• Isaiah 11: 1-10

Isaiah is unrelenting in his realism about the dire current threats from invading superpowers as well as the failures of the nation’s leaders and institutions.  Yet he persists in proclaiming hope in an ideal future.  From the “stump” of the Davidic monarchy, which had been leveled as a tree can be cut back to the ground, a shoot will appear.  Just as shoots of new growth are, it will be tender, fragile, perhaps even unnoticed at first.  A tiny, unexpected sliver of new life will appear amidst the brown rot and decay of the stump.  This new monarch will be an ideal leader, known for perfect justice and reconciliation and restoration.

• Psalm 72: 1-7,18-19

The psalmist assumes the convention of the time: that the fate of a people depended on a wise, fair monarch, who also acted as the guaranntor of justice, as a court of last appeal.

• Romans 15: 4-13

Citing passages from the Psalms, Deuteronomy and the last verse of today’s reading from Isaiah, Paul characterizes the life of Jesus as a fulfillment of Hebrew Scripture in a way that meets and exceeds the idealized expectations of the Jews (“the circumcised”), as well as all Gentiles.  These ancient promises of the prophets sustained people in dangerous times over the centuries.  The “God of hope,” who sustained in the past, now acts in a new manifestation, Jesus, the Christ.  Pragmatic Paul calls for certain actions in response: hospitality, praise and unity.

• Matthew 3: 1-12

Once again, the fate of the Jews, especially in Jerusalem, is precarious.  The Roman Empire deals swiftly and devastatingly with even a hint of insurrection.  Anyone attracting large crowds would not have gone unnoticed.  The appearance of John the Baptizer reminds Matthew of another great prophet, Elijah.  Living and prophesying in the wilderness near Jerusalem, all kinds of people go out to hear John, including the religious establishment.  John spares no one in his condemnation and judgment.  But he goes further.  He tells the crowds that he is preparing the way for another, whose sense of justice is so keen and unequivocal that he will not just warn of judgment, he will execute judgment that is honest and fair.

By the time of the appearance of John the Baptizer and Jesus, the Jews had learned a bitter lesson from their history; they were a small, easily conquered people in a world of superpowers.  In times of crisis,  the faults of their own leadership were exposed.  Even basic justice and fairness could not be expected in such times.  The biblical hope of an ideal One who would reliably and fairly dispense justice so pure that it would be immediately self -evident recurs repeatedly in such crises.  Biblical hope is asserted at the least credible times, yet it is so bold, so ideal, so certain that it could only come from God.

Biblical hope is not a higher degree of optimism or even hope in the usual sense of wishful thinking.  Biblical hope, however, is rooted in the very foundation of the whole biblical witness.  It is an extension of the very notion of God as creator and sustainer.  It asserts, against all conventional evidence, that God inaugurated and perpetuates all creation for one clear motive– benevolent love.  

The Twentieth century tested this hope for all people and shattered it for many.  Wars, holocaust, pogroms, mass murder, saturation bombing, nuclear bombing, exploitation of  the earth and of dispossessed people confront us with terrible realities about ourselves, our institutions, our leaders, our abilities and our failures.  Cynicism is an easy way out.  Even nihilism can have a seductive attraction.  Anyone who participates in biblical hope, therefore, had better be prepared for no easy answers, no quick solutions.  In an essay in his collection, Figuring the Sacred, Paul Ricoeur writes:

“Hope is both irrational, as being ‘in spite of’ death and ‘beyond’ despair, and rational, as asserting a new law, the law of superabundance, the superabundance of sense over nonsense.”  “[H]ope opens up what knowledge claims to close.” (p. 216)

For Christians, the appearance of Jesus as the Christ is a new iteration   of ancient biblical hope.  His words and actions, indeed his fate, initiated and continue a never-ending project of interpretation of hope against apparently overwhelming circumstances.  The ancient Hebrew prophets carved out that place in the human imagination for hope that could only come from God; for Christians, the appearance of Jesus, and his precursor, John the Baptizer, is another manifestation of that biblical hope.  (It truly is like a small sliver of new growth from a “stump” full of rot and left for dead.)  If any one conclusion carries over form the Twentieth century, it is a realistic awareness of the violence and destruction of which humankind is capable and the failures of institutions and leaders.  Out of all that debris and rot, biblical hope demurely points to tiny shoots of new and unexpected growth, that, were it not for biblical claims, might go unnoticed and even trampled upon.  This was the way Jesus appeared; this is the way God still inserts hope into hopelessness.  We can be the midwives of this new birth; we can be reliable witnesses.