Monday, December 24, 2012

Fourth Sunday of Advent: "...So Ancient and So New"


Micah 5:2-5a
Canticle 15: Magnificat
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-45

Throughout Advent we have been considering how by engaging with the past, how by looking back, we can not only make sense of our present but also find ways and means into the future.  In large part, this is a process of conscious contemplation, of intentional listening to the voices of peoples and situations that have gone before.  It is a process which allows us to hear echoes of past experiences in our own, and thus to discern meaning out of our experiences, to discover something meaningful we can say in order to address our own time and circumstances, or to express what believe to be most true.  As we contemplate and amplify what we have inherited of the past, we add our lives and experience into the stream of history; and as Christians, we believe, into the ongoing stream of God’s revelation.

The Book of Micah presents us with such a situation.  The prophet Micah was a contemporary of Isaiah; both lived in the latter part of the 8th century BC.  Their careers corresponded to a period when both the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were coming under increasing pressure from the aggressive and expanding Assyrian empire which would eventually conquer them both.  However, only the first three chapters of Micah are specifically from that period.  Most scholars believe that the last three chapters of the book were actually set down within the context of the Babylonian exile, the Jews eventual return from captivity and the rebuilding of the Temple – some 300 years after Assyria’s rise.  So, as the Jews faced a new crisis in the form of the Babylonian Empire they re-worked and expanded the prophecies of Micah to reflect their contemporary circumstances.  Those living under the pressure of Babylon discerned echoes of their experiences in the voices of their ancestors living under the pressure of Assyria.  They discerned echoes of those voices, and found a language of hope, words enabling them to remain faithful to God’s promise: “But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days….[H]is kindred shall return to the people of Israel…and he shall be the one of peace.” (cf. Micah 5:2-5a)  Certainly God’s promise in the midst of the Assyrians, must be the same as in midst of the Babylonians, and so echoes of the past brought the Jewish people more deeply into the contining unfolding narrative of God’s salvation and redemption.

This dynamic of listening to echoes of the past was not lost among the early Christians, and Luke particularly makes ample use of it as he relates the events surrounding Jesus’ birth.  The figures of Elizabeth and Zechariah, the parents of John the Baptist, are figures created out of the collective memory of Judaism: the faithful and dutiful older, barren couple – think Abraham and Sarah, or less well-known Elkanah and Hannah, the parents of the prophet Samuel who – not coincidentally like John the Baptist – prepared the way for a king.  Then the there is the Magnificat – the Song of Mary – which is today’s gradual and which the choir so beautifully sang.  It finds its inspiration in Hannah’s prayer from the first book of Samuel in which she exults the Lord for having blessed her with a child, and vindicated her in the face of those who lorded over her their success and strength: “My heart exults in the Lord,” she cries, “my strength is exalted in my God….The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on strength.  Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry are fat with spoil….The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low, he also exalts.  He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor.” (1 Samuel 2:1, 4-5, 7-8)  With these words and images – and many others – the early Christians listened to the echoes of the past so as to make sense of God’s revelation in Jesus.  In God’s choosing Mary in her lowliness, they heard echoes of how God had always lifted up the poor, the downtrodden and the enslaved.  In God’s granting a child to Elizabeth and Zechariah they heard echoes of how God had in the past brought about surprising, unexpected events.  In God’s raising John the Baptist as herald and fore-runner of the Messiah, they heard echoes of all those in the past who had proclaimed and awaited God’s revelations.  Like the later editors of the book of Micah, those first Christians listened to and amplified the echoes coming through from the inherited tradition, carrying them into the present conversation about what God might be doing.  As they did so they experienced their lives, the events of their present, as linked into the big picture, the overriding narrative of redemption, God’s story of salvation for humanity.

