Texts for Sunday, December 5: Isaiah 11:1-10’ Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19; Romans 15:4-13; Matt 3:1-12
The scriptures provide the following job description for kings: justice for the poor and meek, deliverance for the needy. Peace will come, the prophet promises, with a leader who will serve the last and least of the people. And on that day, the wolf shall lie down with the lamb, the cow and bear will graze, the lion will eat straw like the ox. And pigs will fly, the prophet might add. Like, “That’ll be the day.”
Cynicism is easy, too easy. Anyone who is paying attention to news from Washington knows that our kings and princes have recently decided against deliverance for the needy. The least of these don’t even make the list of very important people. That is not how it should be.
Jesus and the prophets held up a different picture. A vision of peace, that peaceful place where predators become herbivores, and prey have no worries. And this is written to give us hope, the apostle Paul wrote. Hope is the antithesis and the antidote to despair. Hope is powerful. Hope is not just wishful thinking, hope is a commitment to live in the present as if the future has already arrived.
It is hope that drove the people into the wilderness of the Jordan, to be baptized by John. John announced the coming of the prince of peace and taught the people to prepare for his coming. “Repent!” was the word he used. Repent means “turn around.” Repentance is a reversal of course. Repentance clears the way for a new and better future. And repentance confirms in each of us the hope for a better future.
Hope, three times in this brief passage Paul uses that word. Hope is extraordinary. Hope requires a minute shift in vision, just a small but powerful movement. Elsewhere in the letter to the Romans, Paul explains it this way: Suffering produces Endurance, and Endurance produces Character, and Character produces Hope. Somehow that proclamation seems counter-intuitive, because we all can think of examples of how suffering produces nothing but more suffering. But we also have witnesses to the power of hope. We have Paul, and we have Gandhi, and we have King, and we have Tutu. We have Wiesel, and Kushner, and so many others, people without headline names. We have witnesses to the power of hope, hope that the wrong shall fail, and the right prevail, with peace on earth, good will to all.
And our witnesses show that living in hope gives us the power to join the movement of the one who ushers in the age of justice, and righteousness, and peace.
May the God of hope fill you with all peace and joy in believing, that you may abound in hope, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit. Amen.
