We Wait In Hope

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It's December 24, 1914. The day has dawned bright and sunny, if cold, instead of the miserable rain which made life more miserable in the stinking mud of the Western Front of WW1. Along a 27 mile front from Ypres to the La Basse canal, British troops and the German troops, at times less than 100 yards apart heard something amazing. The guns fell silent and here and there at first, they heard the sound of carolling. The songs would be picked up from men in the opposite trenches and before long, men who hours earlier would have killed each other were celebrating Christmas Eve, and in one case, engaged in a friendly game of soccer. The famous "Christmas Truce" of the First World War was hardly more than a momentary blip in one of the world's most bloody conflicts. But it happened.

And the world still waits for evidence that the Prince of Peace is upon the throne of God.
But we wait in hope, because Jesus has come and has offered us the hope which comes from feeling His love.

When I worked at counselling, a young woman came to see me. She had the usual litany that comes from a life of abuse: alcohol addiction, a series of broken relationships, lack of confidence and a deep lingering pain from the center of her being. She came to talk to me over about three years. Not weekly, but . . .

Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. 
- 1 Corinthians 1:7 

It's December 24, 1914. The day has dawned bright and sunny, if cold,  instead of  the miserable rain which made life more miserable in the stinking mud of the Western Front of WW1. Along a 27 mile front from Ypres to the La Basse canal, British troops and the German troops, at times less than 100 yards apart heard something amazing. The guns fell silent and here and there at first, they heard the sound of carolling. The songs would be picked up from men in the opposite trenches and before long, men who hours earlier would have killed each other were celebrating Christmas Eve, and in one case, engaged in a friendly game of soccer. The famous "Christmas Truce" of the First World War was hardly more than a momentary blip in one of the world's most bloody conflicts. But it happened.

And the world still waits for evidence that the Prince of Peace is upon the throne of God.
But we wait in hope, because Jesus has come and has offered us the hope which comes from feeling His love.

When I worked at counselling, a young woman came to see me. She had the usual litany that comes from a life of abuse: alcohol addiction, a series of broken relationships, lack of confidence and a deep lingering pain from the center of her being. She came to talk to me over about three years. Not weekly, but sporadically when the pain flared up and became unbearable for her. On one occasion I remember asking her about her sense of hope. I remember so clearly when she looked at me and said, "Harold, I have no idea what hope means. I cannot understand what it is to feel hope." 

Hope is a difficult word to define, but we know that it is the light that keeps us moving forward, even when we have no concrete evidence of a better world.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran minister imprisoned  during World War II for plotting against Hitler's life, writes to his fianc? on one lesson learned from life in prison:

A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes, does various unessential things, and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside is not a bad picture of Advent.1.

Bonhoeffer never saw his hope fulfilled. Just before end of the war, on special orders from Hitler, he was hanged in Flossenberg prison. But in prison he lived with hope. His hope was not that the world would suddenly change and evil men like Hitler disappear. His hope was that a life lived in faith that God's kingdom will come, is never lived in vain.
His hope was not dependent on a change in circumstance, but was grounded in the love of God.

At Advent we remember again why we have hope. We have it, not because a few soldiers will bring about an everlasting peace, or that acts of defiance will forever change the world.
We live in hope that a few soldiers who decide to declare a truce or a solitary person who decides to stand up against tyranny can make a difference because our efforts, as small as they are, are never hopeless. We know who has the last word.

Henry Nouwen puts it this way:

Songs, good feelings, beautiful liturgies, nice presents, big dinners, and sweet words do not make Christmas. Christmas is saying yes to something beyond all emotions and feelings. Christmas is saying yes to a hope based on God's initiative, which has nothing to do with what I think or feel. Christmas is believing that the salvation of the world is God's work and not mine.2.

If my hope depended on what I can do, or on the goodness of others, I think I would be inclined toward feeling hopeless. But my hope is not dependent on my holding it together or that someone else out there can either. It is dependent only on what I know to be true about God--He keeps His promises.

This is the heart of our hope at Advent. God keeps His promises, and the promise was kept when God came into our world in the person of Jesus, the hope of the world.

My prayer for you this season is that you do not lose hope.
Instead of trying to hold onto your own hope, let the God of hope hold onto you. You are in far safer hands that way.


Preached  Nov. 27, 2005
Dr. Harold McNabb
West Shore Presbyterian Church
Victoria, British Columbia
Notes
1.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison, SCM Press, 2001
2. Henri Nouwen, New Oxford Review, Nov. 1986