Hope

 Isaiah 2:1-5

November  27, 2022

Advent 1 – Hope

 

The dictionary defines Hope like this:

“to cherish a desire with anticipation

for example, ‘she hopes to be invited to the party”

That’s true and we know what they’re talking about,

but hope is more than that isn’t it?

 

To live with hope is to be optimistic,

but it’s more than that too.

Martin Luther said, “everything that is done

in the world is done by hope.”

Even when the present seems desperate,

to live with hope in the future is to live with trust,

to live with faith.

Hope is faith that God will not abandon us

and that the future will be better.

The prophet Isaiah had that faith in God and

hope for the future.

 

The book of Isaiah is long. 66 chapters.

It’s ascribed to Isaiah the son of Amoz who lived in the 8^th century,

but most scholars believe that it’s written by several people,

and they divide it into three different sections,

First Isaiah are books 1-39 written in the 700’s BC

before the destruction of Jerusalem and exile of the Israelites.

Second Isaiah, books 40-55 was in the 500’s during the exile of the Israelites

and Third Isaiah, books 56-66 were written after

the Israelites return from exile in the 400’s BC.

 

All our readings this Advent are from the first Isaiah

The time before the invasion of the Babylonians,

This is a time when Isaiah and

other people could feel that things were going wrong,

were heading in the wrong direction

and were not going according to God’s will and vision,

and Isaiah was giving a warning to the country of Israel.

 
Chapter one starts out with this kind of warning:

  Ah, sinful nation,

    people laden with iniquity,
offspring who do evil,
    children who deal corruptly,
who have forsaken the Lord,
    who have despised the Holy One of Israel,
    who are utterly estranged!

 he goes on:

 ²² Your silver has become impure

    your wine is mixed with water.
²³ Your princes are rebels
    and companions of thieves.
Everyone loves a bribe
    and runs after gifts.
They do not defend the orphan,
    and the widow’s cause does not come before them.

 

Isaiah sees a country of people

focused on its own gain.

Leaders using the power they have to

serve themselves and get rich rather

than to lift up and support the most vulnerable.

 

Not the country that God had established.

Not the city on a hill for others to look to and imitate,

But just another corrupt country that has put

God’s will and those in need

at the bottom of the priority list.

 

Maybe we can appreciate Isaiah’s

observations today in this country.

The hopes for our nation had been high at one time.

Once we saw ourselves as the one to emulate,

once we were an example for others.

But things haven’t been heading in

a good direction for a very long time.

 

Just like Isaiah said,

people are weighed down with inequity,

everyone does seem to love a bribe

criminals and thieves are the honored ones,

Everyone is just out for what they can get,

and the widows and the orphans – Our biblical code words

for the most vulnerable in our society – are still not cared for.

And violence has been our fallback since the beginning.

This country is not the one that we once believed it was.

We’re letting ourselves and God down in lots of ways.

 

I think we can feel Isaiah’s sense of foreboding.

This model is not sustainable in the long run.

It feels like we’re on the edge of a precipice,

something that will be very unpleasant for all of us.

 

Isaiah warns that these ways will only lead to destruction

to the dissolution of everything they knew

he uses phrases like:

“humanity will be brought low”, “doom will follow”.

Everyone will feel God’s disappointment.

It might seem, then and now, like all hope is lost.

 

But Isaiah doesn’t leave us there.

In the midst of these visions of destruction,

are also visions of a new city and a new reality.

God has not abandoned us. There is promise. There is hope.

Which is what we hear throughout Advent.

 

Unpleasantness that the people face

will not be permanent, it won’t last forever.

In their trials and desperation, the people

will understand where they went wrong.

They will discard all the things that were useless,

they will reject the ways that led them astray.

They will go back to capture the vision that they once had.

 

Isaiah promise that in the end, God’s will be with us,

Immanuel, and these difficult times

will be followed by a fulfillment, something better.

Death followed by resurrection.

 

In this reading for the First Sunday in Advent it says,

“here is the word that Isaiah, son of Amoz saw”.

We hear about a vision, a vision of tomorrow,

promise, a vision of hope.

 

In that vision, people are flooding to the house of God

not just the steady faithful, but all people are going

to find wisdom and to learn the ways of God.

This is not just a dream of church growth,

or to make this a Christian nation.

This is a vision of something much more encompassing,

much more important.  People are coming

to learn God’s word and God’s ways

because the ways of the world that we have been

following didn’t work. The world is working together

to live out the way and the vision of God.

 

And the sign of this transformation would be this:

“They will turn their swords into ploughshares

and their spears into pruning hooks.”

 

We’ve heard this phrase so often

it appears in Isaiah and Micah

it might be cliché now,

but think of how astounding that would be:

 

The whole world would find no need for weapons.

Our children would not need to know anything about

war, or self-defense, or violence, or bombings,

or mass shootings, school shootings, or accidental shootings,

or active shooter drills, or murders, or stranger danger, 

or nuclear bombs, or wounded veterans, or chemical weapons, or refugees.

So much so, that they would look at guns and

bombs and say, “what do we need these useless things for?

Let’s melt them down and turn them

into something we can actually use.”

 

This is an amazing vision, better than our current reality.

This is the hope that Isaiah envisions for all people.

 

And the whole book of Isaiah tells us that that hope

will be heralded through the gift of a child.

The shoot that comes off of Jesse’s tree

Immanuel, God is with us, Wonderful Counselor, Prince of peace.

The Messiah.

 

This is our hope.

This is what we long for,

this is what we pray for,

The one that will deliver us into a new life.

 

This is we believe has already come in

the life, cross, and resurrection of Jesus Christ,

And is still being formed in us.

The gestation period for this one is long.

It is still being born in us every day.

The hope that we are working to give birth to in this world,

the hope that we see glimpses of and keeps us going.

Christ is being born again in us.

 

That is the Word of God that Isaiah saw.

When all will be made new again.

The hope of a world recreated in God’s

image and according to God’s will.

The hope of the one that was,

and is, and is still to come.

The hope of the Messiah.

The hope of Christ.