Living with Hope Between the Two Advents
The following homily was given at Samford University during a faculty and staff worship service on Dec. 15, 2022. The texts used were Hebrews 6:17-20 and 11:1.
Do you know the song, “Is He Worthy?” written by Andrew Peterson? It’s one of my favorites.
The lyrics are written in a question-and-answer, call-and-response style. Here’s how it begins:
Do you feel the world is broken?
(We do)
Do you feel the shadows deepen?
(We do)
But do you know that all the dark won't
Stop the light from getting through?
(We do)
Do you wish that you could see it all made new?
(We do)
Is all creation groaning?
(It is)
Is a new creation coming?
(It is)
Is the glory of the Lord to be the light within our midst?
(It is)
Is it good that we remind ourselves of this?
(It is)
“Do you feel the world is broken”—that question gets right to the heart of the matter, and I feel it more deeply the older I become. Yesterday news broke that Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss, who had been the DJ for the Ellen DeGeneres Show, died at the age of 40 by suicide. tWitch grew up just down the road from us in Montgomery, Alabama, and leaves behind a wife and three children. The World Health Organization estimates that every year more than 700,000 people die by suicide. Do you feel the world is broken?
Later this month will mark the year anniversary of the death of our colleague, Kristi Metz. A picture of health and beauty, she was here one day and gone the next. Do you feel the world is broken?
War continues in the Ukraine. Children are abandoned. Relationships are severed. Loved ones are diagnosed with cancer. Do you feel the world is broken?
Closer to home is the pride we thought we had conquered that’s still there hiding out in various crevices and corners of our hearts. The sins we thought we could overcome, we haven’t. The sins we committed 20 years ago still haunt us in our sleep. We can’t get over the things we should have done but left undone and the things we shouldn’t have done but did. Do you feel the shadows deepen?
Peterson’s lyrics describe life as we know it. It is what New Testament scholars call the Already but Not Yet. We live between two advents, or two comings, of Jesus Christ. The first advent took place in Bethlehem, where the Gospels tell us the Son of God came down from heaven, was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary. When Christ came, God entered our world in the flesh and brought with him his kingdom. The kingdom of God has already begun in the person and work of Jesus Christ. This kingdom continues through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
But the world is still broken. We feel it. And thus, the kingdom of God has a not yet dimension. We are waiting for Jesus’ second advent, spoken of in Revelation. When he comes again, he will finish the work he began. He will completely do away with Satan, sin and death. He will bring the dead up from their graves. He will dwell with humanity and wipe away our tears. Everything will be as new.
And even though the first advent brought the “already” of God’s kingdom, we still limp along, sometimes pitifully crawling like Frodo in the Lord of the Rings because we’re brought low and bogged down by the “not yet.” Thus, we live with an ache in our souls that not all is quite right until our Lord returns.
The author of Hebrews speaks a kind and encouraging word to us this morning. It’s a word that we’ve heard before, and we find it in other places in Scripture too. It’s a word that our President, Beck Taylor, has chosen for us as a university this year: hope.
But what exactly is hope? More precisely, what is Christian hope for the weary, the wounded, and the broken?
In the ancient world, hope was not considered a virtue because it was viewed as no better than wishful thinking. Not only was it considered to be wishful thinking, the Stoic philosopher Seneca, for example, thought that hope was to be avoided because it drew one’s gaze to the future in such a way that we could not virtuously live in the present. In essence, hope was viewed as a sort of escapism.
Even more recently, I heard hope described as being disconnected from reality, a sort of sentimentalism.
Is hope a sign of weakness? A waste of time? A wishful thinking on the part of the Christian?
It depends on the object of our hope.
Hope, when considered as a concept on its own, is neither positive nor negative. The meaning of hope depends on the object—what is being hoped for and what is our hope in. Even in Scripture hope is not always spoken of positively. One can hope for the wrong thing—“some hope in chariots” (Psalms) or “hope in wealth” (1 Tim).
