Advent II- Hope
It was just this word of hope the people desperately needed to hear--the words that Isaiah wrote about the dry-looking stump with a green shoot growing out of it. The Israelites felt hopeless, in despair. The words Isaiah wrote told of that despairing and proclaimed that the door that opened up to future hope was not completely closed. There may yet be some gate of hope the people could get through.
In ancient Chinese medicine, there is a powerful acupuncture point called "the gate of hope." When a person is despondent, opening up the gate of hope allows one to see a bright and clear future. Chinese acupuncture physicians believe that the healing of the body is connected to the health of the mind and the spirit. The Chinese have never given up that belief, and western physicians now know that there is a great deal of validity to the body, mind and spirit connection. In classical Chinese acupuncture, thin needles are inserted at tiny points on the body. This opens up blocked energy paths or meridians. When a certain meridian is blocked, there is no flow of energy or chi, and the result is that an organ of the body experiences illness. That same blocked energy causes specific emotional and spiritual distress.
When energy is flowing through the gate of hope, it opens the way for a flood of hopefulness to come into the soul. My acupuncture physician once told me that whenever a patient says, "I feel hopeless," she knows instantly what she needs to do. It is as if the patient’s inner spirit cries out for renewed hopefulness. So before she does anything else, she will open up the gate of hope in that person.
The Chinese have known for centuries what modern scientific researchers and behavioral specialists have now proven as truth--that with all hope lost, the will-spirit of life is gone, and a person can actually die. With hope completely gone, there is no life.
Perhaps Isaiah felt that there was no hope and no life when he prophesied about the stump of Jesse. 3,000 citizens of Jerusalem – including King Jehoichin, the queen mother, and the city’s leading officials – had been deported as captives to Babylon. Turmoil continued, and eleven years later, the land of Judah took the final blow. Jerusalem was captured and destroyed after suffering unspeakable hardship at the ruthless hands of the Babylonian army.
It was late in the life and ministry of the aged prophet. Isaiah searched the horizon for some sign of the coming Messiah. Patiently, and sometimes not so patiently, the prophet waited for a divine occurrence that would change the world and change his life. He watched with deep longing for hints of future hope. But the years of waiting grew long, the prophet grew old, and the possibility of giving up hope had, no doubt, crossed his mind. Yet Isaiah continued to watch and wait, all the time proclaiming – more eloquently than any other prophet – the Messianic hope. In lavish poetry, Isaiah wrote of the time when hope would be restored, when wars would be no more, when the unblemished age would begin. He spoke of a world of righteousness. He declared that the people must never give up hope.
But we must know that Isaiah was no superhuman messenger dwelling in a state of religious ecstasy and completely unaware of the tragic reality of his world. We need to know that Isaiah might well have reached the end of his rope, the end of his hope. He might very well have closed his prophetic mind, laid down his responsibility before a seemingly unresponsive God, and said, "Too many years! Too long without a single sign! I have wasted my breath proclaiming this messianic hope that never shows even a glimmer of possibility. I give up! I quit! Get yourselves another prophet who can make you feel better. I’m all out of words, completely out of energy, and utterly out of hope."
But somehow Isaiah’s gate of hope must have opened, because he never quit speaking of the coming messianic hope. He never gave up, even though his prophecy was born of his intense anguish of soul. The prophet fully expected the coming of the Messiah to occur in his own day. How could he have known that the fulfillment of the glorious and hopeful future he longed to see would delay for another seven centuries? Could it be that even the aging prophet who spoke most gloriously of Israel’s hope, at times felt the personal despair of feeling that all hope was gone?
Many people live in utter hopelessness. For multitudes of people, people that you and I see every day, hope is lost! And when one is left without any hope at all, that person is left standing helplessly in a pile of dead dreams. Not a very glorious Advent picture . . .
· No angels promising any miracle happenings
· No brilliant star in the night sky lighting a path to a place of promise
· No divine new birth that wondrously shatters the natural order of things
· No fresh renewal of hope in hearts that have endured a year’s worth of disappointment!
