THERE'S HOPE!

Luke 1:39-45

 

In this day and age, there seems to be a paucity of hope among us, and thus we are led to wonder, what is there that we can really be hopefully about.  An inventory of our world, and the days of our lives, would indicate that we teeter (and teeter) on the brink of hopelessness and despair. 

The news abounds with such signs.  The Affordable Health-care Act (what is known as Obama-care) has consistently been threatened with failure and demise over the past several weeks.  Sequestration, fiscal cliffs, foreclosure, shut-downs, bankruptcy, have become are part of our everyday reality. 

Crime continues to infect our neighborhoods – in Baltimore city, again there will have been over 200 people murdered in 2013.  Global conflict and wars persist, natural disasters kill thousands around the world, preventable diseases like AIDS and malaria continue to afflict too many of our sisters and brothers – especially in the two-thirds world.  The days of our lives often appear to be hopeless – don’t they?

And yet, the death of Nelson Mandela (three days ago) should remind us that regardless of how hopeless things might appear, regardless of how dire our circumstances may feel, regardless of the despair and disappointment that we face, there’s always some reason to hope, and  we should never give up hope. 

History shows that South African Apartheid brought on some of the most despicable forms of human atrocity and suffering in modern history.  We should not forget, that through decades, the majority population in South Africa and in other southern African countries like Rhodesian (Zimbabwe), were subjected to deplorable living conditions, under oppressive political and military power structures.  And it was people like Nelson Mandela – even in the midst of 27 years of imprisonment – who never gave up hope that the day would come that Apartheid would come to an end, and that all people – blacks and whites - would have rights to live as they were created by God.

And we know that the apparent paucity of hope that I began with is not new or exclusive to the present age.  Luke tells us that as the angel Gabriel came to Mary to announce that she was about to give birth to God’s son, the world – and especially Israel - faced similar apparent hopelessness. 

God’s people in that day found themselves under Roman occupation.  Their land had been overtaken by political and economic structures that served to oppress them and subject them to human suffering not unlike Apartheid in South Africa, or slavery in America, or imperialism in India, or the Holocaust in Germany, or ethnic cleansing in Europe.

In the midst of all of this, the people in Israel had been waiting for 700 years for the coming of the savior into the world.  They had been waiting for the words of the Prophet Isaiah to come to pass, that “unto us a child is born, unto us a son will be given…  They had been waiting and waiting, and in the midst of it, some 700 years later, they still found themselves wondering whether God’s promise of a savior would ever come true for them.

And God sent an angel to Mary to offer some words to her and to the world that things were  about to change and that hope was about to enter into their world.

There’s hope!  One of the things I’ve learned about hope is that there are times when we tend to trivialize and even mythicize hope so much so that we often don’t recognize it when it is in our midst.  I say this to suggest that if we take time to look around, we will see hope all around us. 

Children laughing and playing, that’s hope.  Music in our ears, that’s hope.  Food on our tables, clothes on our backs, shoes on our feet, new awakenings, that’s hope.  Jeremiah said it best when he sang, “morning by morning new mercies I see…” that’s hope. 

Hope is real, and should be real to you and me.  Hope is what the great German theologian Jurgen Moltmann wrote about when he wrote – “Hope alone is to be called “realistic” because it alone takes seriously the possibilities with which all reality is fraught.  Hope does not take things as they happen to stand or to lie, but as progressing, moving things with possibilities of change.”

Hope is real, and should be real to you and me.  The hope of Jurgen Moltmann is the same hope that contemporary neo-soul singer India Arie sings about when she sings –

Every time I turn on the T.V. (There's Hope)
Somebody's acting crazy (There's Hope)
If you let it, it will drive you crazy (There's Hope)
but I'm takin' back my power today (There's Hope)
Gas prices they just keep on rising (There's Hope)
The government they keep on lying
but we gotta keep on surviving
Keep living our truth and do the best we can do. (There’s Hope)

 

Hope is real, and should be real to you and me.  The hope that Jurgen Moltmann writes about and India Arie sings about is the very same hope that we sing about in the church when we sing –

My Hope is built on nothing less

than Jesus blood and righteousness.

I dare not trust the sweetest frame,

but wholly lean on Jesus name…

There’s Hope.

What say you then does this hope really look like? 

- Hope came to the earth in the form of God’s own and only son. 

- Hope was born of an unwed teenage mother. 
- Hope had an earthly father who was a working class man – he was a carpenter. 

- Hope came into the world of moderate means – if not poor. 

- Hope had the odds stacked against him. 

 

But hope came – fully divine, and yes fully human just like you and me to let us know that God is with us, and in some ways God is like us, God’s knows us. 

- Hope came as the Prince of Peace. 

- Hope came as Joy to the World. 
- Hope came as Love wrapped up in flesh.

Hope came to save the world, and let us know that because he’s hope, there’s nothing that we should be hopeless about today or tomorrow. 

 There’s hope!