Dear all,
During my first year of seminary, while we trimmed the tree at our annual Advent party, two friends and I came across four ornaments, clearly homemade, that said “Death,” “Judgment,” “Heaven,” and “Hell.” Laughing, we held them up to look at — I had never seen these words next to a Christmas tree before. Our dean explained that these were the Four Last Things: themes that, somewhere and sometime during the Church’s history, it had been topical to preach on the four Sundays of Advent. Gathered together that evening, my friends and I were delighted by the seemingly transgressive take on a season that often overflows with cheer. The ornaments added a little punk rock flair to our decorations.
There is another set of themes for the four Sundays in Advent: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. I didn’t grow up with these, either, but as an adult (and now a Professional Church Person) I’ve found them and used them in prayers for lighting candles on an Advent wreath, or in children’s or family formation materials for the season. While they may not seem as hardcore as the Four Last Things on the surface, at their heart, underneath the layers of sweetness we (or at least I) can sometimes apply, I think they are. In particular, in this moment, during this Advent, I’m reflecting a lot on hope.
In the midst of death or despair, hope is hard to hang on to. The act of claiming it when others might dismiss it as naïve takes incredible determination: hope is an action. Think of peace advocates, standing in front of soldiers, or of climate activists again and again sounding the alarm about our warming planet. Hope is no easy thing. In its deepest form it requires us to confront death and despair, rather than hiding from it, and to look beyond it, for it is not the end. Standing for peace in the face of violence, crying out for change to help prevent disaster – to me these are deeply hopeful actions, rooted in a desire and a belief for a different kind of world. As a Christian, it is the hope for a world free from death and its suffering: which is what Jesus promises us and offers us in and through his birth, death, and resurrection. (Rev 21:3-5)
I don’t mean to imply that we all have to be hopeful all the time, keeping our chins up and putting on a grin. There are moments and seasons of life that find us in the pit, surrounded by lions, or walking with Job as we question all that we have known. Telling anyone simply to have hope in such circumstances would feel empty. The gift of the Body of Christ is that in those moments we can journey with others who can hold our hope for us, who can remember for us that death is not the end, and that there is something more beyond it, even when we can’t.
This Advent, the world could use all of our fierce and persistent hope in the face of deep suffering and division. I wonder, how can you embody it? How can you live it, offer it to others and the world? What are the prayers you can make, the steps you can take? Whatever the form it takes, may you encounter hope’s radical presence in your life, in yourself or in another, in the weeks to come.
Love,
Rebecca+