Hope Is Worth The Risk

Luke 1:46-55 - Magnificat.

On this final Sunday of Advent, we turn toward hope. These four weeks, we’ve heard words for the beginning, words like love, peace, and joy, which all come together as we, beloved children of God, await the dawning of Christ’s light among us. We embrace one another in lovingkindness, holding fast amidst the shifting winds of the world. We seek each others’ well-being and peace for all people. We live replenished by the fount of Joy that is the Spirit of God, here and now, breaking in around us and showing us life to the fullest — lives lived in service of God’s great story, the story of redemption and restoration.

We’ve seen Mary, Elizabeth, Zechariah, Ruth, Naomi — all of these faithful followers of God’s story, each drawn into the story by God’s call and direction. We’ve seen ourselves in these people, in their earnest longing to be faithful, and their lingering doubt and uncertainty. This story resonates in us, it is familiar even in it’s geographic, cultural, and temporal differences from our lives.

On this final Sunday of Advent, again, we turn towards hope. Hope that willingly steps into the story, embraces the uncertainties, and finds purpose. Hope that resists the powers of greed, oppression, and domination. Hope that trusts in God’s enduring goodness and the truth of God’s love for each of us. Hope takes the wide view of the world and, still, even with all that we see of heartache and despair, hope points to the dawning light and says, “look, there, God’s love is greater! The dawn is breaking on this world of pain. Look, Emmanuel, God with us!”

Look. Look.

This is a key word in our passage and it is the posture of hope — looking out and looking on.

Remember the Celtic prayer of encircling, where we ask for God’s surrounding presence to gather us close and hold us? In this mindset, we say, “look, look” God is before us, behind us, above us, below us, all around us. Look, look, God is with us.

We can learn to hope by learning to trust this encircling. Though the winds may blow and the ground may shift, we hold hope because we trust that God is, “look, look,” out ahead of us.

And so, today we come to Joseph.

How does hope guide Joseph’s story? How does hope arrive in a time of great fear and concern?

Let’s hear our second Scripture reading, from Matthew 1:18-25:

Matthew 1:18–25 NRSV

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

Amen.

Moments ago, we heard our first reading, where Mary’s words of joy and trust in God arise in the prayer of the Magnificat, Mary’s song. This is Mary’s response in hope to God’s overshadowing presence. Mary puts her trust in God to be faithful.

But what of Joseph? I find myself wondering about what conversations Mary and Joseph had between these two encounters with God’s messenger. How much time has passed?

If we back up and consider that Mary has been away with her cousin Elizabeth for a good portion of the pregnancy, perhaps Joseph was even in the dark on what Mary had heard.

I’ve shared that one of our favorite family Christmas movies is “The Star.” It’s a fun, song-filled, cartoon telling of the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. And for all it’s glitter and fun, it actually tells a really interesting narrative version of both Mary and Joseph’s understanding of God’s purpose for them in the arrival of Emmanuel.

In the movie, there’s the moment when Mary returns from her time with Elizabeth and Joseph, the doting fiance, is greatly surprised to see her baby bump. He’s flustered and confused. What? Wait, what happened while you were away? He wonders.

However their conversation and interactions went, Mary and Joseph have to come to terms with this reality: they are going to be parents.

Culturally, this is a difficult reality for Joseph to stomach. Who is the father? How is he to get through all the cultural disgrace of an unwed mother, betrothed to him?

I love how Matthew tells this story, because he doesn’t shy away from naming the feelings Joseph would have had — fear, concern for the optics, temptation to walk (or run) away from it all. How is Joseph supposed to protect his honor, much less the honor of the woman he is pledged to marry? Should he dismiss her, break off the engagement?

We know the story. But sit with Joseph’s perspective, before the messenger arrives, for a moment: wouldn’t we all feel some of these same things?

I don’t know about you, but I know I like to be in control of my circumstances most of the time, I want to dictate the terms on which I engage the world. I don’t like it when responsibility is simply thrust upon me — I want to choose it, wouldn’t you?

Instead, Joseph chooses to hope, chooses to trust what the angel of the Lord has said. This is not the predictable route. This is not what is expected of him.

But before we give Jospeh this heroic standing or make him some sort of martyr because he accepted his pregnant wife as she was…before we conflate his acceptance with some kind of honorific way of being…let’s remember what hope is really about.

Hope is worth the risk.

We need hope. We need it desperately. We live in a world that is so hungry for hope, so hungry that many times we turn to lesser goods or even towards evil because we so deeply long for things to be better.

As people who know true Hope, we have to be careful not to quickly dismiss these longings as cheap or secondary, lesser than somehow. They are, but these hopes tell us of the deeply stirred desire in humanity to see a better day, a world changed, things set to rights for us, if not for all humanity together.

Why does the Psalmist tell us not to put our trust in princes, in whom there is now hope? Well, because we do. All the time, we place our hope upon princes, rulers, heads of state, celebrities, and even each other, hope that somehow expects that this time, finally this time, these people will fix things. We put our hope in things that will fail — but can you blame us?

