From the Pulpit:

 
                                                                                        Hope Floats

Even in this fast-moving and ever-changing world, there are some things we can count on, and one of them is that John
the Baptist is going to show up on the second Sunday of Advent. He’s always the same. He hasn’t changed his suit or his diet. He was outrageous last year and time hasn’t mellowed him. It was probably a pretty good thing for everybody involved that they always encountered him out of doors.  If I were to take a poll as to what you all think of John, I’m guessing that a majority would probably say that he’s a fairly unpleasant road block on the road to the baby Jesus, calling perfectly lovely people snakes and warning them of the wrath of God if they don’t repent. It’s not the Christmas tree he’s talking about when he says the axe is ready to chop it down. It’s us if we don’t get cracking and bear fruit. So it’s probably going to come as a surprise to you if I tell you that I think John is all about hope.

I admit it was the reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans that set me to thinking about hope. Paul writes, “Whatever
was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scripture we might have hope.”

Romans is Paul’s letter of introduction to the church in Rome. It was not one of the churches he founded. In fact he had never been to Rome, and he was sending this missive ahead to friends of friends so that when he arrived they would know who he was and would not only greet him, but would welcome him into their midst because they already knew what he was about. Romans was the latest of the letters Paul wrote himself, and it expresses his most mature theology. What he’s doing is establishing himself prior to his arrival by laying out his belief system. In contemporary terms we’d say he is presenting his systematic theology, not missing a beat – “Here’s what I believe about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Here’s what I believe about the resurrection and salvation.

He spells it all out for them, and in the part we just read, he’s telling them what he thinks about Holy Scripture and the prophets, that what was written in former times continues to bless these new Christians as they embrace the challenges
of living as Christian community.

Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.

The people who came to the Jordan River to be baptized by John knew full well that his get up and his fiery language were meant to remind them of the prophet Elijah, the one who was said to be the herald of the Messiah. When they saw John, they heard echoes of their Holy Scripture, they saw visions of their deep history before their eyes, encouraging them and offering them steadfastness. Who do you think were the first ones to come to be baptized? Probably not the ones who could afford to take time off and make the trip to Jerusalem and buy the unblemished pigeons and lambs and heifers to be sacrificed as a thanksgiving to God or to be forgiven of their sins. No, those richer folks were just fine with the system as it was. And those folks were the Pharisees and Saducees, latecomers to John’s party.

No, the first people who came to the river were local peasants, and the message that John was giving them was that they didn’t need the Temple system to have hope. Getting dunked in the water did not cost them a thing. Not a thing in material terms, but it cost them everything in terms of repentance. And it could not be bought by Roman or Jewish coinage or respectability or social status or aristocratic lineage. The only currency of exchange was their hearts.

What John meant by repentance has nothing to do with saying you are sorry and that you’re going to try your very best
not to mess up in the same way again and again. No, it meant leaving your old life behind and stepping into the future unencumbered by your checkered past. We need to remember that John’s baptism was a baptism for Jews who already believed. They were cleansed of their sins, but it was not a conversion to a new faith. They’d have to wait for Jesus for that. John is explicit in telling them that all he had was water, but that the one who was coming would have fire and spirit. That is a mighty big promise. That is a lot to hope for.

John was the last of the prophets. When we think about prophets – Jeremiah, Elijah, Isaiah, Hosea, Amos and the rest
of them – we think about difficult people, bearers of bad news, but in fact they were bearers of hope. Hope that if only
the kings and the people would open their eyes, if only they would cease and desist living out the desires of their egos for power and prestige and self-interest, God was waiting just out of sight to bless them and reward them and draw them to his heart. If only….

I thought a lot about hope this week. Hope while the wars drag on in Iraq and Afghanistan  and along our border with Mexico, and in the Congo and Burundi and Somalia and the Sudan. Hope as Wiki-leaks undermine the desperate efforts of world diplomacy and as the job market remains bleak and politicians refuse to work with each other simply because they can. As churches splinter over issues of doctrine rather than unite to serve the least, the lost, and the last.

The hope that John offered the people was not some sort of guarantee that the Roman Empire would pack up and leave town. It was not that they’d regain the land they’d lost, the family farms that had been taken away from them in hard times. It was not that there would be cures for their diseases or that their children would live more prosperous lives than theirs.

No, it was hope that even in their troubled world God was still the God of promise, and that God was faithful no matter what. Hope, in fact, is not something for the future but a precious gift for the present moment, the ground of our existence in whom we can always trust.

Hope holds us up, empowers us when we can’t stand up to the powers of the world. We spoke last week of Nelson Mandela who never lost hope in 27 years of imprisonment. Hope is not the assurance of an easier future but the trust of empowerment in the now, the gift of endurance in the moment  because we are not the source of our own strength, empowerment because we belong to Christ. Assurance that because we have seen miracles – the birth, teachings, healings, the death, the resurrection, the ascension of Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit to dwell among us and within  us – because we are living witness to God’s revelation, we are certain that this world and its empires do not have the last word.

Even in this fast-moving and ever changing world, there are a few things we can count on, and the ultimate of those things is that God is the source of our hope and the assurance that all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. That God in the end knows every hair of our heads, every little brown sparrow who comes to our backyard feeder, every prayer of our hearts, and every sigh that is too deep for words.

 Christian hope is not pie in the sky enticement to hang on until better times. In the catechism at the back of our Book of Common Prayer Christian hope is defined as ‘to live with confidence in newness and fullness of life, and to await the coming of Christ in glory, and the completion of God’s purpose for the world.’ (p. 861)

What is God’s purpose for the world? Jesus himself will tell John’s doubting messengers in the gospel lesson we’ll read next week: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear,  the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.

This hope is nothing less than the absolute certainty  that we have been given what we need to do Christ’s work in the world and to tell the impossibly good story of the gospel to a hungry and discouraged people.

John the Baptist is a hinge figure, a man of the past and the future. He stands in the river and tells the people that they are in the midst of exciting times, that even as they repent of their sins and walk onto the dry land forgiven, it is God who is ever steadfast, and that their true hope is an even firmer ground on which to stand, one which can never slip out from under their feet because it is the terra firma of the kingdom itself, realized in their own time and before their own eyes.

St. Paul is the author of some of the best prayers available to us. Let us pray. May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant us to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together 
we may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed us, for the glory of God.  May the God of hope fill us with all joy and 
peace in believing, so that we may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.