Sometimes there is much more disappointment in our hearts than hope! You have probably not seen a single angel this Advent season. Nor have we noticed any sort of unusually bright star in the darkness. As far as I can see, the hopelessness of the people I know has not been shattered by a fresh renewal of hope! Not yet, anyway!
But this is Advent! This is the season when hope can rise within us as fresh as the dawn. This is the season for shouting "Don’t give up hope yet! There is more to us than meets the eye. There is more to this situation that meets the eye."
If we seek anything from Advent--anything other than crowded malls and full parking lots and harried shoppers . . . If we are searching through Advent for anything at all, we are counting on the fact that hope really can flood our spirits, and fill our hearts, and drench our souls, and even rush through our energy pathways creating an astounding surge of chi.
Think for a moment about what attacks your hope. Illness, or family turmoil, or grief, or rejection.
Unfortunately, hope does not just kick in all by itself, demolish all our trouble, and make us instantly feel better.
Holy and divine hope labors and moves and strives within us!
Holy and divine hope comes as a gift from God, and it enters our despairing places and weaves together the broken pieces of our lives in new and unexpected ways. Hope "sees" what we cannot readily see. Most of all, hope learns and discerns every despairing moment of our past and unyieldingly refuses to let us view that past as a complete loss.
This time of year can be a season of depression. Right in the middle of the hype that touts Christmas as the "happiest time of the year," millions of people dwell in their own reality that contrasts Christmas feasting with poverty and hunger, or lavish Christmas gifts with not enough money to buy any gifts at all. How stark a contrast between a family feast filled with love, and scenes that are so opposite: a family table with an empty chair that screams of a painful absence, a family celebration sparked with family strife. This season can be NOT at all the happiest time of the year!
Perhaps that’s why Isaiah is such a credible and expressive prophet of Advent’s hope . . . because he never saw that hope in his own lifetime. He knew the anguish of unfulfilled expectations. He knew, like we know, the agony of waiting in hopelessness and helplessness.
Just as John the Baptizer knew. When we hear John’s impassioned words during Advent, we hear the cries of another prophet with unfulfilled expectations. Because John died without knowing whether Jesus would bring his prophesies to fulfillment. He died not knowing if his hopes were realized.
No, you and I probably cannot shout exuberant words of hope from the rooftops and promise everyone that hears us that their fondest hopes will be fulfilled. This Advent season will still find the homeless shivering in the cold, and children struggling to survive family violence, and people coping with profound loss. In this world, it is difficult to shout words of hope.
But perhaps we have been chosen and anointed to proclaim God’s astounding hope to a humanity in despair. Perhaps you and I have been chosen to pray and to never lose hope. Perhaps we have been anointed to proclaim God’s astounding hope to a world bowed down in sadness, to every person who says, "I feel hopeless. I have given up hope."
When hope is lost, the spirit within a person dies and the picture of a lifeless stump describes the human soul and the human heart. But Isaiah just cannot let it go at that! Isaiah uses an unusual Hebrew word for "the stump of Jesse." The prophet does not describe a dead and rotting tree stump. Isaiah prophesies of a stump that remains (and survives) after a tree has been cut down – a stump injured by the ax, yet not utterly destroyed. The roots are not lifeless. The stump that looks dry and barren above the ground holds a secret that is hidden under the ground. The dead-looking stump only seems dead. In due time, all would see the miracle of a sprout . . .the gray bark will show a hint of vibrant green, and glossy leaves will begin to grow out of the stump that seemed completely dead.
And so I proclaim to us all that we may be injured, but we are not utterly destroyed. The life that seems barren and without hope may hold an underground miracle of roots alive! I declare on this Advent Sunday of hope that, just when our hope seems all used up, there is a wonder and a mystery within that promises a renewed sense of life in our despairing spirits.
Isaiah had a clear vision of that kind of miraculous, but hidden, hope. Isaiah had a clear vision of the hope that Israel so desperately needed. Isaiah had a clear vision of the Messiah that would bring promise to their desolation . . .and he wrote with a trumpet-peal of faith and hope that a shoot would emerge from the stump of Jesse, and a righteous branch would grow from his roots.
So let us sing. Let us proclaim from the depths of our spirits that trumpet-peal of faith and hope that the world so desperately needs to hear.
