Jesus: the Hope-Giver

Introduction

This is the first Sunday of Advent. It is a time when each week we light a candle, bringing light out of the darkness and we reflect on what it meant for Jesus to arrive in our world.

This is also the first Advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. If ever there was a time for us to deepen our understanding of the Advent themes, it is this year.

The first Advent theme is traditionally that of hope. This may be one of the most difficult things for us at this time in history. Hope is the expectation that what we are going through right now is not all that there is. It is the expectation that something better is coming.

What does hope look like in the era of COVID? Do you remember when it was just two weeks to flatten the curve? Then it was just get to summer. Then it was just get to September. Now we are waiting for the vaccine. The ongoing struggles with no end in sight makes it difficult to hold onto hope.

And yet the world that Jesus appeared in was also difficult. The land that had traditionally been Israel was now Roman occupied with Romans choosing the high priest. Jesus was born during the time of the client king Herod. Herod may have been great but he was not good. He was an evil man and even his own family was not safe from his wickedness. There really was not much at the time of Jesus’ birth that would suggest that the people should have hope.

And yet here we are in Advent, celebrating the coming of Jesus and lighting the candle of hope. What we are going to do is examine how Jesus can give us hope.

Hope in the Gospels

One way to look at Jesus as out hope-giver is to do a word study on hope in the Gospels. The word hope only appears five times in the Gospels, and four of those of five are referring to disappointed help. Three are in the Gospel of Luke. The religious leaders had hoped to trap Jesus in a debate. Herod had hoped to see Jesus perform some miracle. And after the crucifixion, two of the disciples, not realizing that they were talking to the risen Jesus, had hoped that Jesus was the Messiah. He was the Messiah, but at the moment they were feeling disappointment in the wake of the cross. In the Gospel of John, Jesus criticizes the religious leaders for putting their hope in Moses instead of the one whom Moses put his hope in.

This leaves us with Matthew 12:21, which is the last part of a quote from Isaiah 42:1-4. In the context of Isaiah, it is a prophecy in the dark times of Israel that God will send his servant and there will be hope, not just for Israel but for those outside of Israel. 

In the context of Matthew, Jesus had been performing miracles, healing the sick. Instead of receiving honour, the religious leaders were seeking to condemn Jesus for his actions. Imagine how discouraging that must have been, even for the Son of God, to be criticized for acts of compassion.

Jesus withdrew from them but the crowds still followed him. The leaders may have hated him but the crowds desired his power. It is in that moment that Jesus quotes from Isaiah. The first part is very similar to the words that his Father used at his baptism. It was at his baptism that Jesus received the Spirit, the very thing that is mentioned in the prophecy of Isaiah. It looks like Jesus is taking time to reflect on his calling, the one he received at his baptism. The last part of that prophecy is a reference to being the one people put their hope in. Jesus came into this world as the hope-giver.

Since this is Advent, let us rewind to the birth of Jesus. There was nothing obvious about the birth of Jesus that would suggest he was bringing hope into the world. How many babies were being born that night across Judea? They may have given joy to their parents but not hope to the world.

Hope appeared as a little baby with little hint of what he would create in the future. But that is the way hope works, it starts small and has a delayed reaction. Now today, millions and millions of people put their hope in that same Jesus.

Hope in Jesus

So what does this mean for us? All I can tell you is what it means for me. I will tell you that 2020 has been a long year for me. I am still trying to figure what it means to be a pastor, an army chaplain, a student, a father and a husband in the COVID-19 era. Everything has changed, everything is more complicated, everything is more difficult. I am tired and I have no easy answers about how to make everything okay again.

This is not something that we can just solve, as if we did A, B, and C, that we would get the desired result. This is frustrating because that is what we want. We want to do something now and get immediate results.

The problem is that the Bible doesn’t promise that. Yes there are examples, both in the Bible and in my experience, of answered prayer in the moment. However that is not always the care.

The truth is that the frustration we are feeling in the tension between what we experience and what we desire pushes us into the area of hope. Remember that hope is the expectation that better things will come. For Christians, this is not a blind leap of faith but is based on the historical appearance of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in this world.

Jesus is real and this gives us hope and his message was one of hope. Even if he didn’t use that specific word all that often, hope infused everything he said and did. Jesus preached the coming of the kingdom of God. The kingdom was beginning to appear then and will be in its fullness at Jesus’ return. The kingdom of God is God’s reign over everything, including all those things that cause us pain. Everything will one day submit to God.

This doesn’t mean that everything will be comfortable in the present. That is the nature of hope, in that is a future event. But eventually the future and the present meet. 

Think of all those things that have happened to you that it seemed like there was no end in sight. But at some point you got through it. There is hope for us in this world and there is hope for us in the world to come.

Conclusion

We are all tired of COVID-19. And if you return to this sermon in five or ten years, there will be another crisis that we will be tired of. There are other things that are weighing us down, whether finances or relationships or health. There is hope. There is always hope. That hope has its foundation in Jesus Christ. Two thousand years ago, a baby was born in Bethlehem. The world would never be the same. The baby look just like any other Jewish baby (no he didn’t have a halo). But from those humble beginnings, the seeds of hope were sown. We are the beneficiaries of that hope. No matter what happens, no matter how hopeless it looks, there will always be hope. Jesus Christ guarantees it.