One of the pitfalls of modern living is how dis-jointed we are, not just from our past but from so much of the world around us.  More than ever we seem to live episodic lives – that is to say, that so many of us often experience our life as series of episodes rather than a cohesive narrative, rather than seeing the events of our life as directed to a particular end or purpose.  Yet, our Christian faith and inheritance would teach us otherwise.  Our lives are not simply a series of disjointed, disconnected episodes, they are part of the story God is trying to tell.  It is God’s story we discern as we read the Scriptures year in and year out, and it is God’s story we seek to join as we as we gather week by week to worship, and as we direct our homes, families and relationships according to certain principles.  Still we are not always good at listening carefully and sensitively to the echoes of the past, the voices and actions of our ancestors in the faith which help us to tell God’s story.  But if our faith is to have any meaning at all, we must learn to better hone our ears and our senses, because if we do not we may find ourselves unknowingly basing our religious and spiritual lives simply on our own particular, idiosyncratic preferences or prejudices.  As we move through our lives as individuals and as a church we must always be willing to ask if we are still telling the old, old story, God’s story, albeit amplified according to our present experience.  This is what it means for Anglicans that we are grounded in Tradition, Scripture and Reason.  Scripture and Tradition bear for us the echoes of our shared experience as the Christian famly, and it is Reason which allows to make sense of that inheritance in ways still consistent with it, while at the same time being alive, present and active.  Without these, our faith becomes either an ananchronistic fossil or something we invent with every passing change, a series of disjointed, personalized episodes.

We sometimes think that all this talk we Anglicans – we Episcopalians – have about Scripture, Tradition and Reason is some new-fangled thing we made up.  Hardly true.  It’s simply the Anglican way of explaining how we listen to and engage with our past – its voices and echoes.  The Jews did it in their own way as they tried to make sense of the vicissitudes and upheavals attendant on the political scene of their day.  And the early Christians did it too as they tried to understand the revelation of Jesus within the wider of narrative of salvation history, a history they had inherited and of which they saw themselves a part.  At the heart of this engagement is the reality that we are part of God’s unfolding plan, God’s ungoing story, and that  each generation links itself to it by engaging with the past while moving into the future.  St Hippo Augustine of Hippo in describing his conversion to Christianity and to the love of God prayed: “Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!”  What is true of God is true of God’s story – so ancient and so new.  As we prepare ourselves to tell the old story of Christmas, how are we engaging with its voices and echoes in order to say something about God’s continuing revelation in the present?  How are we allowing its truths to carry us into the future?  How are seeing our lives as a part of God’s unfolding narrative, God’s story – ever ancient and ever new.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Third Sunday of Advent: "...and the Rich Must Lie Down with the Poor"


Zephaniah 3:14-20
Canticle 10
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18

At one time or other, we have all heard someone make a call for a return to the basics.  It is often a cry that laments the present state of things in favor of some past, prettily clothed in nostalgia.  In our day it is all too often the cry of some religious or social conservatives, and which often hearkens back only so far as the time of their childhood.  It is a call usually to a very narrow understanding of personal morality, and while posed as a challenge, whether to individuals or society generally, it is actually a desire for facile comfort – comfort in the midst of change, comfort in the midst of the unknown, comfort in the midst of the stranger. 

Yet the call for a re-engagement with the basics is not a bad thing in and of itself, especially if we are realistic about what those basics are, especially if are prepared to be challenged by their significance and sometimes surprising ramifications.  Take for example, the book of Deuteronomy in which God says, “If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor…Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’ ” (Deuteronomy 15:7, 11)  As Christians, one can’t get any more basic than Torah, God’s covenant with the Jews, our ancestors in faith.  The message is similar in the prophets: “Is not this the fast that I choose?  Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” (Isaiah 58:6a, 7)  Or, “this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49  The ethical demands here are far from privatized, far from nostalgic.  They challenged the Hebrews into new ways of understanding and contextualizing their relationship with God, their responsibilities to others.

