Jeremiah 33:14-16
I have long believed that Advent is counter-cultural. In a world where Christmas decorations are sold in October and Christmas sales start on Thanksgiving and Christmas carols are chiming from every sound system every day, the church is woefully out of touch. I sometimes feel like you come to church every week during December thinking “It’s Christmas!” and I stand up and say “Not yet!”
This is the season of Advent, the season of waiting and preparation. So we don’t get “Joy to the World.” We get “Comfort, Comfort, Ye My People.” We don’t get the joyous strains of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” We get the haunting reminder “that mourns in lonely exile here.” And then there are the scriptures of Advent, which are not what we might expect.
The Rev. Dr. Gary Charles puts it this way: “The season of Advent is puzzling to many Christians. The stories read during this season are, by and large, not childhood favorites. They have no star in the east guiding devout magi, no soliloquy of angels stirring shepherds to go and see the babe, no harried innkeeper, no touching moment when Mary ponders these things in her heart. The stories of Advent are dug from the harsh soil of human struggle and the littered landscape of dashed dreams. They are told from the vista where sin still reigns supreme and hope has gone on vacation. Many prefer the major notes of joy and gladness in the Christmas stories to the minor keys of Advent….Given the nature of Advent , it is no surprise that Jeremiah is its herald.”[1]
Jeremiah, of course, was one of the great prophets of Judah … and one of its harshest critics. He constantly warned the people of the wrath that was to come, the penalty for their disobedience to God. He is called “the weeping prophet,” and for good reason. At the time of this particular story, Jeremiah was imprisoned—by his own government, no less—because King Zedekiah was sick of all the doom and gloom. “Zedekiah had had about all the bad news he could stand and so he locked Jeremiah up in the hopes of also shutting him up.”[2] But the time had come. The enemy was at the gate. Jerusalem, the city of David, was about to be overrun—for the second time—by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon.
It is in this context that Jeremiah proclaims, “The days are surely coming when I will fulfill the promise I made…. I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David.” With the enemy at the gate, Jeremiah proclaims a new king in the line of David. Nobody with half a brain would’ve seen any signs of God’s promise about to be fulfilled. But the prophet Jeremiah had that elusive thing called hope.
In fact, in the previous chapter Jeremiah purchased land in Jerusalem. Now, if you know anything about the three most important rules of real estate, that whole “location” issue is a bit of a problem if you buy land in an area that is about to fall to your enemies. You only own it if your people are in charge. If the enemy takes your land, your deed is worthless. But Jeremiah bought the land as a sign and a symbol to the people: The days are surely coming.
A few years ago an insurance company ran a commercial that I love. The narrator is a young child. She says:
There are man-eating sharks in every ocean. But we still swim. Every second, somewhere in the world, lightning strikes. But we still play in the rain. Poisonous snakes can be found in 49 of the 50 states. But we still go looking for adventure. A car can crash, a house can crumble, but we still drive and love coming home. Because I think deep down we know, all the bad things that can happen in life—they can’t stop us from making our lives good.
I always liked this ad. It’s an ad about hope. Hope that perseveres. But this ad is from the same insurance company that has the “mayhem” commercials, showing all the many things that can—and if you’re to trust them—will go wrong. Hope and mayhem from the same company. Either the company has the corporate version of a split personality, or they are intentionally appealing to both realities.
We experience mayhem. We know that all the bad things that happen to others can happen to us. And still we hope. Or we want to. We want to believe that we will still play in the rain. And we will—as long as the lightning strike isn’t to someone we know. Because if it is, our fear will overcome our playfulness. The bad things can stop us from making our lives good—if we let them. The ad is sweet. It’s heartwarming. And I like it. And it sounds a bit naïve.
Jeremiah was not naïve. He did not look at the world through rose-colored glasses. Instead he had hope—and not a fragile hope, but a tenacious hope that refused to be silenced by the evidence. And is that not what we need? what we all need? We are surrounded by problems, pains, challenges, and conflicts. Wars drag on and jobs remain elusive and addictions still hold us captive. Christmas is supposed to be the season of joy and instead we worry about how much it will cost and how we will find the time and whether Mother will find our gift acceptable this year. Christmas is supposed to be the season of peace and instead we worry about ISIS and the mayhem they are creating and the next generation of terrorists that might be created by the response. For us as Americans, the terrorists we most need to fear are not ISIS and are certainly not refugees fleeing the terrorists. It seems like every week there is another shooting on a college campus or a mall or a restaurant or a medical office. Personally, one of my acts of generosity this week is taking goodies to our local Planned Parenthood office to thank them for the courage it must take simply to go to work.
We used to think shootings were primarily inner city problems, which basically meant most of us were immune to the danger. But in our ever-increasingly violent culture, we cannot take that for granted. The news is frightening and our greatest temptations are either to bury our heads in the sand or to give up hope and live in fear.
“As I listen to the cries of Jeremiah throughout the scope of his prophecy, I long for the day that is surely coming when God’s future will be a reality beyond the violent boastings of the ruling Babylon[s] of [our] day. I long for the day that is surely coming when in God’s future the poor are not sent to shelters or forced to sleep on the streets. I long for the day that is surely coming when God’s future has no space for violence…. I long for the day that is surely coming when God’s future affords no room for rancor, a day when our world is no longer torn asunder by racism and sexism and homophobia.”[3] And Islamophobia.
Problems big and small threaten to steal our joy, destroy our faith, and strangle our hope. That’s when our hope cannot be fragile. It must be tenacious, stubborn, not a feathered thing but an ironclad thing to withstand the slings and arrows of reality. We need a hope that is strong enough “to counteract all of the life-sapping, despair-inducing evidence to the contrary.”[4] “Not rose-colored glasses hope, but gutsy the-doors-are-crashing-in-and-I’m-going-to-sing hope.”[5]
That is what Jeremiah shows us, when he promises a branch to come forth from a dead stump. Those words were spoken when Judah was on the brink of national disaster, heading into an era of suffering and shame. And yet there is hope.
If you were paying attention when we lit the candle of hope this morning, you heard that our theme for this Advent season is shelter. “Shelter and safety” are of course our themes this year from the Mission & Outreach Team. But during Advent we are focusing on spiritual shelter. Today our theme is the shelter of a promise fulfilled … which to me is another way of saying the shelter of hope.
Jeremiah bought the land. Even when he knew the enemies would overtake it and it would be worthless, he bought the land because he believed in hope. We, too, buy the land. We invest in hope. We take the risk to believe. Not a pie-in-the-sky Pollyanna wishful thinking kind of thing. No, we invest in hope that is grounded in God’s goodness and rooted in the reality of our faith.
The days are surely coming. Now, tone of voice matters here. This is not (roll the eyes, adopt a sarcastic tone) surely the day is coming. This is (confidently, fearlessly) the day is surely coming. The days of full employment. The days of full recovery. The days of fearless living. The days of fearless loving. The days are surely coming. We don’t know when. We don’t know how. But surely, absolutely, positively, the days are coming.
Shelter in the promise. Shelter in the hope. Thanks be to God.
[1] Charles, Gary W. “Homiletical Perspective.” Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 1, p. 3.
[2] Hoezee, Scott. Advent 1C, Center for Excellence in Preaching.
[3] Charles.
[4] Schifferdecker, Kathryn. Lectionary for November 29, 2009, www.workingpreacher.org.
[5] Munnik, Kattie. https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=448