December 8, 2013
Hope
- Isaiah 11:1-10
- Dr. Teri Thomas
Did you ever feel like a stump?
Like something significant had been cut off- gone?
Like part of you was missing?
I must admidt it feels like a pretty apt description for me these days.
Shall we talk about the elephant in the room?
Or maybe it should be the elephant missing from the room.
By now most of you should have received a letter
explaining that Jack and I are going through a divorce.
I feel like a stump.
Like a huge part of my life has simply been chopped off.
And sometimes the stump that is left
appears beyond life and beyond hope.
But my feelings are in no way unique and I know you understand.
Many of you have been through it yourselves.
You’ve known times of loss, of pain, of sorrow,
times when something you had is suddenly gone,
a part of you that had grown was cut off.
Maybe it was when your hopes and dreams for retirement disappeared in the financial crisis.
Or your health was chopped away by a doctor’s diagnosis
Or someone you loved died
and you felt like a part of your own being was missing
or the job you invested so much into vanished in the corporate cutback
You know the feeling.
Feeling like a stump.
We are not alone…even Isaiah knew how it felt
and he used the image to describe the state of his nation.
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
Jesse was David’s father,
and David was Israel’s best and most loved king,
and Israel’s line of kings was descended from David.
But then the northern tribes of Israel were captured by the Assyrians.
And the southern tribes of Judah were conquered by the Babylonians.
There was no more independent nation of Israel.
There was no Davidic king on the throne.
Life as they knew it was over.
Jerusalem was in shambles.
The Temple was destroyed.
All that remained was a memory of the past.
All that was left was the stump.
The stump - a piece of dead wood
no life, no fruit, no value
Pretty hopeless, wouldn’t you say?
But the word from God to Israel is surprising,
its an unexpected and undeserved word of hope:
"A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him…." (Isaiah 11: 1-2a).
So the stump is not dead. The future is not cut off.
The spirit of the Lord is stronger than all evidence to the contrary.
Dead trees.
Destroyed cities.
Despairing people.
Ruined lives.
Broken relationships.
Shattered dreams.
Whatever the circumstance, the spirit of the Lord blows like a fresh wind, breathing new life into dead wood.
Out of something that appears finished, lifeless, left behind,
comes the sign of new life – a green sprig
a tiny tendril in an unexpected place
something new and good growing.
This is the good news, for all of us here in the second week of Advent,
and for all of us whenever we feel like stumps. There is hope.
We say it — but how do we do it? How do we abound in hope when our days are filled with trouble, or problems, or sadness?
Oscar Wilde once said- “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
We have those days, those seasons when life just feels hopeless.
We have to find the stars.
In Dante’s Inferno there is a sign above the entrance to hell that says
“Abandon hope all you who enter here.”
For Dante, hell is a place with no hope. To enter hell is to give up hope.
Been there, done that.
Thank God for hope.
The Biblical word, “hope,” means to trust that God’s future is for us.
Faith means to trust in God in the here and now;
but hope means to trust in God’s future.
To realize that God is part of all of future history
and is part of your personal history; that whether our future means death or divorce, separation, moving or joblessness, or whether our future means marriage, babies, new homes and new jobs, new schools,
no matter what, our future belongs to God; that God’s power and purpose will not desert us in the days that lie ahead.
According to Emily Dickenson- Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tunes without words and never stops at all.
Hope is a good thing.
And the message we declare in on this Sunday of Advent
is that we are people of hope.
Hope pulls us into the future with assurance and conviction.
Hope gives us a reason to wait for tomorrow.
Hope directs and affirms our lives.
Hope keeps us out of hell.
Hope doesn’t assure us we will get what we want.
It assures us that whatever we get, God is there.
Hope doesn’t tell us our circumstances will improve,
but guarantees we will never be alone in these circumstances.
Hope is not about our dreams coming true,
but it is about God’s promises being real.
Hope is not a cheerful denial of reality,
rather it is a core trust grounded in God’s history and God’s promises.
When I find myself in a place I never dreamed I would be
in a situation I am not sure I can navigate
I ask myself - Has God taken care of me in the past?
When life has been really crummy?
When life has been very difficult?
I invite you to ask yourselves - Has God taken care of you in the past?
Has God taken care of you today?
Is God taking care of you at this very moment today?
And some of you are in great pain, or fear, or lonliness.
Some of you are living in difficult relationships.
Some of you are sick or suffering or dying and is God taking care of you right now?
Well, if God has so faithfully taken care of us in the past….
and if God is so faithfully taking care of us in the present,
certainly, will not God take care of us in the future?
Of course, God will.
We Christians have this amazing thing called hope:
hope for our future in this world
and hope for our future in the world to come.
So may we all live out the words of scripture,
and allow the God of hope to fill us with all joy and peace in believing,
so that we may abound in that hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Amen and amen.