“What was written in former days was for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope,” wrote the author of the letter to the Romans. Which sounds comforting in a season when I am actively searching for signs of hope. And of course there are plenty: even in the hardest of times and places humans beings can be counted on to act with compassion. The six-hundred-some Thanksgiving meals served by Trinitarians, for example, are a huge sign of hope.
I long for more hopefulness at the macro level, though. I fear the possibility of vulnerable people losing health care or Medicare, and grieve threats to the safety of people of color, immigrants and refugees. Wars seem interminable, the planet is heating up and the deep social divisions revealed during our election season show no signs of being healed. In the midst of all this anxiety, there are days when I read the Bible and want to scream at God. The encouragement of the scriptures is really the best you can do? You ask me to hang my hopes on the apocalyptic visions of a guy hallucinating from the world’s most unappealing entomophagian diet? Yes, that’s really the adjective that describes insect eaters. I googled it, and it wasn’t on a fake news site.
But even as I confess my own doubts, I suspect that we as people of faith are perhaps never closer to the experience of first century Judeans—the community into which Jesus was born—than when we acknowledge the truth of our doubt, grief and despair. John came preaching to a people captive to an imperial power, whose own religious leaders had been co-opted and corrupted. The advent of Christ is a fine season to shed a few tears, or a lot of them.
The fact that present circumstances might look bleak has never contradicted the Christian understanding of hope. Indeed, when we consider the breadth of our tradition from the exile to the crucifixion, it might be most accurate to say that despair is the birthplace of Biblical hope. Earlier in the letter to the Romans the author reminded us that “hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?” But faith, in contrast, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
Which is why our tradition gives such pride of place to a prophet like Isaiah, who is able to imagine that which has never actually been seen. Predators living in harmony with their prey, creatures who do not consume one another, and children— the most vulnerable people in society—unthreatened by danger and leading the peaceable parade. Isaiah was writing about the reign of a king in the Davidic succession—which is why we’re hearing from him in Advent—but the prophetic message is not just about a better sovereign or even about the coming of Jesus. It is about an unprecedented new creation that encompasses and transforms all sentient beings, including the ones we feel most threatened by.
Listening to the prophets Isaiah and John reminds me that our job in this anxious age may not be so much to patch together that which is broken as to name the forces caused the breach in the first place, and then to imagine what the world might look like when it is repaired. Those who would practice truth and reconciliation have to be clear eyed about the present and starry eyed about the future. The latter is not possible without the former. Which is why John the Baptist called out dangerous vipers, and why we ourselves need to repent of our willingness to believe their duplicity. And at the very same time, we need to cleave to the vision of Isaiah, wherein even small children can live safely with snakes. They will no longer hurt or destroy.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the Texas man who was photographed standing outside of a mosque last week. The picture of him holding a sign that said “You belong. Stay strong. Be blessed. We are one America” was all over the internet this week. It happens that the mosque—the Islamic Center of Irving, just outside of Dallas—had also been the site of armed threats after terrorist attacks in Paris last November. Justin Normand, the sign-holder, appeared surprised by all the attention, but responded with the humility of someone whose imagination was shaped by scripture. “This was about binding up the wounded,” he said. “About showing compassion and empathy for the hurting and fearful among us. This was about my religion, not theirs. And, it was about what I think I must do as an American when our way of life is threatened. Targeting people for their religion not only threatens our way of life, it is the polar opposite of our way of life.” A southern Christian standing in public solidarity with members of a mosque. And they will no longer hurt or destroy.
Or perhaps you’ve had a chance to hear from Padre Roberto Arciniega, rector of San Miguel in Newberg and missioner for Latino Ministries in the Diocese of Oregon. He was here at Trinity earlier this week, and someone asked him how his congregation was feeling in the wake of heightened racial violence and threats of deportation. He said that his community was actually feeling pretty good. Not because the threats were not real or frightening, but because other people of faith were finally paying attention to what has been their reality all along. We have to be clear eyed about the present if we want to be starry eyed about the future. Which is really actually so difficult. All the snakes don’t have to be de-fanged at once, and—honestly—they won’t be until God makes all things new. But in the meantime, we have to really want the children to be safe, and then stay the course.
If you want to experience a bit of the peaceable kingdom with an edge of prophetic truth-telling mixed in, consider coming to Las Posadas at Trinity this coming Saturday evening, when Padre Beto and many of our Latino Episcopal brothers and sisters will re-enact the journey of Mary and Joseph seeking shelter in Bethlehem. I’ll be there, in part because for me, it’s a bit like meeting John the Baptist at the river. It’s an uncomfortable liturgical drama if you have to play the part of someone closing the door on the holy family, but there’s some truth in that role for those of us who have never known the risk of deportation. But not to worry, we’ll all be welcome in at the end, and there will be tamales and pinatas.
And this, my friends, is what Christian hope looks like. It is not an abstraction or a disembodied future reality. Nor even is it binding up wounds to make present injustice a little less cruel. It is allowing the never-before-seen to be birthed within our imagination, and—through that—to inspire our action. It is what God has already done in the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ, continuing to be done in and through us. It is embodied and relational and unconditionally welcoming. It is a baby born in a musty Bethlehem stable and Muslim neighbor welcomed in Dallas and a Latino child whose parents could be deported swinging at a Pinata in Kempton Hall. It is us signing on—registering ourselves, you might say—as citizens of God’s peaceable kingdom, and then living into what the prophets imagined to be possible. As the king we await this Advent has called us to do.
