First Week in Advent - Hope Past Hope's Conceiving
This Advent we will be reflecting on Biblical texts that lie behind Thomas Troeger’s Advent Hymn – “View the present through the promise”.
The first verse of the hymn reads:
View the present through the promise, Christ will come again.
Trust despite the deepening darkness, Christ will come again.
Lift the world above its grieving through your watching and believing
in the hope past hope’s conceiving: Christ will come again.
Isaiah 11:1-9
1 A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
2 The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
3 His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear;
4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
5 Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
6 The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.
7 The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
9 They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
Verse 3 catches us by surprise – the anticipated and just ruler will decide not on the basis of what they see and hear – they will instead judge with righteousness – which is beyond what is seen or heard. How often have we listened carefully to an account of a difficult set of life circumstances and been left with the feeling that there is no way to be fair, to bring justice to the situation? We have seen and heard – but in our limited human ability there is no way to solve the problem.
In situations like that we trust there is an answer beyond what we can imagine, that there is a way forward beyond what our eyes can see. We live in hope that there is something to hope in that is beyond anything we, as mere human beings, can conceive – a hope that is beyond hope’s conceiving. We live in that hope for ourselves, but also for those around us who live in despair, who see no way out.
The picture painted in this passage, gives us hope that there is a way beyond the best case our minds can imagine. For who would imagine a world in which wolves and lambs, bears and cows will live together in peace? Who could imagine a world in which lions become vegetarians? Who can imagine a world where there is no one hurt?
But that is exactly the world this passage invites us to imagine, to believe in. Towards that world we invite people to live, to lift up their gaze beyond the limits of our imagination, to the world that God has imagined and is bringing into being when Christ will come again.
PRAYER:
Lord God, help us to hope when our hope is gone, to find in you the hope past hope’s conceiving. We believe that Christ will come again, shape us as people who live in that hope and point others to that hope. In Jesus’ name. Amen.