Hope Amid Bowls of Tears
1 December 2023
Advent 1 B
Isaiah 64:1-9; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37; Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
Homily delivered at St. Mark’s Episcopal Parish, Medford Oregon
9:00 a.m. Sung Mass
God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen
When I first became an Episcopalian, I was taken aback when Advent came. For me, it had always been the time for joyfully preparing for Christmas. But then, right there in the lectionary, it was all about the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord! Yikes! But a kind priest resolved my conflict. Advent is the season where we focus on the once and future coming of our Lord. It happened back then, but it will happen still in the future. As the Gospel of John puts it, “the hour is coming, and now is.” Or, in the words of the doxology sung to conclude the psalms in the daily office, “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.”
It is part and parcel with the heart of our faith. We look about the world and see it is broken: War in the Holy Land and in Russia and Ukraine, the divided partisanship of our society where we demonize each other, our unwillingness even to listen to each other or hear truth that does not conform to our narrative and interests. We see this brokenness in our neglect, or our outright exploitation, of others. We see it in our abuse of the natural world, which increasingly threatens life on this, our fragile island home. As the psalmist says today, because God seems hidden from us, we abandon God’s ways all the more
We hope for God to come and set things right. That’s what “day of judgment” means, after all. In the Old Testament, the Book of Judges is not about legal court and people in white powdered wigs wielding gavels and being called “Your Honor.” It is about men and women like Samson, Deborah, Judith, Jael, Barak: military heroes who set things right and liberate the oppressed. That’s the basic idea of the “Day of Judgment.” But if we ask who are the wicked who might get the worse of it when things are set right, if we are honest, we see that, in the words of Pogo, “we have met the enemy and he is us.” So we fear the day of judgment as well as hope for it.
As, again, the Psalmist says in today’s reading, “You have fed us with the bread of tears, you have given us bowls of tears to drink.” And yet, we must continue to trust God, knowing he made us, and we are his. So he cannot completely blame us for our misdoings. He made us this way, and we are his. And, being his, he will restore us to health, confidence, prosperity, and peace.
The message of Advent, which talks about how God has come already and will still come again, is this: don’t give up on hope.
Hope. That’s what Advent is all about. We see the world and see that, even 2,000 years after the coming of our Lord in the flesh, it is still a profoundly broken place. And, in the words of Langston Hughes, what happens to hope deferred? Does it dry like a raisin in the sun? Or does it explode?
Hope is expressed in the gospel song by Andrae Crouch that we used to sing as the recessional all through Advent in Beijing’s Congregation of the Good Shepherd:
Soon and very soon,
We are going to see the King,
Soon and very soon,
We are going to see the King.
Soon and very soon,
We are going to see the King,
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
We are going to see the King.
No more crying there,
We are going to see the King,
No more crying there,
We are going to see the King.
No more crying there,
We are going to see the King,
Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
We are going to see the King.
Hope for being delivered from ill; fear of perhaps being one of those from whom others must be delivered. Hope fulfilled and fear driven out in the past, present, and future. Today’s readings all have this dual past/present vs. future, this “punish the wicked!” vs. “spare us, good Lord!” character.
Paul today tells us that God has given us all the spiritual gifts needed to get us through safe and sound. We need to keep on trusting, keep on hoping. That is what “stay awake for the return of the Master” in the Gospel means.
When I was young, I sometimes heard in Church sermons on what they called the “signs of the times,” or the signs of the end. Most of these were disastrous indications of the world going to hell and destruction. I only later learned that this was a gross misunderstanding of the New Testament idea of “signs of the times.” In Matthew 16:1-3, the Pharisees and Sadducees come to Jesus and ask him to show them a sign from heaven. They have heard of his marvelous healings and acts, which he says is a sign that the reign of God has come near. They want a proof before they’ll believe his claims. He replies, “You know how to read the weather, but not read the signs of the times.” For Jesus, his marvelous acts that showed God’s grace and love and healing were the true signs of what time we live in.
Paul agrees—elsewhere he says this twilight we are in is leading to light, not darkness. He wants the night—with its “works of darkness”—to end.
As the Collect for Advent reminds us, we must put away the “works of darkness,” that is, the actions that are symptomatic of this messed up and unjust world. That, too, is a sign that we have stayed awake in our long wait for the vindication of God.
Keep awake! Let us cast aside the works of darkness and don the armor of light. Put on Christ. Know that God loves us, and will help us be better.
In the name of Christ, Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment