Context of "Advent Hope" series: In the winter of 2021, while I was still a student at YDS, I was presented the opportunity to do pulpit supply for First Church of Christ, Congregational and Hopeville Church UCC. The two churches were yoked together and were entering Advent without a resolution to a search for a new pastor. I offered the theme of Hope in the past, present, and future to walk with the two congregations through a difficult time.
Good morning. It is good to see you all again. I am grateful for the opportunity to preach for another week and accompany you along your Advent journey. Last week, we started Advent by looking towards the future, appreciating the difficulty of hope that eludes the present. Isaiah’s prophecy helped us approach Advent with new eyes. Instead of being a season with an expected ending, Advent became the way for a yearning congregation and church to relate to Jesus’s descendants who endured the lull in-between, without knowing when Isaiah’s prophesized savior would arrive. We looked to the future to strengthen our resolve in the present. Today, we depart from the present to ponder hope in the past.
If we approach the future with anticipation, we handle the past with expectation. Since we are confined to the present, it is understandable the future is broadly used to encompass all that is unknown, while the past is the storage shed where everything known gathers dust until it is needed for reference. Since the past is all that has passed, the present and future monopolize most of our time and resources. Yet, in our pursuit to get to places faster, increase output, and decrease what is unknown, the past becomes the beckoning dream of “simpler times,” where rose colored glasses see goodness and greatness that has been lost.
Only a few years ago, a cry of “Make America Great Again” seized upon this nostalgia, imagining a Leave it to Beaver like world that never really existed, but was better than reality for those who felt disenfranchised, caught off guard by the advancing sands of time. Of course that is just one example. If you haven’t heard, the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s are in now, just like the 50’s were in during the 80’s. There is always some time that was better than now. At least that is how the logic goes. The logic of expectation.
It is amazing that, even though we cannot predict the future, we can be anxious about what lies ahead. Unlike last week, I am not referring to the unknown. I am referring to what is expected. In today’s text we got a glimpse of the “golden age” for the people of Israel. Unlike last week, there is little to be concerned about. David’s son, Solomon, managed to complete the construction of the first temple and is now awash in wealth, with gold and ivory works as testament to his success. This is the time of David and Solomon, the kings that Jews and Christians both hold as the greatest examples of prosperity for God’s favored.
America was not the first to love rags to riches stories or equate wealth with success. That is probably why, despite the many flaws of David and Solomon, this fleeting moment of prosperity is set as the desired standard, rather than an exception. Great spoils create great expectations.
When you heard today’s reading, what did you think of? What imagery caught your eye? Was it the thousands of horses, the golden drinking vessels, or the silver and cedar that were as plentiful as stone and sycamore wood? It all sounds very impressive. I guess that is what comes from being the king who “excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and wisdom.” But where is the power, the meaning in this? For all its prestige, there is nothing special about wealth, except the reality that it signals winners in a game of scarcity. There is not enough gold to make golden cups for everyone, or enough ivory for ostentatious decorations for the masses. So, a split forms between the haves and the have nots, the have nots being defined by all they lack.
Yet, that is the only difference. We know this because, as people of faith, we pray to a God who does not measure our worth by bank balances and property acquisitions. A God who picked Abraham for his faith and made a covenant with Jacob that depended upon the success of relation, rather than riches. This meant that, even when Abraham’s descendants were enslaved in Egypt, God had not forgotten them. Before they were in Solomon’s temple, God was in a tabernacle that moved with the Israelites through the wilderness and beyond. Yet, in today’s reading, the Israelites seem to have finally made it. Settled in a location where they flourished and could build a grander home for God to reside in. Anyone who remembered that time has been gone for millennia, so it gets a dusting of nostalgia and a dash of idealism to remove it from any reality that might have been. Time to dust it off.
When I thought up this series on hope, I had a feeling it would not resonate as well if I followed the conventional path of past, present, and future. After all, your situation is not conventional. You are a yoked congregation, in the process of looking for a minister, all while doing your best to maintain your community.
An unconventional situation that needs unconventional truths. That is why I started with the future, with Isaiah and the people of Jerusalem awaiting a hope in that lull between moments. Now, just as it would have for the people of Jerusalem, today’s reading rises from the past as a reminder of faded glories. After all, the power of the messianic prophecy derives from a living knowledge that God had delivered in the past, that there had once been great kings and great wealth for a chosen people who might have felt forgotten. The past built expectations that limited the ways hope could manifest.