John the Baptist is trying to recapture this vision.  In the wilderness he is making a call for a return to the basics – yes, but there is nothing of nostalgia or privatized morality.  The Gospels, justly or not, present a Judaism losing vitality; a Judaism in which people justified themselves not by what they did or how they lived, but by claiming an ontological connection with the past, for example through a genealogical relationship to the patriarchs: “We have Abraham as our ancestor.” (Luke 3:8)  Rather, John reminds them of the covenant.  He calls them back to the basics of God’s will and purposes expressed in the law and the prophets:  “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” (Luke 3:11)  He calls the people not to some idealized past, but the living truth of God’s law of justice and compassion, and to the making of it a present reality among them.  This too was in large part the message of Jesus and which he called – as I have often said – the kingdom of God.  He called people to the basics, and not only to the basics of the law, but to the very basics of our human existence – the basic reality that we cannot control everything, the basic reality that worrying or fretting changes nothing, the basic reality of our utter dependence on God, the basic reality that little of we think is ours really is ours: “…do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.  Today’s trouble is enough for today” (Matthew 6:34); “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” (Matthew 5:42)  Jesus’ call to basics, like John’s, was not just a lament for a bygone era, but a challenge to live at a more human level, to live with more compassion and understanding, to live more authentically.

When we really begin to ponder on the basics of life, we recognize how little we can control and how much of what we receive is at the hands of others or of God, or both.  Those of us who are more or less comfortably well-off can hide from that reality more easily.  We can distract ourselves by our possessions or our wherewithal to make plans and follow them through; but have real tragedy or disaster come our way, and we realize how much we are at the whim of things.  They level the playing field, unmasking the lies we tell ourselves about self-sufficiency, about the power we have over the events of our lives.  And while a simplistic call to basics is about controlling things according to our comfort zone, the scriptural call to basics is about giving up that false sense of control or superiority, recognizing how much we are all of us in the same boat in one way or another, recognizing our own poverty in any of its many forms.

There is little doubt that for many of us, the poor and issues of poverty make us feel just a little uncomfortable.  It’s more than just guilt, but rather the hint they may suggest that “there but for the grace of God, go I” or we.  In part, for this reason in so many cultures and among so many people the poor are ignored or demonized (we used to do this with the sick as well, but that’s perhaps another sermon for another time).  The call to the basics of Torah, of the prophets, of John the Baptist and of Jesus confronts us with the reality of the poor and the downtrodden, and the truth that they are not separate from us:  “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:19)  A return to the basics in this respect, can carry us into the a future of living more honestly, can point out the many little ways we hide from, ignore or disguise the precariousness of our existence; and can make us more compassionate, more willing to see ourselves in the other.  A return to the basics, in this respect, challenges us to engage with our basic, shared humanity regardless of anything else.  It allows us to the see the poor and disadvantaged not as other, but as us, and demands that we make a difference in their situation; which could be ours but for grace or luck.

The future God plans for us, and envisions for the human family is enshrined in much of  the ethical teaching of Torah and in the pronouncements of the prophets.  Both John the Baptist and Jesus emphasized this aspect of the Jewish tradition, this particular concern for the poor and preoccupation with the most vulnerable in society.  It is basic to anything we may want to say about God, basic to any engagement with the Gospel.  When people cry out for a return to the basics, I wish they would think about this – rather than some cozy view of the 1950s.  I wish they would allow themselves to be challenged by the reality of our basic and shared humanity, seeing themselves in the poor and disregarded, and especially in Advent when we not only prepare ourselves to celebrate Christmas, but when we look to and confront the truth that, as an old song says:
“The time it will come when our Saviour on earth
   “And the world will agree with one voice…
“Saints, Angels and men, Hallelujahs will sing,
   “And the rich must lie down with the poor.”
            

