Full Spectrum Hope

A sermon on Luke 21:25-38 and Jeremiah 33:14-16 for Advent 1, 2024, Preached at St Paul's, Ashgrove

It is wonderful to be back with you!

I understand a few things have happened while I was away – in the parish and in the world. I am still catching up on the parish stuff, but I have suffered the world stuff with you from a distance.

There seems to be a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, but not anything we could remotely call peace. The violent mortification of hope in that region continues.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says, “When you see stuff like that happening, straighten your back and lift your head because your redemption is at hand.”

Donald Trump is to be the President of the US again. I am not going to make any assumptions about how each of you might feel about that, but I have noticed that even those who love Trump know that his second presidency is not going to be characterised by movements towards stability or equity. And many people fear he will lead the world into a very troubled time indeed.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says, “When you see stuff like that happening, straighten your back and lift your head because your redemption is at hand.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has resigned because he was implicated in failure to report egregious abuse in the Church of England. This news has added to the anxiety of people who have been abused in churches, and the anxiety of people who have worked so hard to make churches safer spaces for everyone.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says, “When you see stuff like that happening, straighten your back and lift your head because your redemption is at hand.”

The world gets dark sometimes. Our lives get dark sometimes. You know that. I know that. Darkness can feel like it is separating us from God, but it is in the darkness that we can expect God’s light to burst through – any time now!

Luke refers back to the prophet Daniel, who spoke of a dark time when the people would be oppressed under the heal of a succession of empires until suddenly those arrogant bullies would be swept away and one like a human being would appear in the clouds to take the leadership of the world into good, kind, righteous hands at last.

Just when the darkness seems impenetrable, God will turn up with all the light that is needed.

“When you see stuff like that happening, straighten your back and lift your head because your redemption is at hand.”

Our lectionary – the set of Bible readings we use each Sunday – wisely directs our attention to another prophet, Jeremiah. The Gospel writers note lots of connections between Jesus and Jeremiah, so it is often helpful to refer to him as we try to understand Jesus.

Jeremiah lived and wrote at a time then the city of Jerusalem and the state of Judea were about to fall to the Babylonians and the people taken into exile. This was a dark, dark time indeed, and there were plenty of prophets assuring the people that there was nothing to worry about:

God won’t let the city fall.

God won’t let the temple be destroyed.

God won’t let the royal line be extinguished.

That is what hope looked like to them: pretending that everything will somehow turn out OK. But is that hope? Or is it just denial and wishful thinking, fuelled by fear. That sort of hope doesn’t help anyone. Jeremiah would have nothing to do with such false hope. He declared, loudly and often:

The city will fall.

The temple will be destroyed.

The royal line will be extinguished.

The people didn’t like that. The king didn’t like that. They burned his writings and put him down a well.

They wanted wishful thinking from their prophets, but Jeremiah gave them truth. He said to them (my words):

“We are living in dark times.

Our times are going to get a whole lot darker.

You will lose everything that gave your life meaning and security,

Everything that that enabled you to believe in God’s presence and God’s love.

The light will be extinguished, and darkness will engulf you.

AND in the darkness – where you feel abandoned by God – God will be doing a new thing. A Great thing. A work of restoration and healing, recreation and renewal, beyond anything you could have imagined.”

“When you see stuff like that happening, straighten your back and lift your head because your redemption is at hand.”

Jesus lived in dark times. His people were oppressed by a new empire – the Romans had replaced the Babylonians, but empires are empires. Power and oppression are boringly predictable.

Like Jeremiah, Jesus refused to give his people false hope. If you flick back to the beginning of Luke 21 in your Bibles you will see that, just like Jeremiah, he announces

The city will fall.

The temple will be destroyed.

There will be great violence, dispossession and injustice.

It will happen. The darkness will fall. And it did fall. Less than 40 years later.

This Gospel was probably written after that, and Luke would have shaped these words so as to give comfort to those who had lived through that dark time. And to them he said:

“When you see stuff like that happening, straighten your back and lift your head because your redemption is at hand.”

It is dark, but just watch what God can do with darkness!

The darkness of the destruction of that city and temple was due to happen almost 40 years after Jesus spoke these words, but there is another darkness that is about to fall much sooner – within a week. Very soon, Jesus will walk willingly into the darkness of false accusation, unjust trial, torture and death. Millions of people have walked that path before him and since. Power and oppression are boringly predictable. He knew where he would be going if he exposed the darkness rather than denying it with false hope and wishful thinking.

He straightened his back and lifted his head and stared down the darkness, knowing what God can do with darkness. And in the darkness of his tomb, God brought resurrection.

“When you see stuff like that happening, straighten your back and lift your head because your redemption is at hand.”

People sometimes get confused about Jesus saying all this would happen within a generation. They try to identify things that did happen within 40 years, but also find things that still don’t seemed to have happened after, even 2,000ish years.

The things Jesus spoke about happened within a week in his death and resurrection. They also happened within a generation when, in the darkness of the destruction of the temple, God was raising up a new, indestructible, organic temple that could be in all places at all times – the body of Christ, of which we are a part.

But yes, there is more to come. There is always more to come. There will be the ultimate fulfilment of this pattern when Jesus returns as the unextinguishable and eternal light that banishes all darkness.

It is also true for every generation, because there is darkness in every generation. We are tempted to push the darkness away with wishful thinking and false hope, but the darkness thickens and deepens, nevertheless. Even in the darkness of our generation, we can expect God to turn up and bring light. We can expect Christ to be present to bring new possibilities and new life to birth right there in the darkness.

Power and oppression are boringly predictable, but new life is infinitely varied. Hope comes in every colour of the rainbow!

So, look for it! Look for it like you search your fruit trees at the start of spring. They may seem lifeless after winter, but even in their deadness you can start to see little shoots of new life.

Look for them! They might not be where we expect to find them. The people of Jesus’ time and Jeremiah’s time expected to find new life springing from the temple, but it was not there. God was doing something new. We do the same. We look for new life in things that have brought us light in the past. But it might not be there. God is infinitely creative. Hope comes in every colour of the rainbow!

We might find new life in protest movements: in strong, insistent voices calling for peace and justice, even though those voices don’t seem to be using the name of Jesus.

We might find new life in people who are working for the restoration of our ailing planet even though those people might not acknowledge God as creator.

We may perceive new life in those who are trying to move our legal system away from retribution, in the direction of healing and restoration, even though they may not have fully understood that they are doing God’s work, since God’s justice is all about the healing of relationships.

So look for it - and not just in the big things. We may see it in a kind action, a gentle word, a choice someone makes to refrain from violence.

There is darkness, and in the darkness there is light.

There is evil and there is love.

There is death and there is new life.

There is giving up and there is taking up.

And in all these things:

“When you see stuff like that happening, straighten your back and lift your head because your redemption is at hand.”

Amen!

With Love from Rev Margaret