews. I can’t help but think that they did not find what they were expecting. I doubt they were picturing an unwed mother with a baby living in temporary accommodations in a suburb of Jerusalem. It would be quite understandable if the magi said to themselves… Oh wow… we sure misread the signs. Instead… Scripture says that they worshiped the child and presented gifts.
Real Hope is based on the character and promises of God… not on our wishful thinking or assuming that our wants and God’s plan are the same thing.
Consider the story of Simeon in the Bible: Luke 2:25-32 says
Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. 27 Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:
29 “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you may now dismiss[a] your servant in peace.
30 For my eyes have seen your salvation,
31 which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and the glory of your people Israel.”
We don’t know much about Simeon. It says he was righteous and devout— or he was in a right relationship with God and was consistent in the practice of his faith. He was waiting for the comforting and healing of God for his people… and he was filled with the Spirit of God.
God told him that before he died he would see the Lord’s Messiah. I don’t know how old he was but it sounds like Simeon recognized himself as being near the end of his life. And I don’t know when God told him that he would see the Messiah. I would like to think that he was quite young when he was told. And year after year he was faithful in watching and waiting and living with hope.
That is a hard thing. Proverbs 13:12 says that “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” Jesus knew that maintaining hope is hard for us. A number of the parables of Jesus deal with the struggle we have with time— whether it be in terms of patience, maintaining faithfulness, or struggling with uncertainty— clinging to hope is difficult. It is easy to fall into hopelessness (rejecting the one who gives hope) at one extreme, or false hope (replacing the one who gives hope with our own fantasies).
I believe that Simeon held on to hope year after year because of the source of his hope— God. And when a couple of travellers speaking with a Gallilean accent show up at the temple and could only afford the sacrificial offering of the poorest, Simeon did not turn his back on them because the child did not match his expectations of what the Messiah would look like or where he would come from. Instead, he took baby Jesus in his arms and praised God and thanked Him for doing exactly what He promised.
I think this can inspire us… to remember that God is the one we can rely on based on his benevolence, his promises, and his power.
Despite this, I find hope rather difficult for me. I am rather a pessimist. For me, not only is the glass half empty… but they probably got my order wrong as well.
It is God’s sense of humor that I am involved in Christian counseling. My wife Celia is a clinical chaplain and pastoral counselor. She really should be up here speaking, not me. This is her topic. Primarily I teach missions courses at seminary… but I also help out with our counseling center— Bukal Life Care. The name “Bukal” we chose for two reasons. First, it was chosen because of our sending church— Bukal means Spring— as in Spring Hill Baptist Church. The other is that it provides an acronym. A lot of the counseling we do relates to hope… since hopelessness is a cause of many problems… and a symptom of many other problems.
As I said, I struggle with hope.
Back in 2003 I quit my job at Northrop-Grumman and we sold our house so that we could go off to the Philippines as missionaries. I have heard people say that I or we must have had great faith— one could also say hope here… they are closely related terms.
But that was not true. I was prepared to arrive in Manila and realize that this was a complete and total mistake. We had decided no matter how bad things go, we would stay one year. Ultimately, God was faithful, and we stayed 3 years. Then we came back to Spring Hill and talked to our pastor. We said, we have finished our schooling at seminary and have been very active in medical missions. But since we are done, we can come back and serve at Spring Hill if he wants. Dan said NO… we should continue in the Philippines. I am not sure if he wanted us to serve there or was just getting rid of us. But we stayed and then set up the Bukal Life Care and Counseling Center and CPSP-Philippines. Things were going well until 2012 when our main ministry partner did some things that a minister really really should not do. It was so bad that I wondered if our ability to minister was permanently damaged. It was our other ministry partners who said, “We shouldn’t stop… we should keep moving forward.” And this did keep moving forward. A couple of years after that, our finances were hit suddenly and we were not sure we could continue. It started looking around for other jobs. When the only jobs I could find were far outside of my own skill set and passion— Celia and I decided to just continue with what were called to do as long as we could feed our family. And we were able to. Then health problems that had been affecting our children really began to flare up and really got to be a problem. It became so bad that again we considered stopping. But we didn’t and now all three are doing much better and the ministry at seminary, the counseling center, and CPSP-Philippines has never been better.
So when I say, that we as Christians need to embrace hope, I am not speaking as one in which hope comes easily. And I am not speaking as one who thinks that hope means one will get everyone one wants when one wants it. I am, however, speaking as one who has struggled with faith and has discovered, almost to my surprise, that God is indeed faithful in his benevolence and his promises. The path is never what I have expected, but it has been to where I am supposed to go and be.
We are about to go to the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper is a ritual of hope.
I Corinthians 11:26 says, For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup (our participation in the present), you proclaim the Lord’s death (our foundation in the past for real hope) until he comes (hope lived out until Jesus returns.)
Thank you for your time and attention, and always for your support.
Bob and Celia Munson 