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Second Sunday of Advent: Pax, Shalom and Beyond

Baruch 5:1-9
Canticle 16
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6

The earliest mention we have of the city of Jerusalem is in Egyptian texts of the 18th and 19th centuries BC.  Various theories have been proposed for the origins of the city’s name, and the most likely is that it is a combination of two elements, yeru (Sumerian for “foundation”) and Shalim, the Phoenician Canaanite god of dusk.  With his twin brother Shahar, the god of dawn, they share a connection with the sun goddess.  Nevertheless, the theory which has had the most influence is that “Jerusalem” actually means, ironically enough considering its history, “city of peace”.  The word itself being a blending of the Hebrew yireh, meaning “an abiding place of the fear and service of God” and salem (or in modern Hebrew, shalom), – “peace”.  It is not just a “city of peace’, but God’s city of peace.

Built on two hills and on the boundary between present-day Israel’s cultivated grasslands and arid desert regions, the city itself seems a representative of opposites and dichotomy.  The writer Amos Elon notes that for Jerusalem “there has always been a tension between the present and the future, the earthly and the heavenly, the real and the ideal Jerusalem, a city of diverse people struggling to accomplish their daily activities and the city of religious visionaries.”  Jerusalem seems always caught between one thing and another, between its history and its future, between vision and reality, dawn and dusk, war and peace, between prosperity and desolation; and the latter is the context of the Book of prophet Baruch. 

While the book is set during the time of the Babylonian captivity which occurred in the 6th century BC, it was actually written sometime between 200 BC and 50 BC when Jerusalem and the whole area was ruled by the despotic heirs of Alexander the Great.  Certainly, both these periods were periods of crisis, when the Jewish people were in the midst of subjugation while at the same time forging a new self-understanding.  The author of Baruch writes in order to give hope to those living within the context of this crisis and soul-searching.  He writes while caught in the tension between the vision of peace and the reality of its absence.  The author writes to a people living in exile, whether physical or spiritual, and offers hope through a vision of peace centered on the “city of peace”:  “For God will give you evermore the name, Righteous Peace, Godly Glory.  Arise, O Jerusalem, stand upon the height; look toward the east, and see your children gathered from west and east at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that God has remembered them.” (Baruch 5:4-5)  The prophet envisions a return from the exile, a return of peace to the people and to the land; a time when the tensions of opposites will cease to exist: “For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God.” (Baruch 5:7)
It is hardly surprising that this imagery is placed in reference to John the Baptist in the Gospel of Luke, quoting – in this case – the prophet Isaiah.  The times of John and Jesus, the times of the Gospels’ writing were times also of conflicting opposites.  Certainly conflicting images of peace.  The known world was ruled by the Romans, and the writer of Luke goes to great pains to make that clear: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea” and so on. (cf. Luke 1:1-3)  It was the time of the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace, which had been inaugurated by Tiberius’ predecessor, the Emperor Augustus Caesar through the violent subjugation of his enemies, and the ruthless military control of the various parts of the Empire, including Judaea.  The peace of the Romans was bought at a terrible price; one need only have witnessed the many who, considered to be threats to that peace, were killed or executed, and the many more that lived in dark fear and the shadow of that peace’s violence.  The Roman peace was just that – peace for the Romans.  Caught in this one-sided “peace”, the ministry of John is signaled by pointing to an older image rooted in the prophetic tradition of Israel, the image of shalom.  If the Pax Romana is peace at any price and one maintained through a rule of terror, the Hebrew shalom is one about right relationships.  It is about living and relating in ways which establish and maintain justice and human dignity.  It is a vision of peace expressed in the poetic language of Isaiah: “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.  The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox….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.” (Isaiah 11:6-7, 9)  Living in a time terror and looking for a future beyond it, John the Baptist and Jesus, and all those who would follow him, looked to the past in order to find something meaningful to say about peace, in order to give the lie to the image of peace being peddled by the powers that be.  Like the prophets, they looked beyond not simply to a cessation of violence, but a whole way of being and of running things which exemplified God’s purposes for human beings and the rest of creation. 

