Yearning Hope

Rev Indrea Alexander

Isaiah 64:1-9; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9;  Mark 13:24-37

I wonder if you have really yearned for something. Really yearned. Typically we yearn for something that has been lost. A relationship, an opportunity, a person, a place. Such nostalgic, regretful yearning for things of the past is naturally laced with sadness.
 
But sometimes we yearn for the future, for something not yet achieved, a deep desire not yet fulfilled. That too can be accompanied by a wistful melancholy, but it can also be infused with hope. It may be hope for the restoration of a relationship, hope for justice for an age-old wrong, hope for the resurrection of something that was destroyed. Or we may hope for something completely new.
 
Five hundred years ago, Spanish priest John of the Cross said, “Yearning...needs to hurt in order to be worthy of the word. Otherwise, it is just wanting.” Yearning is marked by an intensity of longing, an insatiable craving for something that is at present out of reach. A hunger.
 
One writer said, “When the soul is starved for nourishment, it lets us know with feelings of emptiness, anxiety, or yearning” ~ Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Ukranian-American rabbi. Others have noted that real yearning can lead to real purpose and focussed action.
 
Today we begin Advent. A season marked by yearning hope.
 
We remember the yearning hope of the Jewish people of the Old Testament as they awaited the coming of the promised Messiah. They were a people yearning for the presence of God in their midst.
 
As we offer our traditional Advent prayer: “Come, Lord Jesus,” we join the heartfelt prayer of those who yearned for hundreds of years for the birth of the Messiah.
 
As Isaiah expressed it in his cry to God in todays reading: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down…. Make your name know to your adversaries...from ages past no ear has heard, no eye has seen any other God who works for those who wait for him.”  So in Advent we look back at those who were looking forward with yearning for the coming of the Messiah. 
 
We secondly pray “Come, Lord Jesus” with those eager for this year’s celebration of Jesus’ birth, with all that Christmas means for them in terms of family or holiday or restoration.

Thirdly we pray “Come, Lord Jesus” into people’s hearts and homes today, and we consider afresh what Jesus Christ means for us and for our world. We pray with hope because we know that Jesus changes everything for the better. We have seen and experienced the change Jesus brings in people’s lives. We know God transforms relationships and communities through Christians who share Jesus’ ministry of justice, reconciliation and love.
 
Fourthly we pray “Come,” as we look toward the return of Christ and the restoration of God’s ways “on Earth as in heaven.” Advent is a time to specially yearn for peace and justice in this suffering world which “God loved so much”. We pray with hope because we trust what God has done and will do. As our Gospel reading indicated, we look toward the full flowering of Christ’s reign on earth.
 
Scripture speaks of the glorious arrival of Christ at the end of the age - final proof of God’s victory. The cosmic signs the gospel speaks of - the sun and moon darkened, the stars falling - these signs echo Old Testament imagery, and here declare that all creation will signal the coming of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ. And at his coming, we are told, he will gather his scattered people. Revelation speaks of the Earth being renewed by God dwelling among mortals, and in this new Earth all chaos, grief and pain will have passed away.
 
The Bible speaks of the end of the age as a sign of hope for believers who are suffering—there is better yet to come; it also serves as an encouragement to live faith-filled lives and to continue witnessing to others about Jesus—because the time and opportunity to do so will suddenly cease – and as the gospel of Mark spells it out, no one knows that day or that hour apart from God the father.
 
Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann wrote, “Hope in gospel faith is not just a vague feeling that things will work out, for it is evident that things will not just work out. Rather, hope is the conviction, against a great deal of data, that God is tenacious and persistent in overcoming the deathliness of the world, that God intends joy and peace. Christians find compelling evidence, in the story of Jesus, that Jesus, with great persistence and great vulnerability, everywhere he went, turned the enmity of society toward a new possibility, turned the sadness of the world toward joy, introduced a new regime where the dead are raised, the lost are found, and the displaced are brought home again.”
 
We have a Christ-light that shines inside of the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it.
 
Christian writer Richard Rohr put it like this, “We must all hope and work to eliminate darkness, especially in many of the great social issues of our time. We wish world hunger could be eliminated. We wish we could stop wasting the earth’s resources on armaments. We wish we could stop killing people from womb to tomb. But at a certain point, we have to surrender to the fact that the darkness has always been here, and the only real question is how to receive the light and spread the light. That is not capitulation any more than the cross was capitulation. It is real transformation into the absolutely unique character and program of the risen Christ.”
 
He calls Christians to name the darkness as darkness, and the Light as light, and to “Wait and work with hope inside of the darkness … never doubting the light that God always is - and that we are too.”
 
God works through people who choose to live in love and work for the transformation of the world.
 
So this Advent, as well as looking back into history, looking forward to Christmas, and looking ahead to the final coming of Christ (point my far left), we also look around.
 
We acknowledge the yearning hope of people in our community and around the world who constantly pray “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven” – whether they pray that with words, or with their suffering. We look for signs of the coming of Christ’s reign on earth that was inaugurated by his birth, life, death and resurrection. If we truly yearn for God’s will to be done, we not only wait but work for that glorious reign of hope, peace, joy, love, truth, justice... and all that Christ embodied. We seek to be the change we long to see.
 
Paul begins his letter to the Christian community at Corinth with words of grace and affirmation. He says that all the gifts that we have come from God and are to be shared with others (v. 5-7) in keeping with God’s ways. Paul is gently suggesting that people take time to reflect and consider whether they are the best they can be (blameless). God is faithful and will come to us, just as God comes to those who are living in poverty and fear.
 
This Advent let’s make time to connect with the God of Love and Life - who has our best interests at heart, who does not forget the people that are most often forgotten. Let’s identify a gift we could share, and be alert to who God is bringing to our awareness to receive it. Through your love, God might just touch someone who is yearning for hope. Let us be another sign of the in-breaking of the kingdom of God.
 
Come, Lord Jesus, come. Renew us, transform us, and fill us with light and hope that spill out into our communities.