“That we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope”
There are things which, perhaps, we would rather not think about that belong to the wisdom of the Advent season. What are those things? They are things like death, judgment, heaven and hell, the proverbial four last things or eschatology which for centuries were served up as the basic preaching fare during the Advent season. They are things which we would rather ignore or forget. We do so at our peril because such things really belong to hope, the great advent teaching of the Second Sunday in Advent.
Scripture speaks to Scripture, opening out the Word to us that carries hope in its breath. The Holy Scriptures are “written for our learning,” St. Paul exclaims, and Archbishop Cranmer prays the same in the wonderful Collect that adorns this day and this week, a Collect that embodies a whole attitude of mind and approach to the Scriptures. It encapsulates a way of understanding the Scriptures. They are writings that teach us “that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.” Comfort here is not simply hygge suggesting a quality of coziness and material comfort making us hyggelig. Comfort here is much stronger and deeper; it relates entirely to our life with God in his word coming to us that challenges us and redeems us from ourselves.
Hope is one of the great lessons of the Scriptures. Why? Because hope is precisely something which is not dependent upon us. The hope to which the Scriptures awaken us is real hope, the hope that has realized the utter limitations of human endeavour, the hope that has faced the empty abyss of ourselves and the vanity of our actions, the hope that has considered the reality of sin and death. Looking into the things of judgment and condemnation, hope also looks up to God and to the coming of God into our midst.
The coming is hope itself. We look for what we do not see. We wait for it. In the coming of Christ we look for what we do not see in ourselves but see in him, namely, the redemption of our wounded and weary humanity. But it takes the Word proclaimed and celebrated to awaken us and to sustain us in the hope of the Gospel and in the hope that we might begin to see this even in ourselves.
For what do we hope? Simply for the accomplishing of the good will and purpose of God in our lives. Big deal, you might be thinking. What will be will be. Que sera, sera. Yes, but why assume that that will be good? Why not assume misery and suffering? Plenty of that to go around, after all. Such an attitude is fatalistic. It leaves the individual completely and conveniently out of the equation – what will be will be whether I act or don’t act, whether I do something or nothing. That is sheer hopelessness. Fatalism is ultimately our despair of anything good; it is, really, a denial of hope. The denial of hope is our despair of God and his love. We consign ourselves to victimhood. It belongs to the culture of depression and dependency; the culture of despair. It is ultimately anti-human and negates the truth of our humanity as found in God.
And it arises simply from one thing – a despair of thinking the Revelation of God in the witness of the Scriptures. Closed book, closed minds; dead souls and empty lives, we might say. We are the hollow men, the culture of the walking dead. Only the Word, the living Word of God can revive us. In a way, that is the strong and unequivocal prophetic message of the Advent season now and always. It stands in judgment upon the ways of human pride and presumption that lead to darkness and despair but only so as to awaken us to hope. It is founded on the idea of God making his way towards us and in us.
Prophecy is as much a style or form of the presentation of ideas as anything else. We catch something of its tenor in the uncompromising claims that belong to prophecy’s essential character as insight. Something of its disturbing character is captured in the Lucan Apocalypse, the Gospel reading for today at Holy Communion. Dark warning signs and loud thundering words. Strong words that seek to awaken us to the reality of judgment, to the reality of judgment as the coming of God’s word, now and always.
The coming of God’s Word is judgment. That is the strong and necessary lesson for our day. The Word is not captive to our whims and fancies. It comes as the measure of truth about “the devices and the desires of our hearts.” Yet, it comes to offer the redemption of our desires; in short, to bring them to where they should be in the truth of God. But that means the acknowledgment on our part of the barren emptiness of ourselves simply within ourselves and as left to our own devices. It means the awareness of the hopelessness of our world and day without the transforming and redemptive power of God. The paradox is that without judgment there is no hope.
“Look up and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” Look and see. Look and see what the Scriptures are saying in the wonderful pageant of God’s Word, the pageant of the Word conveying redemption. We wait in hope not for something that is going to happen but upon what has happened in God’s eternal love; we wait in hope for its meaning in us.
The great question is whether we will be attentive and watchful about the motions of God’s word coming to us: coming to us in all of the majesty and awe of the prophetic utterances, coming to us in the Word that enlightens and teaches that “[we] may abound in all hope,” coming to us in the comfort of the Holy Sacrament, and coming to us in the grace-notes of God’s love made manifest in the little deeds of human kindness. The Word awakens us to hope precisely when and where we need it – in the awareness of all the forms of human darkness and despair.
We do not hope in ourselves. Our hope is in God whose “words shall not pass away.”. In his Word we find our hope, the hope that redeems the lonely despair of a dying world and shows us the shape of glory.
“That we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope”
Fr. David Curry
Advent 2, 2023
(2012 reworked)