Poem/Reflection, 1st Sunday of Advent, December 3, 2023
Guest Preacher/Celebrant Thomas E Wilson Church of the Holy Trinity, Hertford, NC
Advent Hope Sunday 2023
Isaiah 64:1-9 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 Mark 13:24-37 Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
Many of you know that five months ago my wife died. We both had been married before and we built on that wreckage with a new Hope, a Hope that we had learned from the past and worked each day on nurturing Peace, Joy and Love. We were lucky and we read and studied together three of Robert A. Johnson's books, a Jungian Analyst, Psychotherapist and author who died three years ago at age 97. The books were, “He: Understanding Masculine Psychology”, “She: Understanding Feminine Psychology”, and “We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love.” That last book states that “Romantic is not Love but a complex of attributes about love.” It wasn't Romance that held us together but it was Hope. Johnson observed:
Zen teaches that Inner Growth always involves an experience of “a red hot coal stuck in the throat”In our development we always come to a problem, an obstacle, that goes so deep that we “can't swallow it and can't cough it up.”. . . We can't live with it and we can't live without it – we can't swallow it, and we can't cough it up! The “hot coal” in our throats alerts us that a tremendous emotional potential is trying to manifest itself.”
That manifestation of the potential, “Hope”, is the time we know we can't just continue to deny there is a problem and try to live blissfully, but we are called to go deeper spiritually.
When I do reflections on scripture, I don't just do it for people in pews. I reflect on scripture to help me hold on to Hope. Forty some years ago on Sunday nights or early Monday mornings I got into a habit and started looking at the lessons for the coming week in the Hope that God might speak to me through the scriptures to meet the coming week. Often I was looking for something that would stick as a red hot coal in my soul.The Spirit of the Living God is not about making these words Holy but about turning to these words and entering into the Spirit of those who wrote those words out of their red hot coals to have Hope; Hope in a living God, not a God of idols or doctrine. But I also go to those whose words did not get put into official scripture but about those people who saw deeply and shared their vision of Hope.
Every Advent I pull up one of my favorite poems. It is by 19th Century Poet Emily Dickinson, ““Hope” is the thing with feathers”. She wrote, she said from “the landscape of her spirit”. She wrote for herself and her soul and did not give titles to her poems. But after she died and the Poems were published, the first line of each poem was often given as the Title
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
Hope is that memory, small or large, in the past that continues into the present and which we can hold on to its promise even into an unknown future. It is that awareness that a power greater than ourselves is imbedded into our daily being. There are moments when we get so busy and worried that we temporarily forget, but Hope holds on and lives even into the middle of the doubt.
For this first Sunday of Advent, the Hebrew Testament selection is from what scholars believe is the voice of Second Isaiah. Many scholars posit that the Book of Isaiah is divided into at least 2 or three parts with an overarching theme of the “Day of Yahweh” as the hope that there will be a time when Israel's God, Yahweh, will subject all of God's people to a time of Peace, Joy and Love. First Isaiah, written by the Prophet Isaiah of the Jerusalem Temple, who started his ministry with a broken heart, and a red hot coal in his throat in the call from God in the “Year King Uzziah died” (742 BCE) The name Uzziah (Uzzīyyāhū), meant in Hebrew “my faith is in Yahweh”. Here is what happens in Isaiah's life; the one in whom he had put his trust has died, and now Isaiah must put his trust in something other than earthly rulers. He must live into his own name, Isaiah in Hebrew Yeshayahu" (“Yahweh is my Salvation.”). He has a hard rime swallowing the events of the times but he cannot just cough it back up; he has to let it enter his soul to find out how his faith can grow. His Hope must be in a power greater than earthly events and that is where he begins his spiritual and earthly ministry.
You may remember that two weeks ago, I related to you that this area whose capital was Jerusalem had been under threat of constant attack from the Egyptian Empire, then the Assyrian Empire, and later by the Babylonian empires. Constant tension and yet they hold on to this Hope. They hold on to this hope in resisting these empires. Finally the Southern Kingdom is captured by the Babylonians, the walls of Jerusalem lay in ruins, and many of the leaders of the Southern Kingdom are taken into exile into the Babylonian Empire in (587 BCE). Yet, the Hope remains, regardless of all of the outward signs; Hope remains for Peace, Joy and Love in everyday life.
The writer of Second Isaiah, is one of the disciples of the School of Isaiah in Jerusalem, the Temple has been destroyed, but out of the ruins, he does not just say it sticks in his craw, but he goes within himself and he writes to the exiles from the wreckage to remind them to hold on to hope. The walls are gone, the Temple is destroyed, the leaders are in captivity but Hope holds on. Finally in 539 BCE, 3rd Isaiah sees the Hope in the success of the Persian Empire, Cyrus the Great in overthrowing Babylon and allowing the exiles to return to their home and to their Hope that they continued to hold on to. The time period covered by Isaiah and his school are about 200 + years. Death does not stop hope; and those who read or teach from those books hold onto that hope over the centuries after the Greek Empires came, and after the Roman Empire came. Everything changed, but Hope remained to hold on the Peace, Joy and Love in everyday life.
The Composer of the Psalm for today, which was probably written in the Northern Kingdom and brought into the Temple of Jerusalem, when the Northern Kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrians in 720 BCE, remembers the Hope that God's people had placed in God in the past years. The people sing in asking God to give them the Hope filled Grace to ask again in song: “Restore us, O God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.”
Five and a half centuries after 3rd Isaiah, there is this Hebrew prophet from Nazareth, heavily influenced by the writings of all the Isaiah's reminds the people to hold on to the Hope, even with Roman rule. Kings and Emperors die, but Hope is still Alive for the Day of the Lord. He says in the lesson for today that generations will pass away; but hold on to the Hope, the Hope that never dies, urging us to have Peace, Joy and Love in everyday life.
Hope never dies; after Jesus is killed, his message and ministry continues as people, gathering in Jesus' name, say that even though Jesus was killed, the Christ continues to live in the ministries of isolated communities they call the Church, people who hold on to Hope. Paul writes to a church in the city of Corinth; and what a messed up group of people there are there. They fight over everything, but Paul reminds them to hold on to the Hope that there will be a day when God's Peace, Joy and Love is in every heart.
I hold on to Hope and it is what gets me through. My wife, Pat, had been struggling with illness for the last 3 years but each day, week, month and year we held on to that Hope for all of our 34 years of marriage.
The day after she died I wrote a poem:
The Next Day
Your side of the bed was empty this morning.
Last night you weren't there for me to kiss you,
and tell you again what I had hoped you knew,
in a ritual that for decades was habit forming.
I knew I should get going, work out at the gym,
but it seemed pointless without a morning tryst
as this sweaty lover telling you'd been missed
and his deep love was not just a passing whim.
Yesterday, you kept that deadly appointment;
feared, delayed and avoided, but now met.
I knew, of course, I'd have to give you up. Yet,
didn't do ritual prayers or anoint with Ointment.
I could not be your Priest, only a failed lover
who could not stop those angels to hover.
She died, but our Hope never died. We Christians see death as not the end of hope, but a step in the journey to a deeper Peace, Joy and Love. Each day, when things happen that I cannot swallow and I cannot just cough up or shut down. I take deep it into myself, and bathe it in Hope and each day I am aware that her Peace, Joy and Love continues in my life. Yeah, there are moments when I will bump into furniture and flirt with being sorry for myself, but I hold on to that Hope which we nurtured every day and that keeps her spirit alive in my heart and in the hearts of those who loved her as well.
This is the first Sunday of Advent, a season to remember each day is an opportunity to be reconciled to Hope, Peace, Joy and Love.
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