THE WONDER OF HOPE
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Text: Psalm 25:1-10
“I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die
For poor, orn’ry sinners like you and like I.
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.”
Waiting and watching, wondering and wandering. It has always seemed curious to me that John Jacob Niles beloved Christmas song would include sin and death along with the miracle of Jesus’ birth. But there it is, right along with the contrast of the lowly manger and magnificent star and the affirmation that Jesus could have had anything he wanted. And in the midst of it all the wonder that he came to earth for poor orn’ry sinners like you and I.
Writing of waiting in wonder, the poet, James Agee, speaks of the child who is “nearly sick with the fear” of anticipation of that which is to come, that which breaks beyond the familiar and the shakes the comfortable (James Agee, Knoxville: Summer of 1915.) So the season begins in which we wait again in wonder for things to be revealed that will astonish us and fulfill our dreams. We wait once more in wonder for God to come among us in new and astonishing ways. We wait and watch in wonder for the fulfillment of ancient prophecies and a newborn’s first cry. We wait in eager anticipation and, if we think things through, we ought to experience some trepidation about what is to come. This is the season of Advent.
It has nothing to do with “Black Friday,” that holiday newly manufactured by modern marketers to get us to go out and “Buy! Buy! Buy!” before all the best bargains disappear. It has little to do with trimming our homes with bright lights and tinsel and gaily wrapped packages. It has even less to do with spending ourselves silly and then spending the next year paying for all those purchases, which may or may not have won us favor in the eyes or hearts of their recipients.
The hymn writer proclaims that it is “the hopes and fears of all the years” that are met in the culmination of the Advent season. As we discussed Advent in Bible study on Tuesday, Advent does not come all soft and sweet and pretty with a bright bow on top. Advent comes with rough edges and stiff challenges and the fierce, unyielding love of God. The lectionary gives us Luke’s version of the Jesus’ apocalyptic pronouncement of the destruction of the Temple – a strange text for this most unrelentingly cheerful of holiday seasons. But the truth is that Advent is about waiting in wonder for a force to come among us that will turn the world upside down, or better yet, right side up.
We need no commercialization of the season. Rather, we wait with the poet the “rebirth of wonder…for the age of anxiety to drop dead, for the Second Coming, for a religious revival, for intimations of immortality, waiting perpetually and forever for a renaissance of wonder.” That sounds much more like Advent than homogenized carols piped into supermarkets and box stores to entice us to spend more. On Friday, along with Jan, Peter, my friend Charlotte and a few hundred other people, I attended a performance of Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio”. It is unquestionably one of my favorite musical works of the season and we don’t get to hear it often enough. I am thrilled when the trumpets and tympani break forth accompanying one joyous chorus of praise to God after another. This performance of excerpts by the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus was done in English for some reason I never really grasped. I confess I complained to Charlotte about that on the way home. In particular, I said that I did not want a heavy helping of 18th century German Lutheran guilt served up with my Christmas feast. As long as the work is sung in German, I don’t have to consider such texts as “My life my Jesus gave me. My Jesus died that he might save me,” or “Thou who didst so sorely suffer, on Thy bitter Cross for me.” This is not my idea of Christmas. And yet here is Bach and his librettist, here is John Jacob Niles, wondering about the saving power of this infant so tender and hoping it is so.
These challenges to sentimentalizing the season brings to mind a text from another Christmas favorite, Ceremony of Carols by Benjamin Britten, in which the composer sets an ancient text highlighting the wondrous mystery of the season: “This little babe, so few days old, has come to rifle Satan’s fold. All doth at his presence quake, though he himself from cold doth shake.” Who is this God who comes so close in human form and shakes our living to its core? How does he come and how shall we greet her? What shall we do to prepare for this holy coming?
In truth, Advent usually comes, sneaking up on us, often with surprising speed that catches us unaware and unprepared. Didn’t we just finish with Thanksgiving? We’ve hardly had time for the feast to settle. Is it really Advent already, this sacred season set aside for waiting, watching, wondering? In just four short weeks are we expected to make time and space to prepare our lives for the very indwelling of God? And this while everyone everywhere seems ready to leap right over preparation in favor of breaking out the carols to accompany the dizzying whirl of parties and purchasing that precede Christmas, or actually is Christmas for many. Since, for those in much of the northern hemisphere, Advent comes in the “bleak midwinter,” it’s no wonder people want to party.
