A New Hope

A New Hope

Intro

Forty three years ago the world was introduced to what is the best movie franchise of all time. It was almost 40 years ago that I first experienced it. This great story that ends in just 18 days.

A New Hope it was subtitled. Of course, I am speaking about Star Wars for those who don’t know. This story of a people oppressed. Lost. A religion - a way of life - that had been lost for years. And in that loss of faith those oppressors came to power and began to rule over the hearts and lives of everyone.

They were a people without hope.

That should be familiar to us. We lose hope from time to time. Life gets sideways, things don’t go the way we want. And in those moments we scramble don’t we? We try to fix. We find hope in something, even if it is only something temporary. But ultimately, those things fall short of the goal.

[jewish diaspora]

This is as true for us, as the Jewish people, as it was for Luke Skywalker. We spend our lives walking from moment to moment - always looking to the future. Never mindful of where we are or what God is doing. We are almost unaware of our need for something else. Something beyond ourselves. Something intangible but somehow bigger than anything we could ever imagine! Something that can be found all around us if we would only slow down and look.

Maybe we daydream about it. Maybe we can’t wait to leave home, or go on a new adventure, or just find the answers we are looking for. Whatever it is, we all yearn for something new. A new hope. And in our yearning, we fill our lives with new things to hope for. And in so doing, we lose focus on the hope we are called to have.

This is the story of the Jewish people. The story that brings us to this moment in scripture. They were alone in the world - at least they felt that way. They believed that God had left them, and because of that belief, they felt like He wasn’t there. They couldn’t see Him, so He must have abandoned them. Things weren’t going their way, so surely He wasn’t there.

[zec and eliz]

They needed a new hope. At least they thought they did. But what they really needed, like Luke, and like us, was to be reconnected to the living hope that is found when you trust God more than yourself.

Proverbs tells it to us straight. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge (or look to, or give deference to, or more simply LISTEN TO) Him, and He will make your paths straight.”

He will guide you. He will advise you. He will walk with you, if you can just quiet you soul and allow Him

Center yourself. Reach out with your feelings. Remove what you know from your mind and fill it with what He wants you to know in this moment! All these ideas we find in this movie, in this story, and in our lives!

I mean, how can you ever find a new hope, if you aren’t really looking to the source of all hope? You can’t move that rock with your own power. You can’t change your reality with your own will. You have to rely on something outside of yourself if you ever want to find the hope that is offered to the world.

Zechariah should have known that! After all, he was a priest! Just think about that; is this diaspora, this time of apparent separation from God, this man was faithful and strived every day to connect himself - and other people - to the God that they couldn’t feel or see!

This man was faithful. This man was all that we are called to be. And JUST LIKE US, in the moment when God first made His presence known to him, he rejected this old source of hope - even though he prayed constantly for it!

[praying]

You ever do that? Do you ever reach out to God in hope, only to reject it when He responds. Maybe He is telling you something you don’t want to hear, or worse yet, just telling you no. But that isn’t what we want! So we reject that reality and insert our own! We find hope in something other than God! And when that thing fails, we come running back to God hoping beyond hope that things will go better this time!

Church, Zecariah prayed too! You see the Angel say that! “Your prayer has been heard!” Your wife will have a son! What a way to hear God’s voice for the first time in 600 years! There will be one - one you have longed for and prayed for - that will be born to bear the news of the Messiah! I am here! I am real! I never left you! Everything is fine!

That is what God is saying.

But Zecariah’s response, much like ours, is to lean on his own understanding of the situation. But how? “How can I be sure of this,” he asks. I understand my situation! I am old, she is old - it ain’t happening! No reason to find hope in that because it is impossible!

[all things are possible]

He found hope in his own reason. In his own knowledge. And in that moment He missed the real message.

There is hope! I know my people have not seen me, but I am right here!

His hope in himself, and in his own understanding of reality, and in his own concepts and worldview - all these things that aren’t God, that are destined to fail - those things held him back from understanding and following when God was calling him to a better reality.

Church here is the truth. All things are possible. I don’t know that all the things that you want are what God wants, but they are all possible! What we must do, though, is to begin to find hope not in our deepest desires, not in our wishlists, not in what we think this life or our situations or our preferences would be, but in WHATEVER it is that God is calling us towards! We can’t sit and argue with our God because our hope in other things outweighs the hope God is offering!

There is no hope in things we make, or ideas we have. There is only hope - a New Old Hope - in the God of everything. No matter what we think or understand, He is still God, and our hope must be in Him alone.

Luke 1:19–20 NIV

The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”

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So what do we do to get there? Well first we must take a lesson from scripture.

We need to talk less.

Talking about what God is doing, becomes in all of us an idol. It becomes the thing that we want and later ascribe to God when it goes our way, or when we eventually accept reality as we find it. So just like Zecariah, when we feel the need to question or to directly call God into question, we need to be quiet.

And in that quiet, we will find out that we can listen more.

I think that is really what is going on here. God needed Zechariah to listen more. To learn to be moldable to the reality God was presenting him with. To understand his life as a reflection of God’s grace and provision and less as a reflection of his effort or knowledge.

And that goes for us too! God is happening, church, even when we can’t see it! When we think He is far away, and that life is out of control! He is there in the storm as in the peace! He is there in life and in death! In birth, rebirth, and destruction!

Romans 8:24–25 NIV

For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

[Rom8:24-25]

[Rom8:24-25]

[Rom8:24-25]

He is there! He is Hope!

And Church, we are all looking for hope! We all look for some sign that God is there with us! But what we need to understand that this type of hope, this new hope that we chase after, isn’t really hope at all!

Hope seen is affirmation. But that isn't what God is offering really. He offers hope! A desire to experience something that we can never see! An offer to a life lived in faith of all that will come in spite of all that has been done! And to see that hope too clearly is to lose it! As Paul explains, hope seen isn’t really hope at all!

It is hope, after all, that attaches us to something church in a real and permanent way. Hope molds our soul to the thing in which we place that hope so that it becomes the core of all we are! And if we have that thing, it isn’t hope anymore! And then we will move on to something else.

If you have ever owned a car, or a house, or had several jobs, you know this truth well. We long for that new thing right? We just know it will be better! It has to be! It pays more, or gets more mileage, or has more room! So it has to be better!

But we know it never is. We will find a reason to not like it, or something to improve. Something else to hope in.

But that isn’t the function of the hope to which we are called! The hope we are called to is the understanding that God is bigger than us, has a plan for us, and is there with us - even when we never feel it or understand it!

That is hope! And that is what is born in us this season. A hope that is bigger than our pain, our problems, even our praises! A hope that bears us towards our God in all things, and in all situations and at all times! The hope of the Christ born in each of us this, and every day.

He’s coming, church. That is what I read in this. Jesus is coming. Zechariah, sure you will have a child who will announce it, and that is a miracle and all, but listen - Jesus is coming!

That is how we must frame our lives! There are miracles that will happen, sure, but listen - Jesus is coming! And your life announces to the world the thing in which you place your hope! Either your ideas and stuff, or the very real presence of hope for all mankind! The completion of God’s plan for us all! Christ our Lord - God in the flesh.

Every word. Every thought. Every action. They all point to the hope to which we are all called! Point to God in all of it. Point to Christ. Quiet yourselves and boast only in Him - not in us, not in our actions, not in anything apart from the hope that fills us. God - and God alone.

[pray]