Hope

 Isaiah 2:1-5 November  30, 2025

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 just optimism.

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, to live with purpose.

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.

During Advent, we’ll be reading from the book of Isaiah.

And the traditional theme for first Advent is “hope”.

 

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 Isiah Second Isaiah and Third Isaiah.

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

before the destruction of Jerusalem and exile of the Israelites.

Second Isaiah, books 40-55 was in the

500’s BC 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 part of 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.

But the siege of Jerusalem and the exile of the Jews

hadn’t happened yet.

 

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

only 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.

 

This was 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 – which are 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 our call as people of faith is to have hope in

the midst of hopeless situations.

When we give up hope, then we stop trying.

We engage in what’s called “premature capitulation”.

We believe in the power of the bad in the world,

more than the power of the good so we give up too soon.

The forces of evil in this world love that.

The forces of evil love it when good people give up hope,

Hope is not just blind optimism, which can be naive.

Hope is acting, it’s determination. It’s having your ducks in a row

and pushing forward. It’s anticipating God’s actions and help.

Maybe that’s why our biblical stories are so full

of miracles –things that seem impossible.

God wants to get us used to the impossible happening.

So that we will still have hope.

 

I want to remind you about hope that many of us were involved in.

In February of 2022, I had heard that Chimney Cove was

going to be torn down to build luxury apartments.

The developer actually called me, and thought I would be

happy about this, but I was not.

So I talked to a lot of people about it,

and I got a group together to discuss it.

And most people said that nothing could be done.

The deal was too far along too much money was involved.

I remember one friend saying, “You can’t stop that”.

I heard that and I actually believed it in a lot of ways.

 

But when the eviction notices were given out and people

were given just 30 days to leave, we didn’t give in to

the fatality of the whole thing, and we all raised a stink

and we started to go on TV and mobilize.

And that caused lots of other people to raise a stink.

 

We erred on the side of hope and in the end,

our friends in Chimney Cove were able to stay.

Was it a miracle? hmm. You can probably connect the dots and see

how it all happened, but it sure felt like a miracle.

Had we all just given up and stayed quiet, and given into

premature capitulation and not had hope,

the outcome would have been different.

 

In the midst of desperate situations,

Hope is one of our greatest weapons.

And in the midst of whatever seems hopeless now

we have to remember those miracles, and

to use that hope and not give in too quickly.

 

And more than just that one event, I have hope that one day,

the people of Chimney Cove will not have to worry

about being evicted because of redevelopment.

I have hope that they will be saved permanently as workforce housing.

 

In the midst of Isaiah’s visions of destruction,

he provides stories of a new city and a new reality.

He shows that God has not abandoned the people.

There is promise. There is hope.

 

The sadness 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.

 

That’s what this first reading for Advent 1 is.

After the warning and destruction in chapter 1,

there is hope in Chapter 2.

In this 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 they 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 might be cliché now

it appears in both Isaiah and Micah

but think of how astounding and hopeful

that vision would be:

 

That the whole world would find no need for weapons.

Our grandchildren and great grandchildren

would not need to know anything about

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

or mass shootings, or 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

missiles 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 birth is long.

and it is growing in us every day.

Part of me says that’s what the second coming is:

The hope of Christ being born again in us, in our hearts.

 

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.