• “Is there anything promising on the horizon? Or will this world just keep grinding every eternal hope into powder and ashes?” – so begins an article written by James Kay in The Christian Century from 1997 reflecting on these scriptures for the beginning of Advent.
• It is easy, isn’t it, to focus on the doom and gloom in the world; to see the many ways that hope is being ground into despair:
• The war in Iraq grinds on. It has now lasted longer than the U.S. participation in World War II and is just a few months short of equaling the length of the Civil War.
• Afghanistan grinds on. It doesn’t get the press of Iraq of course, but still people are dying there.
• The war on terrorism grinds on.
• The conflict in Israel/Palestine grinds on.
• People here and there and seemingly everywhere are hungry, cold, homeless, despondent, despairing, addicted, abused, afraid.
• As Hawkeye Pierce said in the fictional TV show MASH based on the Korean War: What difference does our work make? The sick keep coming. The dying keep coming. They all just keep coming.
• And so we begin the season of Advent: The joyous rush up to Christmas. Ho, ho, ho.

• It seems to me that what we really need for Christmas, what the world really needs for Christmas isn’t a new PlayStation 3, or an iPod Video, or even a 56” flat panel projection TV (despite what retailers would have us believe). What the world really needs for Christmas is hope. And where I find hope is in the Advent story: the anticipation of Christ’s coming, the promise of God’s redemption, the fulfillment of Emmanuel: God with Us.
• The problem is that the church often conveys that promise, that hope, in one of two ways:
• First, the church has traditionally and even today pointed to a hope that is out there. Somewhere over the rainbow. A hope that is heavenly based. The peace that God promises isn’t peace on earth, but eternal peace in heaven. Sure this world is messed up and always will be, but someday, someday we’ll know peace. Later. When the roll is called up yonder. In the sweet by and by. Hope therefore becomes something so disconnected to our present reality as to be too hard to grasp. And not very comforting to those who are in need of it, here, today, in this place.
• The second way hope is portrayed is that is all depends on us. God set up this planet, gave us the tools we need, and then stepped back to let us take over. In this view, God is passive. Completely dependent upon us to do God’s will. Waiting for us to take charge and set things right. The only problem is, we humans don’t do so well when left to our own devices. Our human weaknesses and egos, and prejudices seem to keep getting in our way and the greatest of human atrocities are committed in the name of setting things right.

• We need a new source of hope. Not something unknown and unseen out there. And certainly, not something completely dependent upon us. Our passage from Jeremiah locates our hope in a different place. Hope isn’t in the clouds of eternity; heaven where all is perfect. And hope isn’t located strictly in us: if we just work harder, be better, we’ll finally get it right. For Jeremiah, for people of faith throughout the ages, our hope is in God, maker of Heaven and Earth. Our hope is in the promises of God, the sure and certain promise that God is at work, bringing about redemption. Our faith reminds us that God will keep God’s promises, and even now God is alive and active and bringing about transformation in our midst.
• That’s the hope that Jeremiah wrote about: and he was writing to a people sorely in need of hope. Jerusalem was under siege by the Babylonians, the people would shortly be forced into exile. Jeremiah himself was in prison. If ever a people needed a sign of hope, it was them. And from Jeremiah it came. This part of Jeremiah is called a little book of consolation, for to a people without hope, God spoke through Jeremiah a promise of hope:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah . In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’

• To be sure, God has chosen since the beginning of human history to effect salvation through humans. In other words, God has chosen to use us to bring about salvation. For better or worse. I’m sure the angels are still debating the wisdom of that particular suggestion. But though humans are invited to participate in fulfilling God’s promises, it is God who directs and blesses our work.
• And it is God who has committed that one way or another, through us, or in us, or around us if need be, God’s promises will be fulfilled. The days are surely coming, says the Lord.

• And so we have hope. And it’s not an empty hope based on a vague promise. It’s a hope given life through the history of our faith, through the ancient stories that attest to God’s life-giving power, and God’s love fulfilling promises.
• It’s the story of a people lost in slavery whom God rescued through an unwilling servant named Moses.
• It’s the story of a people under siege by foreign nations, lost to idol worship, or separated from their homelands, alternately comforted and challenged by God through God’s prophets, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and others.
• It’s our story, our Christmas story, of God’s promise to be with us, to be incarnate in us, and the faith of Mary and Joseph, and the birth of a child. It’s the good news proclaimed by the angels to the unworthy shepherds, and the devotion of foreigners who traveled to worship the Son of God.
• Each of those stories, those stories of our faith, reaffirms God’s activity in our world. And they reaffirm that God’s promises are trustworthy.
• The good news for Advent and for all time is this: God has come into the world, God is in our world, and God is yet coming in our world. This is the hope of Advent. This is the hope we so desperately need.

James Kay draws his article to a close with these words:

The message of Advent is not that everything is falling to pieces. And certainly the message is not that God is in heaven and all is therefore well with the world. No. The message of Advent is that when heaven itself is spinning into oblivion, when every fixed star on the moral compass is wavering, when all hell is breaking loose on earth, “your redemption is drawing near…” When we least expect it and when there is no evidence for it, God's power comes into this godless world in ways the world itself could never predict or foresee.

That’s Good News.