“Called to Hope”

Jeremiah 33:14-16

Jeremiah, as he says these words, has just told Judah of God’s judgment on them: because of their sins, God would hand them over to Babylon, their enemy, the land would be left desolate, Jerusalem would be in ruins, and her people carried off into captivity. It was a pretty hopeless message. Jeremiah was prophesying the end of the nation and the end of their way of life. They might have also supposed that it was the end of their faith, because it was believed, in the ancient world, that if another people conquered you, it meant they had also conquered your god. It seemed that God was not waiting for the Babylonian god to come do battle with him. He was abdicating the throne.

Luther said that whatever we ultimately depend upon, the thing we place our trust and faith in, is our god. The fact is that many have left the faith because they feel that there are things in this world that are more powerful than God, that can provide them what God cannot: money, success, status, the good life. And others have given up on God because they feel he has abdicated his throne to the devil. It seems to many people today, that the gods to which our world gives allegiance have overcome the God of the biblical faith.

The penalty for going after gods was death. The penalty for Israel’s going after other gods was the death of the nation. It was beyond conception, that a nation could continue to exist in exile. It was impossible for them to conceive that their faith could continue in God after they had been defeated. That they might yet return was beyond reason.

Many feel the same today. A loved one dies, and we wonder why God let it happen. Perhaps we begin to think that death is stronger than God. In our grief, we enter the realm of death and it is inconceivable to us that we can continue in him, because death has won the day. We give in to despair, because to believe that our loved one will be given back to us is beyond reason.

For many, that is exactly what happened. In the great Babylonian melting pot of nations, removed from their land, removed from their culture, removed from the temple, the sacrifices, from their whole religious system – their faith changed. It had to. Many left the faith altogether, opting for the faith of the victors. Many were seduced by other religions. Many formed a syncretism of Jewish practice and pagan belief. Divested of its cultural roots, for many the Jewish faith became for them only a cultural memory, remembered in their festivals – just as Christmas is for most people, devoid of its true meaning.

It is to these people that Jeremiah declares this promise:

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’”

Hope in the face of devastation. Hope based on a sure promise. Not only for Israel, but even for Judah, which had been utterly destroyed one hundred years before. But not only for them, but for us as well. The name under which the reign of God will be placed will be called, “the Lord is our righteousness.” “Righteousness” means “restored relationship.” We will be restored to God, to one another as a new community, and to ourselves through this hopeful promise.

In this midst of the problems of this age, we are, as Christ’s people, as God’s people, called to hope. We are called to believe that the answers to our problems do not lie in social restructuring, or in a return to the past. It does not lie in any of these gods who seem so much more powerful than ours. They lie in God – in the one true God – the God we know in Jesus. He holds the future. It is our trust in him, and our hope in him, that enables us to live into that future, that enables us to live in his coming kingdom, even when we cannot define that kingdom clearly, or see it coming into being with our earthly eyes. He holds us. He will not let us go. Even if, along the way, we are forced to take a journey into a far country – he will also be there. And because he is with us, there is hope, and reason enough to rejoice.

Advent is about hope. It is about waiting on God’s promises to be fulfilled. It is about living in the future kingdom of God, even while we wait for its arrival. It is about not growing weary in hoping. We are called to hope – to anticipate his arrival. We are to always live uncomfortably in this land, because we are merely sojourners here – members of another kingdom, the kingdom of God. We live as those who are anxious to return to our Father’s arms, to hear again his familiar voice, and to feel the strong arms, not of a mighty God, but of a gentle carpenter, grasp us in loving embrace. That is our hope this advent season.