Text: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing (Rom 15.13)
Our New Testament reading began with a reminder that ‘whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.’ Looking back to our Old Testament reading with these words in mind, the prophet Micaiah may certainly be seen as a role model for steadfastness in the face of intense pressure from a violent and evil king, who would not listen to advice he did not want to hear, throwing Micaiah into jail for insisting on telling the unwelcome truth. Not much hope in all that for Micaiah, nor indeed for King Ahab, who would bleed to death as the battle was won, propped up in his fighting chariot to face the enemy. It wasn’t even much of a victory, since the day ended with the victorious Israelites scattering to their homes on news of the king’s death. If there is a glimmer of hope, it lies in the sense that the steadfast God, whom Micaiah served so fearlessly, was working his purposes out through the ugly twists and turns of Jewish history, despite the folly and wickedness of so many of their kings.
As St Paul reminds us in our second reading, the prophets learned over the years that God’s loving purposes were to be understood as extending beyond the narrow, tribal destiny of a nation occupying a promised land under the protection of their god, to the Gentiles among whom they lived, who were to rejoice with them. We tend to think of ourselves, with gratitude certainly, but with some degree of satisfaction too, as the Gentiles to whom Paul began to carry the gospel, but I would like to suggest that we in our time need to look beyond the Christian Church, beyond even the 72% of people in this country who claim to be Christians even if they rarely darken the doors of a church, to the new Gentiles of our own day the Buddhists and Hindus, the Muslims and Sikhs, the agnostics and the atheists and yes, of course, the Jews as well, to all of whom Archbishop John Sentamu, in his enthronement sermon, bid us extend the hand of friendship. Rejoice, O Gentiles with his people; and again, in him the Gentiles shall hope. That inclusive message, that expectation, remains at the heart of our Advent hope. The vision of the prophets is for us and for all humanity. The King is coming. Make ready in the desert a highway for our God.
As the Vicar reminded us in his sermon last Sunday evening, Jesus himself looked forward to the coming of such a kingdom, indeed he sensed that it was very near, though even He did not know how or when it would come about. And just when things began to look good for him, when the crowds began to chant Hosanna, his enemies dragged him off to the refuse tip just outside the city, to put him to a humiliating and painful death. For three days it must have seemed that all hope had died with him. But the resurrection changed all that. At first the reality of Jesus’ resurrection was wonder enough on its own. He is not here, he is risen, he is alive. But as they began to explore the implications of this astonishing truth for his mission and his message, and for themselves, they came to the understanding that that moment of death and resurrection was not some isolated wonder unique to Jesus himself, but the turning point in the history of the world, the decisive confrontation between good and evil, indeed it was the moment to which the establishment of the kingdom of God could be dated Anno Domini as we used to be allowed to say. Jesus’ life and death and resurrection became the ground of their hope, as it is the ground of our hope to this day.
For our hope is focussed not just on the coming of God’s kingdom at the end of time, when his rule will finally extend to all creation on earth as in heaven. That is a wonderful future vision, which helps to sustain our hope in dark days when evil men and women seem to have it all their own way, when the world and its rulers seem as hell-bent on destroying one another as King Ahab and his Aramaean foes on the field of Ramoth-gilead. But that hope is for the long term, when, as Maynard Keynes famously said, we are all dead but wait a minute, our God has turned the world upside down. In the long term, we are not all dead, we are all alive. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul calls on the spirit of wisdom and revelation to show us the hope to which God has called us (Eph 1.18) which is that we who were dead, because we had cut ourselves off from God by our sins, have, by God’s grace and his great love for us, been made alive with Christ, and raised to sit with him in the heavenly places (Eph 2.4-6). Or as we read in the first letter of Peter, ‘he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading.’ (1 Peter 1.3-4).
Yes, there is a sense in which the coming of God’s kingdom is to be seen on a grand scale, in the great sweep of history, and we have to rely on the eye of faith to see signs of it in the here and now. It is not so obvious as the cracking of the ice, by which the creatures of Narnia know that Aslan has broken the power of the White Witch. But there is also a sense in which the ground of our hope in the kingdom of God is to be directly experienced by our quiet, attentive awareness of the presence within our own hearts and lives of the spirit of Christ, our Lord and our King. If the ultimate triumph of God’s kingdom is the superhuman dimension of Advent, this quieter coming is if you like the human dimension of Advent, our expectation of the coming of ‘our God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man’.
The assurance of our hope, the event which gives it substance, is the resurrection. ‘For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive’ (1 Cor 15.22). If by God’s grace the Holy Spirit dwells within us, then indeed we are alive with the life of Christ, and death, which will one day claim our bodies, will have no power over our true selves. Christ’s resurrection is the ultimate guarantee of our resurrection, but it is already implicit in the incarnation for which we prepare ourselves through the season of Advent. On one level we look for Christ to come on the clouds of heaven in power and great glory, but on another he offers himself to us as a vulnerable defenceless baby, the most compelling symbol of that unlimited giving and receiving of love which is the defining principle of God as Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
Is it not the love of God, as we see it in the life and death of Jesus, as we experience it by the grace of the Holy Spirit, that is the ground of our hope? Hope does not disappoint us, says St Paul (Romans 5.4), ‘because love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us’. In Paul’s words again, faith, hope and love are the three things which will always be there, at least in this life (1 Cor. 13.13). In the life to come, faith and hope will give way to knowledge and certainty, but love will be the very air we breathe in God’s kingdom. Meanwhile, love is already the source of so much joy in our lives, as we have been reminded only to-day by the joyful celebration of Ted and Rachel Nugee’s golden wedding anniversary. Our faith that love is at the heart of God gives us joy and peace. So, as we look forward in this season of Advent to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, both now and at the end of time, I conclude with the words from our new testament reading with which I began May the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace in believing, so that we may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Handley Stevens