When Isaiah’s audience heard a prophecy of a future king, they had set expectations of what a king was, what greatness could be. Since Solomon and David had represented the height of the past, that prosperity was set as something to be expected, even deserved. We have the privilege of being able to look back and know these expectations fell flat. Solomon’s wealth is still the high point that has yet to be passed. When Isaiah’s prophecy came true, the anticipated new king defied all expectations.
When Christ was born, he was a far cry from his distant regal ancestors. Although wise men brought him gold, frankincense, and myrrh, he was born to a humble background. The only crown he ever wore was one of thorns.
Anyone who was hoping this savior would return the world to the prosperity of the days of David and Solomon would have been sorely disappointed. Yet, we are all gathered here today, anticipating the birth of that humble babe, one who we believed changed the world. A babe who grew into a man who did everything except for what was expected. That is what made Jesus stand out. It is what makes his ministry relevant in every moment of time. He was not the savior anyone could have imagined, yet he became the only savior we know. What does that say about expectations?
Hope often feels futile because we make the mistake of equating hope with expectation. Expectations do not require imagination. The patterns and results of the past are the box where these expectations reside. That box is a safe place, an orderly dimension where we can forecast the future and fix the present to be predictable.
Yet, unlike Pandora’s box, there is no hope in this dimension of expectations. We think it is there, after all, when expectations are not met, the first word to come to mind is “hopeless.” We feel hopeless when we do not get the job promotion we had been planning on, when our work towards change is met with apathy or active resistance, or when climate reports continue to get more dire. Or maybe it feels hopeless when Advent comes and a new pastor still has not been found. No one can be blamed for relying on expectations, for wanting plans to be successful. However, a life of expectations overlooks the reality of hope. Hope is most powerful when it is found outside of set expectations.
Jesus was not Solomon yet we, as Christians celebrate Jesus as infinitely greater than the man who had more wealth and wisdom than any other king of his time. We see Christ, a man who never had wealth, whose only army was a ragtag band of outsiders, as greater than the man who had enough silver to make it more common than stone. Who could have expected that?
Through Christ we recognize possibilities for life that defy expectations. A life not defined by tiers of wealth and status, but the good deeds and care one gives to their neighbor, especially the poor. In this time of immense wealth inequality, with billionaires shooting themselves into space and burning through the world’s labor and resources without abandon, it is reassuring that God did not give us hope in the form of another rich man. In Christ’s ministry, the rich do not save the day, and empires do little to nothing. In a kingdom where the “meek inherit the Earth,” the hope of the world is the small communities, where two or more are gathered, offering up their time, resources, and hearts to transform this world into something we have never known. A world without racism, hunger, thirst, homelessness, war, disease, cruelty, patriarchy.
Now, lets pause. When I listed those elements of hope, how did you react inside? Did it inspire joy, strengthen your resolve, or, did tried and true defense mechanisms dismiss it as naivety, pulling you back to Earth so as not to get your hopes up?
I do not mean to call out, and I certainly do not judge. I only asked because, despite my preaching on hope, I constantly fight not to be cynical, to stay invested in things I do not see. The truth is it hurts to hope. That is why hope gets aligned with expectations. It feels safer, more practical for hope to be reserved for what we know can happen or expect to happen. Maybe that is why our culture at large has made this a season of hoping for the new phone or car model that comes out every year. It does not have to be that way.
Look around you, take a moment to consider this building we are in right now. We are in a capsule that contains the dreams and hopes of all who wanted a sanctuary for souls to be revived in. Every day people helped make this place, have kept it running, have put in the hours to decorate it so that lost children of God might find a home. It is kind of nice that it is not a mega church, with fancy trappings. It’s the church. You can know everyone’s name here, feel your impact in everything you volunteer for, in every person you interact with.
I am sure, like most churches in America, you can look back at days when membership was larger, when there were more volunteers and activities, or funds for missions. Like the wealth of Solomon, American Christianity might seem to be past its “golden age,” that is, if you measure success by membership numbers and collection pledges. Again, maybe we need to look beyond expectations. You who are gathered here right now are the church. You are not confined to what has been or what is expected, you get to decide what church is, what community is, what the future will be when we are the past everyone looks back at. I know you are anxious about your pastoral search, but do not let this downturn define you, keep you from cherishing what you have, or distract you from your missions. Think of what you expect to happen next and then leave yourself open for something beyond that.
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