Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Neither Hebrew nor Greek has much punctuation. In fact, sometimes, when we're reading the Old or New Testament, we can't say for sure where one sentence ends and another begins. So readers of the Bible must often choose between two or more perfectly good meanings, depending on how they understand the words to fit together. For example, in this morning's very well-known passage, Isaiah 40, verse 3. Jewish interpreters read it this way, "The voice of one crying, 'In the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God." They see it as a prophetic announcement: that the Hebrews, who were exiles in Babylon at the time, would soon be going home. And so (figuratively) someone needs to prepare in the desert - in that great expanse of wilderness between Babylon and Jerusalem - a highway for God and his people to travel. A beautiful figure, and a great prophecy of deliverance by the hand of God. And it came true.

Christians, taking a different tack, believe that these words from Isaiah foresee John the Baptist, who (as you know) lived and preached in the wilderness of the River Jordan; so Christians read it, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." John the Baptist was the front man for Jesus. And it is in Jesus, we Christians say, that God builds a highway through the deserts of our souls and makes the crooked in us straight and the rough places plain. Another great prophecy of deliverance by the hand of God. And it came true.
Both interpretations are prophecies of deliverance, very hopeful prophecies proclaiming a new day, and both say "make straight the way of the Lord." That is, both proclaim that God is about to do something marvelous for his people and we need to grease his tracks.

The longer I live the more I realize how critical hope is for a happy, healthy life. The way we see the future colors, dramatically, how we live in the present. It is important to hope even for things that we know will probably come true: I hope you have a nice wedding. It is important to hope for things that are more "iffy": I hope the Redskins make the playoffs. We also need hope for those situations where the odds aren't so good: "I keep hoping the altzeimers will be reversed, and pop will be himself again." But, most important, as followers of Jesus in a hostile world, we must sustain hope even when it seems there is no hope. The Jews in exile felt utterly hopeless. "On the trees along Babylon's rivers," they said, "we hung up our harps. Left them there for good. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" Hopeless. They had no idea, could not have imagined, what God had in mind. Many Jews in Jesus' time felt they had no hope: their nation had been a vassal state of this empire or that for hundreds of years. There was no real independence. Moreover, in their religion, the rabbis had contrived so many rules and regulations that the rigor of their ancient faith had mortised. Hopeless. They had no idea, could not have imagined, what God had in mind.

Hope is the mark of great men and women. People follow hopeful people, because hope is rare in his world and we're all searching for it. After that first horrible day at Shiloh, in Tennessee, Tecumsa Sherman found Grant standing alone under a tree. "Well, Grant, he said, "we've had the devil's own day." "Yep," Grant said, and walking away, "Lick 'em tomorrow." And he did. Who can explain how an army can get up again, after fighting a full day in such a horrible place, and after sustaining such losses, and fight another day, and win? It was hope, which came through the chain of command from the leader. American prisoners of war in Viet Nam, held in the so-called "Hanoi Hilton" (some for as long as ten years) told of how their North Vietnamese guards tried to kill all hope in them: "The people back home in America have forgotten you," they were told. "Your families. Friends. Everybody." But they all remembered that day when a new prisoner arrived and, once he had mastered the secret tapping code, tapped out the message: "Back home in America people are wearing your names on bracelets around their wrists." And the whole mood of the camp changed. Hope had returned.

Advent is a season of hope. Hope against the twin powers of sin and of death which threaten every day to undo us. And these are the enemies; let's not mince words. They wear many disguises Sin and death are cronies, and they are interlopers. Neither existed in the Garden of Eden. Neither was in God's original plan. But when Adam and Eve sinned the first thing that happened was that Cain killed Abel. Sin and death: all the same really. The Bible says death is "the wages of sin." Every time we sin we die a little, until finally the coroner makes official what everyone else has known for a long time. Every time we live by the word of God we are more alive, and death can touch us all the less. That's why Jesus said, "I am come that they might have life, and…have it more abundantly." "He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die." Near the end Jesus tells his disciples that they can leave if they're not up the ordeal he is about to undergo. Peter asks, "Where can we go? You have the words of eternal life."

Do you remember Robert Penn Warren's magnificent book, All the Kings Men? The politician who is the main character (a thinly disguised Huey Long), tells his henchmen to go out and did up some dirt on his opponent in the next election. They say that the man has nothing scandalous in his past; he's simply lived a good life. And the politician replies, "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption. and passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something." And I guess what disturbs us about those words is that there is always something. No escaping sin; no escaping death on this earth. We need hope, and hope is the business of Advent. You can read Isaiah either way: He will come as a conqueror, on a highway made just for the occasion, and enter the deserts of our hearts. He will come as a new-born baby, and by his life, death and resurrection, deliver us from our sin…and likewise from death. Either way, he will make the crooked straight and the rough places plain.

In the earliest Christian art, and later in stained glass windows, the symbol for hope was always an anchor. That gives us a hint as to how the first Christians understood hope. When a storm arises at sea, the captain drops anchor. Thus the ship is not tossed about like a twig and finally broken, but is steadied and protected by the anchor. There was an old hymn, "My Anchor Holds." The Advent hope, which is with us all year long, is an anchor. It holds us firm in life's tempests. "When the storms of life are raging, stand by me." Let me that highway where the crooked is made straight and the rough places plain.

When the storms of life are raging, stand by me.
When the world is tossing me like a ship upon the sea,
Thou who rulest wind and water stand by me.