Of course, we all know how stark this reality has been in our political scene over the last couple of decades, if not longer. Putting our trust in the hope that politicians and big business owners will save our sinking ship. Hope that someone powerful will finally unlock all the crises and fix things. Hope that we can reach a higher level of human achievement if just the right people are in charge.

So what is hope about, if not all these things?

To truly capture hope and all that it means for us as followers of Jesus, we have to be honest with ourselves about the potential for all that we hope for to not be enough.

Sorry, I’m gonna be a downer again for a little longer: When we put our hope in the powers of this world, there will always be disappointment and lack. For all our talk of hope in the public sphere, we must be honest with ourselves that the pendulum will continue to swing, the oppressors will continue to find ways to weigh down the poor and the hurting, the resolution of our problems sadly does not cease.

This is why true hope is risky.

True hope is risky, in that it puts trust in things that should not work, in things unseen, in the possibility of a different kind of life than the one we are living.

Hope is risky — let’s consider it for Jospeh, of course. For Joseph to hope according to the world’s standards would be for him to lean on the traditions and cultural norms and dismiss Mary quietly, trying to at least deflect some of the scorn and shame from her. It might not be perfect, but maybe it will be enough.

But the risky hope Joseph chooses is quite different. Joseph, after being assured by the messenger that this is, in fact, the work of God, chooses a different path — he did what God instructed him to do. He stayed. And this is risky. It’s risky, because it puts everything on the line for Joseph.

And being a man, being born of the line of King David, Joseph has some privilege and position of his own. His risky hope puts this in jeopardy, too.

But he chooses this risky hope because, maybe, somehow, this will be the way things actually change. Maybe, somehow, God is actually up to something in Joseph and Mary’s lives and, taking the risk, they can lean into hope that they can be a part of that something.

I understand hope to be a trust in God’s enduring faithfulness and goodness. As far as we are concerned, can we trust that God has been good and faithful to God’s promises? If this is so, can we trust that God will continue to be faithful? This is hope. Hope that God’s goodness will continue to prevail, as it has before.

Let’s link up a few things:

First, God’s leading and encircling. If we trust that God is before us, around us, guiding us, then we can set out a risky hope in following God’s leading. Yeah, it may not make sense. Yes, it may challenge our assumptions. But if God is before us, then we can turn our risky hope to the horizon and expect God to direct us.

Second, there will always be other forces that vie for our hope. True? There will always be powers in this world which ask for our hope, our allegiance, our commitment and our lives. Many of these are neutral, or even good things. But the hope God desires for us to cultivate is a hope that always puts God’s direction first, over and above any other force that would ask for our trust. What does this mean? Well, it means that in all things, we should look, look, for God’s direction, God’s purpose. Just a quick example from this week’s news: in the eleventh hour, the US government once again put together a budget to hold off from shutting down. We are asked to put our hope in the nation’s legistlators, a trust that they will keep our nation functioning and active. And yet, we know, that once again this is a cheap agreement, a fleeting trust, because we’ll do this all over again next time around and leaders will ask for our nation’s support, all the while not holding true to that faithfulness we offer, all the while always coming back to the table to argue and seek what is best for party or person, over nation. They ask for our hope, but is it ever asked for in the good faith that we find in God’s enduring care for our world? Sadly, not so much.

Finally, risky hope demands us to, like Joseph, step forward and put our stability, our standing, and our future, in God’s hands. It is never a guarantee of the outcome we would choose or desire.

I was thinking about Aslan the Lion from C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe,” this week. We hear that Aslan is not a safe lion, but Aslan is a good lion. To place our trust in Aslan, who, of course, is the Jesus figure, is to place trust in risky, dangerous, potentially life altering things. Sounds crazy, right? Well, yes, but while God’s way is not always safe, we hear, it is good. Risky, but good.

So what must you risk in hope today? How are you being called closer to Jesus, closer to trusting God’s design? Have you ever stepped out in hope when you knew it wasn’t the safest choice?

In this season, we wait upon the Lord with hearts full of hope. Every year, as we practice advent, we intentionally wait and even hold out the possibility that somehow, the light will not come again. Hope is worth that risk. We wait for the Lord, knowing that it’s a risk.

As I’m sure you know, yesterday was the winter solstice for us here in the northern hemisphere. In many ancient cultures, the solstice was an important day of hope, because it reminded them of the return of the sun’s light, as the longest nights are finally over. These ancient communities would hold hope that the dawn would break again and the light would come, to help crops return and food to grow. We enter into winter, with all its cold and ice and darkness, with a risky hope that the light still dawns.

Of course, this is why the season of Advent is placed in the calendar year where it is. Christians recognize this deep, human impulse, to put risky hope in what could be. We await the Christ child, the dawning of the light. We wait, we look, we hope.

May it be so with us. Let us pray.