Sermon preached at Ayot St Peter 8 December 2007: Stephen Fielding

‘Jesus the Advent hope’

This is a sermon about hope – about that ingredient in our lives that tells us, ‘it’s not yet over’.

Let me start with a folk tale. It’s about a farmer who has just one horse to pull his plough, and the horse runs away. His neighbours say ‘that’s awful’. The farmer says ‘maybe’. The next day he comes back with two horses, and his neighbours say, ‘That’s fantastic’. ‘Maybe’ says the farmer. His son tries to break in the horses but instead breaks his leg. ‘Oh that’s awful’, say the neighbours. ‘Maybe’, says the farmer. The next day the army come to take all the men off to war, but they can’t take the farmer’s injured son. Now the neighbours say, ‘You’re so lucky’. What do you think his response is? Correct. ‘Maybe’.

Like the farmer, we are always in the middle of the story and we never can know the end of it.  It’s not yet over.

For the children of Israel, God’s own people, the story was always a matter of ups and downs, always in course of development. They were having a tough time in Egypt and God brought them out of slavery through the leadership of Moses. They ended up in the desert and they thought their luck had deserted them again. But at length God brought them into the promised land. They thought they were safe in Jerusalem and then they were forced into exile in Babylon. And what the great prophets said to the Jewish people, who’d lost their city of Jerusalem and their temple, was, ‘It’s not yet over’. The great prophets, notably Isaiah and Jeremiah, saw with their inward eye, that there would be deliverance and rescue. The prophets had an imagination and a confidence that all would turn out well in the end. And so it did. After the exile there was restoration. The prophets were in other words the preachers of hope. God is at work, they said, against all outward appearances, to restore you. It’s not yet over.

From the rising and falling of Israel comes a fantastic new assurance and promise. This is what we heard in our reading from Isaiah. ‘A branch will grow forth from the rod of Jesse’. (Is 11).  Jesse was the father of King David, so the rod of Jesse is the family tree of David, from which there will be a new shoot, a new sprouting. So if, says Isaiah, you thought it was all over, you’re wrong. There will be a fresh start. There will be continuity and so there is a cause for hope. It is not just that David’s family tree will come back to life. You will see bigger miracles. God’s spirit will raise up a Messiah, and this Messiah will be a flag for all nations to rally to, as well as way of bringing about a miracle in Israel.

In the birth of Jesus was seen a new hope for the world. His preaching about a new kingdom of love, gave a confidence that what the prophets of old had preached was indeed coming to pass.  And then came a terrible death by crucifixion which seemed to spell defeat and failure.  Slowly after the resurrection, the church came to see that what looked like failure was in fact victory – that in the resurrection of Jesus lay a new hope for the world.

But note this. The story is not yet over. We live our lives today between the fact of Jesus’s resurrection and the end of time. And our task is to live in the light of the fact that the story is incomplete - to live our lives as part of the great narrative of God’s work in the world. All our Christian living comes in the space between what God has done in the resurrection of Jesus and what he promises he will do in the last days. So we live right in the heart of this narrative of past fulfilment and imaginative, abundant future hope.

Some of you may know that in my secular work, I practise as a commercial mediator. This is about encouraging people in dispute to imagine a better future – to imagine that the future can be better than the past, that they can unlock themselves from the grip of the past and imagine a better life. This imagining of a better future was of course what the prophets of old did – it was a prophetic imagination; and all of us, I think, can develop our sense of new possibilities in the situations we are in.

Advent - that period of anticipation, of expectancy and of hope - gives us the specific space and opportunity for this – to renew our hope in the good purposes of God.  Jesus is the Advent hope – the link between our present and our future. As we prepare ourselves, we may find the use of the psalms in our private devotions to be once again of great and lasting benefit. Let me be specific. I recommend Psalm 136. You might like to read this every day in Advent. It is a longish psalm, with each verse having the same hopeful and inspiring refrain. ‘For his steadfast love endures for ever’. I find the repeated use of this phrase wonderfully calming and reassuring and hopeful.

You and I need to be reassured that behind all the ups and downs of human life, lies a God whose steadfast love endures for ever. To know this, to recall it daily, to live as if it were true, is to live our lives more fully as children of the most high God.

So what have I been saying? The story is not yet over. There were ups and downs in the life of Israel – and God rescued them again and again. The most decisive rescue of the world came – and still comes – in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. And we live our life of ups and downs with the climax of the story, the climax of all history, yet to come. The story is not yet over. Read Psalm 136. The steadfast love of the Lord endures for ever.

Even so, come Lord Jesus!

Amen.