Again, this vision of peace was not simply a precarious cessation of violence, but a reign of right living, respectful relationship; and this understanding of peace would color the entire Christian movement.  It would shape the Church and relationships within her, because in reading the prophets they understood peace – that kind of peace – as foundational to the kingdom of God.  And so we can see how often peace becomes a greeting for Christians, how often Paul opens his letters by offering his readers peace in the name of the Lord.  The distinction between the peace of God – shalom – and worldly peace – the pax romana and anything like it – is made explicit in the Gospel of John when Jesus says to his friends. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (John 14:27)   And while we as the Church may not have always lived out this reality of peace, we certainly keep it at the center of our lives, even if only as a reminder of what we are called to and what we are to be about.  We keep it at the center of the liturgy too; after the confession, after we have come before God and admitted our brokenness.  We come to each other and offer to one another peace.  We renew our commitment to the vision of shalom, that peace that is grounded in justice and right relationship.

Like our ancestors in faith, like the city of Jerusalem herself, we too often live in the midst of conflicting opposites, and are challenged as to how to walk on level ground, how to see past the hills and valleys to the truth of God, of our lives, of ourselves, of each other.  In the midst of the conflict and chaos of exile, Baruch preached God’s vision of peace for the city of peace.  In the midst of a false peace maintained by violence and oppression, John the Baptist and Jesus preached a peace that is the not determined by expedience or conventional standards, but by real justice, grounded in fellowship and human dignity.  They lived in a world of competing opposites, but pointed beyond them to a vision of shalom.  We ourselves often find ourselves living in dawn and dusk, trying always to discern day.  The prophetic image of peace, which is Jesus’ vision of peace, takes us beyond all dualities and conflicts to reveal God’s own un-ending day, God’s own vision for us and for the world; and as Christians we are called to direct the world to it, accepting no substitute.  Like the prophets, like John, like Jesus we point to the coming – the Advent – of that peace in God’s renewal of all things when “every valley shall be filled,…every mountain and hill…made low, the crooked [paths] made straight, and the rough ways…smooth.” (Luke 3:5)  May the world know that peace by our lives and practice; indeed by our life and practice of peace – real peace – may “all flesh…see the salvation of God.” (cf. Luke 1:6)

Monday, December 3, 2012

First Sunday of Advent: Looking Back for Hope


Jeremiah 33:14-16
Psalm 25:1-9
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36

Jesus in Luke presents us with some pretty disturbing, even frightening, images of a time yet to come: “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.  People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” (Luke 21:25-26)  And while I mentioned last week that Jesus’ way of things was not necessarily the way of conventional apocalyptic – end time – theology, it was in its context that he lived and in which the Gospels were written.  He would have been – and the Gospels certainly were – influenced by it.  Yet the apocalyptic language and images on the lips of Jesus in the Gospels seem to point not so much to the end, but rather seem to talk about how to live until the end and how to trust in God’s promises, how to live in hope.  As you may remember, I  alluded last week to the political and social conditions under which Jesus lived, and under which the Gospels were written.  It was a time of crisis, and since from about the 2nd century BC the increasingly popular theological response to crisis had been apocalypticism – the belief that God would eventually directly intervene in human affairs to punish the “wicked” – for wicked read “our enemies” – and reward the “just”, that is, us  For some, what was called for until that “terrible day” was a complete separation from the world, from the wicked and unclean.  Thanks to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we know a good deal about one such group, the Essenes.  This Jewish sect retreated into the wilderness of Qumran, living in caves and adhering to a strict rule of prayer and purity in preparation for God’s vindication.  John the Baptist is believed by some to have been influenced by their theology and practices. 