Hope is traditionally the theme for this first Sunday of Advent. Though it, too, may seem a curious text for Advent, hope is clearly a focus to be drawn from the opening verses of Psalm 25. In fact, this is a psalm of confident hope. It is the song of one who has known the complexities, the downs and ups of life, and still maintains a steadfast trust that God will provide for him, that God will care for him, that the future is ultimately in God’s hands. This is the song of one who has escaped the exile, who is at home, sitting in her chair, thinking over how her life has been both challenged and blessed. Many of us could comfortably and reflectively sing this song.
The verses we are given to consider alternate between the writer’s penitence for sin committed, and confidence that God will restore the writer to wholeness. Isn’t that where hope is always situated - between the world gone wrong, life off-track, tasks undone, and expectations of the world righted, life moving steadily ahead on God’s mainline, work well-done. It is the human condition to live in tension between failure and fulfillment, sin and salvation, trouble and hope. We might say this psalm shows the very human tendency to mix concerns and expectations, reality and dreams, hopes and fears as the stream of consciousness flows through the mind. We may be aware of having strayed from faithfulness to God at the same time we hold hope for restored relationship. We acknowledge our limitations at the same time we hold hope for future fulfillment. Those pesky Lutherans again use this as one of their prayers for this day, “Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come. By your merciful protection alert us to the threatening dangers of our sins, and redeem us for your life of justice.”
Since this psalm is apparently written after the return from exile, its song of hope is not infused with the actual anguish of exile and the desperate desire to return home. Nor, on a personal level, does this writer seem to be weighed down with guilt and shame over some great unresolved sin. This does not seem to be a de profundis hymn, cried out from the depths of despair. Though there is reference to the sins of youth, the confession is the confession of one ruminating toward the end of a relatively full and decent life. This is the prayer of one whose sin consists mostly of youthful indiscretion and the small transgressions that separate us from the ultimate fullness of life possible when living in complete obedience to God and God’s law.
Writing on the wonder of hope and reflecting on this psalm, Walter Brueggemann says that “…humanness is pervasively hope-filled, not in the sense of buoyant, unreflective optimism, but in a conviction that individual human destiny is powerfully presided over by this One who wills good and works that good…Yahweh is not instrumental to the hope of Israel, but Yahweh is in fact the very substance of that hope” (Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy, p. 497.)
This is indeed the hope into which Advent invites us to enter, the fulfillment of the promise that in all our living God will provide for us, take care of us, indeed, save us. The hope of salvation is the hope for fulfillment of the ancient messianic promise; it is the coming Christ who will bring God’s redemption to God’s people. One might wonder if Anna and Simeon did not chant Psalm 25 as they waited patiently in the temple for just such a fulfillment of God’s promise.
Barbara Brown Taylor writes movingly of living with such of a promise. “The promise may not be fully in hand,” she says. “It may still be on the way, but to live reverently, deliberately and fully awake – that is what it means to live in the promise, where the wait itself is as rich as its end. All it takes are some regular reminders, because as long as the promise is renewed, the promise is alive, as vivid as a rainbow, as real as the million stars overhead” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine , 41.)
The hopes and fears of all the years are met once again in these days of Advent. What are your hopes and fears this year? Perhaps health care reform, maybe an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iran, possibly an end to the economic recession and 10% unemployment. Perhaps fewer children will go hungry, maybe the homeless on our streets will find shelter, possibly Palestinians and Israelis living in peace and harmony. Perhaps I need to make room for a refugee or immigrant, maybe I need to support marriage equality and an end to employment discrimination for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people, possibly there is some racism that lingers in my heart. Perhaps I am expected to step up and make a difference, maybe I have to reexamine my financial priorities, possibly I need to reconcile with my alienated sister or brother. Preparing the way, preparing myself, preparing my community - it is not a time soft and sweet and pretty with a bright bow on top; it comes with rough edges and stiff challenges and the fierce, unyielding love of God. This is the wonder of hope – and, once again, we wait in wonder. Amen.