Advent 4: Waiting in Hope

Advent 4 (A) (2010)
Isaiah 7.10-16
Psalm 80.1-7, 16-18
Romans 1.1-7
Matthew 1.18-25

Traditional wisdom tells us that “hope springs eternal.” And if Advent is about anything, it is about hope. Its color, blue, is more specifically the blue we see in the sky just before the sun rises. Advent is about our waiting in darkness for the dawn to break upon us from on high (cf. Luke 1.78); and as we wait, we wait in hope, knowing that the sun will rise. Hope and waiting are intimately connected. If we are hoping, we are waiting for that hope to be fulfilled. If we are waiting, we are hoping that our wait will be vindicated. Spanish makes the connection between the two more clearly, as the words are etymologically related. The Spanish “to wait” is esperar, for “hope” esperanza. Some years ago I was leading an Advent study group, and we were discussing what might be the most appropriate image to describe the nature and feel of Advent. We came up with a maternity waiting room in a hospital; the place where family and friends gather as they await the birth of a new baby. There one finds all the expectation and hope which should surround Advent. That waiting carries with it a sense of danger and trepidation – fear for the well-being of the mother and the child to be born; but also joy and excitement that a new life is coming into the world. The waited-for baby carries for those around her a sense of hope, and all the sense of possibility new life brings.

So it is no accident that today we are reminded of this image. “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7.14). “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel” (Matthew 1.23) Although referring to two different babies, both Isaiah and Matthew use these similar words to express a sense of hope in the new possibilities which a coming child represents. While the passage from Isaiah has often been understood as speaking directly about Jesus, the majority of biblical scholars do not now agree with this view. Raymond Brown the renowned Roman Catholic New Testament scholar says that the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures “were primarily concerned with addressing God’s challenge to their own times. If they spoke about the future, it was in broad terms of what would happen if the challenge was accepted or rejected.” Isaiah was addressing his words to King Ahaz at a time when the kingdom of Judah was under great threat by the rising empire of Assyria. It was in fact under so much pressure that King Ahaz in desperation had sacrificed a child of his to one of the pagan gods hoping to assure his safety and that of his kingdom. He repented of this act of faithlessness and violence and so, the prophet Isaiah offered to him a sign. He places all his hope on the next generation, on the child which is in the womb of Ahaz’s wife, on the next king: “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7.14). The hope in the prophet’s words is that in the birth of this new child God will make fully known the divine purposes for Judah and the world; that God will make God’s self present in a new and distinctive way, a way which will renew the disastrous kingdom and all of creation. The words of the prophet are the words of a firm faith and hope in the God of Israel to save his People.

Matthew too wishes to express the same hope in the child born of Mary, and as he is writing down the story of Jesus this passage from Isaiah comes to mind. A passage that perhaps had been turning round in his head for a long time. It is not identical with that of Isaiah. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures with which Matthew was familiar had translated “young woman” into “virgin”, and while Isaiah says she “is with child”, Matthew writes that she “will conceive”. Nevertheless, it is fundamentally the same passage, yet in this new context a whole new generation of Jews found a source of hope in the coming into the world of a new baby. Matthew, writing some forty years or so after the death and resurrection of Jesus saw Jesus’ coming as somehow a fulfilment of the words Isaiah had spoken about the son to be born to Ahaz and his wife. Encountering the Jesus story with the eyes of the faith, he voiced the early Christian conviction that in the rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, surely God is with us; and so have Christians believed down the ages.

Now, the child in the womb of Ahaz’s wife did not exactly usher in the reign of peace and justice Isaiah had hoped for and anticipated in his words. Judah was eventually overrun by the Assyrians anyway. And if we are honest Jesus – the one whom we confess as Son of God – did not fully usher in the hoped for kingdom; and while we work for its mainifesation, we continue hoping and waiting for that full revelation of God’s kingdom and God’s purposes. While we work for the kingdom certainly, in some way we also continue living in that delivery waiting room, living in anxious and joyful expectation; and we can continue to do all this because of one word in the Scriptures. A word which appears only three times in the whole Bible – two times in the book of the prophet Isaiah and one in the Gospel of Matthew; a word which we have heard this morning spoken twice – Immanuel. A Hebrew word which means “God with us.” We continue to wait, and wait with hopeful expectation, because we believe that God is faithful, and we believe the promise of that word – Immanuel, the promise that God is with us. If we did not believe then we would stop hoping. We would stop waiting. We would have packed it in long ago. But we do believe. We believe that God is with us in the words of the prophets preserved through the ages. We believe that God is with us in a particular and distinctive way in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. We believe that God is with us working out the divine purpose in the world. We believe that God is with us here and now when we gather in fellowship and praise. We believe that God is with us. And that belief gives us the courage to hope and the strength to wait for the fullest manifestation of God’s promises, even in the face of the darkness and the tragedy of the world.

This Friday night we will gather here again, to begin our Christmas celebrations – to celebrate the birth of Jesus in history, yes, but more importantly, the everlasting reality that God is with us; that Immanuel – “God with us” – is not simply a title for the Christ, but the underlying reality of our lives. The fact that God’s promises and God’s kingdom have not been fully revealed does not daunt us one bit, diminish our faith or deter us from action. Those who gather in the maternity waiting room of a hospital know that life is difficult, they know that the child they await will be born into a world of violence and prejudice – a world that is far from perfect. Yet that does not daunt them in their hope or make them any less joyful when the child is born. They bring to their waiting a clear hope in human life and in the potential possibilities of a new human life. How much more should we wait with hope, not just in life, but in the Lord of all Life? In one sense Friday night we will end our waiting, yet in another sense we continue to wait for the full revelation of God’s kingdom; but we can wait in hope. For as Paul writes to the Romans, “hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5.5), in other words because God is with us.

It is true that for human beings “hope springs eternal”. We may not always get it exactly right. Ahaz’s son did not usher in the world where the lion lay down with the lamb, and the imminent return of Jesus which his earliest followers expected did not materialise. But that did not and does not shake hope. It did not shake their hope, and it does shake our hope. We continue to wait and to trust God’s abiding presence. Hope seems to be an indestructible aspect of the human make-up, maybe even genetics. And maybe, just maybe this persistent sense of hope instilled in us, this willingness and ability to wait in hope, this strong inclination to trust in the potential offered to us by new possibilities, is the best evidence of all that “God is with us”.