However, the picture presented of Jesus’ message in the Gospel is different, more nuanced; and certainly by the time the Gospels were being written Christians were already learning that the apocalyptic perspective was not helpful if they were going to learn to live well until Jesus’ return – which appeared hardly imminent; and if they were going to make manifest the Good News of the kingdom right here and right now.  Let’s face it, the idea that we are just waiting around until God intervenes to dispense punishments and rewards is not the most exciting or attractive of messages.  There had to be something different, something more helpful to say.  There had to be a more positive way to live in the world;  and so our early Christian ancestors looked back to the prophetic traditions of Israel in order inform their thinking, to find inspiration and insight.  Look for a moment at today’s passage from the prophet Jeremiah.  Certainly there is talk of God’s justice and righteousness, but how gently it is announced: “The days are surely coming…when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” (Jeremiah 33:14)  It is in the language of covenant.  Equally, the day’s eventual coming is described in the subtle imagery of natural growth, imagery which Jesus himself considerably made use of: “In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David.” (Jeremiah 33:15)  When the prophets do speak of God’s judgment and anger, it is the never directed to the enemies of the Jewish people as in the apocalyptic tradition, but to the Jewish people themselves for abandoning the covenant, particularly the covenant call to care for the poor and the stranger.  The Gospels and the Jesus tradition, hearken back to the witness of Israel’s ancient prophets in order to discern into the future the reality of Jesus and of the kingdom.  They looked back in order to learn how to live now, how to live until all things are resolved in God’s time and according to God’s righteousness.

Central to this kind of living is hope, the sort of hope which, even when things may seem bleak, while conditions may appear grim, still not only points us to the truth of God’s sustaining spirit and ultimate revelation, but also teaches us and enables us to live in and through the difficulties of our times,  and do so without retreating from the world but instead engaging more fully with it.  So Jesus says to his followers: “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.” (Luke 21:34-35a)  Dissipation, drunkeness, constant worry – all these are symptoms of hopelessnes.  We know that as we see the hopelessness among the poorest and most disadvantaged in our towns and cities, as we see it among many younger people.  The difficulties of life and the sometimes frightening events of our day, can make us lose hope.  They can leave people confused about the present, and feeling bleak about the future.  They can drive us to retreat from the world, or to seek extreme and violent solutions to the world’s problems and injustices.  It was so in Jesus’ day, and seems particularly so in our own.  Living in hope, however, holds out to the world the possibility that things are not exactly as they seem, and that we make that possibility manifest by our lives.  We light a candle in the dark, or feed people in the midst of hunger, or volunteer to help in response to a natural disaster or to human tragedy.  In the midst of what seems unconquerable evil and dis-order, we witness to hope by – as Paul counsels the Thessalonians – increasing and abounding “in love for one another and for all” in order that our hearts may be strengthened in holiness and that we may be “blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” (cf. 1 Thessalonians 3:12-13)  We grow in love and engage in the world in order that the hope inherent in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus – and which is already in us – be more fully revealed in the world by our own lives. 

As we begin the season of Advent, we know that it is fundamentally a season of hope – hope that light will overtake darkness, hope that God is and will continue to make all things new, hope that the child born in the stable will be born in us.  In midst of crisis and difficult circumstances the reponse of Jesus and of the early Church was also hope.  Hope informed by their looking back to the prophets, looking back beyond the contemporary climate of apocalypticism to an older tradition of covenant and faithfulness expressed in care for the destitute and in fellowship beyond the narrow bounds of one’s immediate community.  Looking at the signs of the times, it is easy to give up without glimpsing anything beyond them.  But the Advent invitation is to look back and find our lives in the great drama of God’s call and providential care, and to continue to hope.  In a recent film Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the young and inexperienced hotel owner is trying make a go of the old family business.  Despite his lack of a real business background and the dilapitated state of the building, he remains cheerfully hopeful, saying to one of the patrons “It’ll be alright in the end; and if it’s not alright it is not yet the end.”  That certainly is Christian hope, the sort of hope that enables us to look forward confidentally as we allow ourselves to be inspired and molded by our communal history and tradition.  The end may surely be coming, but it is not here yet, and until then we continue to do and strive in the hope promised to us; we continue to live according to the covenant made long ago and proclaimed and lived anew in Jesus.  It is a hope founded in the past, refreshed anew daily in the preset, and that carries us into the future to engage with the world, while at the same time being instruments of its transformation as we do await the “coming of the our Lord Jesus with his saints.” (1 Thessalonians 3:13)