I write these blogs every week in the hope that someone might get something out of them. In truth, I have no idea how, or even if, they are received. And it occurs to me that using the word “hope” in these circumstances has become how we understand hope today. Someone mentions they are going on holiday and we say, “I hope you have a good time”. Someone says they are going to a new restaurant for dinner and we say, “I hope you have a good meal”. In truth we don’t know if they will or not. It may be the weather on the holiday will be dreadful or it will be the chef’s night off. We say we “hope” as a general good wish in the absence of actually knowing what will happen.
The first Sunday of Advent is traditionally associated with hope. But do we understand what Christian hope is? The first disciples had met Jesus in person and knew Him very well. From that personal knowledge, they had hope in Him. Even when He left them and told them He’d be back, because of what they knew about Him, they maintained this hope; He would come back one day. And they lived this hope. They were able to face persecutions and martyrdom because of this hope. Their hope was based on what they knew about Jesus from their past and their confidence in what Jesus would do in their future. For them, it was more than a generic feeling that it would turn out ok. They knew Jesus and trusted Him, they based their hope on fact, not speculation.
Today we find the church in a difficult place. We face a world that views us with apathy at best and enmity at worst. Our world is in a mess with wars and conflict, climate change and rising levels of poverty. Even in our locality we are seeing more and more people coming to us for food assistance. We know this is not how the world is meant to be because in Jesus’ ministry, we see how it is going to be when He returns. We know that hunger, poverty, illness and exclusion will not have the last word and will one day be consigned to history. Because we, as Christians, trust Jesus, we have this hope. So when we say we have hope that things will get better, it’s not some vague wish; it’s one of the foundational statements of our faith. Our hope is based on nothing less that Jesus Christ. Let us live this hope so that those we encounter can share this hope too.