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Joyful Hope
Pauline McDougall from the Emmaus Family of Prayer in Southport, encourages us this Advent to reflect on God’s ongoing intervention in the life of his people throughout history, which can give us hope for the future.
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To wait in confident expectation for the final coming of Jesus in glory, means that we have experienced a “personal advent” as we have met with the Risen Lord in our own lives. Renewed Christians, we are told, should be “beacons of hope” in our communities but often we fail to throw much light into our darkened world. A clue to a major impediment would seem to lie in another prayer of the Mass. The priest prays that we will be protected from all anxiety during this waiting time and it is clear that whatever causes our focus to be on the problems or difficulties will inevitably take our attention from the Lord. The English word “anxiety” has its roots in the Latin word meaning “to narrow”. Anxiety has a narrowing effect which serves to put all the emphasis and attention on the source of the anxiety rather than on the One who is the source of the solution. Society today, as ever, has tremendous problems – social, moral and economic – which can easily breed a climate of hopelessness leading to anger and depression. Many of our contemporaries feel alienated and marginalised by the scale of the pain in their personal lives. We are not exempt from the redundancies, unemployment, sickness, bereavement and breakdown in relationships which beset this generation. For the Christian these need not overwhelm and diminish us as human beings. “The antidote to depression is hope” The antidote to depression and despair is hope. For the Christian this hope is a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. At the beginning of His public ministry Jesus, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, recognised Himself as the fulfilment of the prophecies of Isaiah. When He stood up to read in His own synagogue (Luke 4:18) He declared that all that the Jews had waited for in the coming of the Messiah was now being realised in Him. His contemporaries would have had a greater understanding of “the Lord’s year of favour” than we usually have. The Book of Leviticus describes the Jubilee Year when, after forty-nine years, ( seven Sabbatical years) each person would return to the land of his tribe. Land which changed hands between the Jubilee Years was technically leased and therefore could not be permanently lost. Unfortunately, even in Old Testament times this seems to have been an ideal rather than normal practice. It is not too difficult to imagine the effect on people if they genuinely believed that this ideal was about to be implemented. What an uplifting thought that justice and a fair distribution of resources is a real possibility in Christ! That God manifestly wants His children to be people of hope is clear from the Scriptures. Immediately after the Fall God gave mankind hope that the situation was not without remedy. In Chapter 3 of the Book of Genesis we see God promising the overthrow of Satan and even providing Adam and Eve with animal skins as better protection than the fig leaves they had used themselves. “Chain of Hope through the Ages” Adam and Eve were the first links in the chain of hope which stretches through the ages. After them came Noah, the one good man of his time, through whom God provided a new beginning for His creation and sealed His covenant with the rainbow (Genesis 9).Then came Abraham, “our father in faith”, through whose line God brought Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. The humiliation of slavery in Egypt was terminated by another link in this chain of hope as God prepared Moses as leader of his people at the time of the Exodus. After Joshua’s leadership God raised up Judges from among the people. They were gifted with what was needed to bring the people a stage further on but, not content with this, they eventually demanded a king like the neighbouring nations. During this difficult period of monarchy, the links of hope were maintained by the prophets who ceaselessly urged a recalcitrant people to listen to God‘s plan for them rather than go the way of the pagans. “Times of great distress often are the means by which hope is rekindled” Times of great distress, both for the nation and for individuals, including the Babylonian exile, were often the means by which hope was rekindled. It is sometimes out of the depths of our misery and despair that hope is born. In Job, Chapter 11:18 we read – “full of hope, you will live secure, dwelling well and safely guarded.” Through the prophet Hosea God promises – “I am going ---to make the valley of Achor a gateway of hope.” (Achor was a gorge near Jericho which usually symbolises Hell.) How can we be a people of hope? In the Letter to the Hebrews 6:18-19 we find these words – “—now that we have found safety, we should have a strong encouragement to take a firm grip on the hope that is held out to us. Here we have an anchor for our soul, as sure as it is firm, and reaching right through beyond the veil where Jesus has entered before us and on our behalf --” In the classical world the anchor was the great symbol of stability and was adopted by the Christians as their sign of hope. How can we as Christians become “anchored” more firmly? The first means at our disposal is prayer.Private prayer is essential if God is to communicate with each one of us on a personal level. By spending some time every day in His company we become people of hope as we see God active and concerned in our lives. “Importance of Praise” Our prayer must have an element of praise for this takes us very quickly into the presence of the King – it is a royal door . We sing “I will enter His gates with thanksgiving in my heart. I will enter His courts with praise”. We are reminded that praise anticipates God’s action. In the Old Testament we read of the victory cry as armies went into battle, sometimes against alarming odds, but with a firm hope that God had the situation in hand. Joshua was told before the battle of Jericho – “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands.” King David incorporated the festal shout of praise into the liturgy and we ourselves, use the phrase “a sacrifice of praise” during the Mass. “We need to study the Scriptures” We need to study the Scriptures to see how God has held us in the palm of His hand and lovingly gives us example after example of those who did not hope in vain. The chain of hope is very real. It is made even more tangible to us through the fellowship of the Spirit. It is very important that we witness to each other about God’s involvement in our lives. The community of believers needs to have its faith built up by the personal testimonies of its members. God is still at work in us to fulfil His purpose for each individual life. As we share how we have been changed by our encounter with the Lord, other people’s faith is increased and hope springs eternal again. We echo the words of the writer of the Lettter to the Hebrews – “Let us keep firm in the hope we profess because the One who made the promise is faithful.” With this shared experiential knowledge of the God whose plan for the redemption of Mankind has been revealed to us through Jesus, we can hold on to the certainty that the remainder of the promises will also be fulfilled so that in our moments of struggle we can remember that prayers are offered every day to protect us from all anxiety. Keeping our focus on God, rather than on the anxiety, may we respond wholeheartedly to this prayer for our safeguard as we say – For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Every
time we celebrate the Eucharist we proclaim our belief that this time
on earth is a waiting period which is meant to be filled with an anticipatory
joy. Advent is perhaps the time when we are most aware of this. Our
attention is focussed on the Incarnation and the historical events of
2,000 years ago. However, if the Incarnation is no more than an event
we commemorate like any other birthday, then there probably won’t
be much evidence of “joyful hope”.