Rather, the kind of hope that is promoted and encouraged in Scripture is a hope that finds its object in the Living God, the God of Promise, the God who raises the dead, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who in humility came down from heaven for us. Thus, the object of our hope transforms the kind of hope we have and becomes the subject of hope. “Christ Jesus is our hope!” Paul writes in 1 Tim.
Christian hope takes our eyes off ourselves and our situation and places them on Jesus Christ, the one in whom all of God’s promises are “yes” and “amen.” Those promises include: God is for us, God is with us, God advocates for us, God holds onto us and won’t let us go, God loves us, God has forgiven us, God has made us clean, God provides for us, God cares for us, our life is hidden and belongs to God. God will raise us up gloriously from the dead.
Let’s look a little closer at these texts from Hebrews.
In our two texts from Hebrews, we find that hope is inextricably linked to faith. They’re inseparable. Hope comes from faith in Jesus Christ. Living faith begets living hope. We cannot have hope without first having faith in Jesus Christ.
Heb. 11:1, says, “Now faith is the assurance of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen.” The writer of Hebrews follows this statement with one example after another from the Old Testament of faith in action. Because Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses’ parents, Moses, etc had faith in the Living God and his promises, they built an ark, left their homes, gave birth, hid their son, and gave up power to suffer with his people since the “one who draws near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (v. 6).
In the New Testament, faith is always spoken of as faith in Jesus Christ and in his incarnation, death, and resurrection. Faith gives assurance of our hope in Jesus Christ because it looks back to what God has already accomplished on our behalf. Faith is the confirming of the “Already.” Faith says, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried, descended into hell and on the third day rose again and ascended to the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit.”
But as you and I both know, our faith cannot be proven as the world seeks proof, like a mathematical equation, science experiment, or an act caught on video. Faith is a gift from God. Faith trusts that God is who he says he is and that he keeps his promises because he has told us in Holy Scripture, which we read today: “it is impossible for God to lie.”
Faith looks back to the first coming, to the “already,” and says, “I believe.” This faith, then, gives way to hope. Hope looks forward to the second coming of Jesus Christ and says to the “not yet,” “one day.” It poses the question: “But do you know that all the dark won't stop the light from getting through?”
John Calvin said, “Hope is nothing else than the expectation of those things which faith has believed to have been truly promised by God. Thus, faith believes God to be true, hope awaits the time when this truth will be manifested.”
Our hope bears witness to our faith. And the opposite is also true: hopelessness bears witness to a dead or nonexistent faith.
In 1 Corinthians some people in the church, while confessing to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, did not believe that they would be raised from the dead in glorious physical bodies. Paul says that if our glorious resurrection is not true, then our preaching and our faith are in vain. Then he says, “If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone.”
To have Christian hope, says German theologian Jurgen Moltmann, is to have resurrection hope.
Our hope is an anchor, firm and secure, because it is in Jesus Christ, who is alive and who has entered the inner sanctuary of the presence of God, behind the curtain, on our behalf. Our hope anchors us in the storms of the not yet, in the brokenness and darkness of this world, in the situations which are beyond our control, because our hope is being held by Jesus Christ, who indeed is holding onto us and who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Jesus Christ is our hope.
In just a moment we will confirm our faith in the reciting of the Apostles’ Creed, and, in case you miss it, the creed ends with the hope of the one day, of the second advent.
Faith and hope. Hope and faith. These are gifts from our loving Father to help us in the in-between space of the two advents. But one day we won’t need them. As our colleague, Dr. Robert Smith Jr. once said, “Faith and hope both have expiration dates. And when time has ended and eternity future starts, we will no longer need faith…we will not walk by faith we will walk by sight…we will no longer need hope because why would you need hope when you see the realization?”
Our faith and hope direct our gaze to Jesus Christ, to believe and see what our eyes do not, until the day, as we sang momentarily ago when:
“Our eyes, at last, shall see him, through his own redeeming love; for that child so dear and gentle is our Lord in heaven above; and he leads his children on to the place where he is gone.”
Is it good that we remind ourselves of this? It is.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Benediction:
2 Thess. 2:16-17
May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father who has loved us and given us eternal encouragement and good hope by grace, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good work and