Risk Hope!

Originally published in the December edition of the Anglican Highway

Advent is the season of naming our hopes.

The poets and prophets of Advent proclaim hope.

What a daring thing to do! To name our hopes, to not succumb to being numb in the face of relentless war, remorseless brutality, unscalable accumulations of desperation: poverty, displacement, trauma.

Insurmountable systems of greed. Irreversible damage to Earth. Flash floods, fire, fear.

How can we name our hopes!?

In the face of what we see in our world.
Wouldn’t that just be naïve?

In Ladder to the Light: an Indigenous Elder’s meditations on Hope and Courage, Bishop Steven Charleston says:

Hope arises when we embrace a sacred reality. That vision is not a dream, but a goal. What we project into our future through faith is not just the wishful thinking of dreamers out of touch with reality; it is the blueprint for a future our faith sees clearly before us. Hope is not a wish, but an intention. Most of us do not see ourselves as heroic agents of change, but if we have enough hope in what we see, then we find the strength to make change happen. When our hope is linked to the hope of others, we become even stronger.

I will not abandon my belief in the coming dawn just because I dwell in the midnight hour.

One of the greatest dangers we face is getting used to the darkness.

Hope is a decision.

Hope changes history”

Advent visions stir our imaginations so we do not become resigned to what currently is. Prophetic poetry rouses us so we don’t get used to the darkness! We are called to hold onto God’s goal of restoration for the whole earth. God’s transformation. God’s realm where all live in fullness of life. Advent hope focuses on God.

When I studied Jeremiah with Dr. Walter Brueggemann in Georgia, he began every class with prayer. I learned a lot about prayer from his prayers.

He had steeped himself so long in the prophets of Hebrew scripture and Christian scripture, that his language for prayer was vehement and honest, electrifying and challenging. He spoke to and focused on God, like Moses face to face, toe to toe, with the Holy One. Not pious and polite, but demanding. Not demure, but bold.

In one of his startling invocations, Brueggemann prays,
“We gather ourselves together to subsume our hopes under your rich names.”

This is a great image for Advent! All the rich names of God we hear in our Advent scriptures are where we can risk our hope: Mercy, Compassion, Way of Peace, Refiner’s Fire, Faithful, Gracious, Liberator, Love.

Pay attention to the names of God in all the familiar readings and hymns of this season. Keep a list of the ones that speak to you, these qualities of the Holy One we worship and long for. Expand your names for God! (hymn #395 in Common Praise, Bring Many Names)

Our hope rests In the Holiness of this living, loving God. In this God of Advent is the vision that stirs us and claims our lives.
In the face of all that is overwhelming, it is God breaking into our numbness that gives us the possibility of actual Newness.

1 From Ladder to the Light: an Indigenous Elder’s meditations on Hope and Courage. Steven Charleston, Broadleaf Books, 2021 (pp. 64.-68)

2 From “Reform our deformed lives”, written originally for Columbia Theological Seminary. Excerpted from Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann (pp. 115 – 116), Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002.

For more Advent Resources go to: https://www.kootenayanglican.ca/news/advent-2024