For several decades now, the themes of Hope, Peace, Love and Joy have been connected to the four Sundays of Advent. I find it rather odd, then, that not one of the four lectionary readings for this Sunday of Hope (Jeremiah 33, Psalm 25, Luke 21, 1 Thessalonians 3) actually included the word “hope”! Yet there was something about this little reading from 1st Thessalonians, a letter written by the Apostle Paul, that drew me to it.
Thessalonica was and is a
Greek city about 500 km north of Athens, and Paul had a close relationship with
the house Churches there. He had lived
and preached in Thessalonica only three weeks, but the response was tremendous,
with both Jews and Gentiles enlivened by the good news of Jesus Christ. There was also a local group there that was
dead set against Paul and his teachings, so much so that they followed him to
other towns to oppose him after he left Thessalonica. This combination of the
rapid response of the people, and their resilience in the face of fierce and
committed opposition, endeared this Church to the Apostle.
He had his worries for them –
some members of the congregation were so convinced that the return of Christ
was going to happen immediately, that they quit work and avoided any type of
sin so they would be blameless when the Lord returned, and Paul needed to snap
them out of that behaviour. Still, he
loved them deeply.
In the first chapter of 1st
Thessalonians Paul wrote, “2 We always thank God for you
all and always mention you in our prayers. 3 For we
remember before our God and Father how you put your faith into practice, how
your love made you work so hard, and how your hope in our Lord Jesus Christ is
firm… 6 Even though you suffered much, you
received the message with the joy that comes from the Holy Spirit”. One chapter later, he wrote (2:19-20) 19
“it is you…who are our hope, our joy, and our reason for boasting of
our victory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes. 20 Indeed,
you are our pride and our joy!”
Imagining yourself in one of
the house churches in Thessalonica, can you imagine receiving praise like
that? Clearly, there was something about
them that touched Paul’s heart. Their faith in the risen Christ and their group’s
ability to be energized by love even when things were tough, humbled and
encouraged the Apostle when his own faith and energy flagged. I hunch he was also impressed by their
ability to receive correction when they got carried away with their zeal.
On this Sunday of Hope, it’s
important for me to start with this beautiful connection between Paul
and the Thessalonian Church, but not to end there. For this combination Paul saw in them of
faith in Christ and a sturdy love that was so resilient in times of trial is
something that keeps showing up throughout history. And that’s a very good thing, for there’s no
shortage of things to worry about in our day and age, from a particularly nasty
group of egotistical world leaders to ongoing eco-anxiety about the fate of
this planet. We need honest words of
hope that will go beyond mere platitudes, and remain staunch amidst the hardest
challenges… and I’ll briefly quote from three such authors now.
1) In 2021, a popular speaker, author and professor named
Brene Brown wrote a book entitled Atlas of the Heart in which she
explores the landscape of human emotion.
She writes, “Hope is a function of struggle – we develop hope not during
the easy or comfortable times, but through adversity and discomfort…. Hope is not a warm, fuzzy emotion that fills
us with a sense of possibility. Hope is a
way of thinking – a cognitive process [which helps one] believe in
themselves and their abilities.” Hope,
then, is often forged in times of hardship, when someone or something helps us learn
a belief that hard times will not be the end of us. As someone who, 25 years ago, lost most of a
year to clinical depression, I can attest that it is possible to learn how to
be hopeful when all looks bleak. It’s neither
easy nor automatic, but it is possible.
2) Back in 2007, Rev. Dr. Mark Giuliano, a minister then
serving in The United Church of Canada wrote these words about the way hope is
held in community: “During the first two days of my ordained ministry, I was
called to minister at a funeral for a 16-month-old toddler who had been
tragically killed in an automobile accident.
“Not
only was I filled with deep sorrow for the family of that small child, I was
overwhelmed with a deep anxiety about having to be the one who would attempt to
speak a word of hope [to] that community…. I wondered how we could possibly
draw forth strength to praise God when our hearts were so heavy with grief.
“But
as we began to sing, ‘Praise to the Lord, the almighty’ on that day of
remembrance, our weak and quiet voices began to fill with strength and
hope. Even through our tears, people who
were bent down [by] sorrow were able to stand straight.
“I
learned some important lessons that day” Mark concludes. “We offer God our worship not only when we have
hope, but when we need hope. I
discovered that praising God isn’t a solo activity; we do it with and for each
other. And I experienced first-hand that
when we rejoice in the Lord, it reminds us that even though our world may feel
like it is spinning apart, God has not let go of us.” Much like the Thessalonian Christians, who
gained so much as they leaned into one another’s faith in times of trial, our
Churches today are strengthened when we lean into one another’s faith in hard
times.
3) And we hear one more story of hope, this one from much
earlier than 2007. There was a 14th century English Christian Mystic
named Julian of Norwich, whose story entered my heart when I spent part of my
2019 sabbatical in Norwich.
When Julian was 30 years old,
in the year 1373, she was gravely ill and nearly died. Some think that her husband and child did
die. At this time, Christ came to her through a series of visions, in which she
came to know the mysteries of the Divine in a deep and holy way. God and Christ and Spirit spoke to her in
these visions at the foot of the cross, as the sufferings of Jesus spoke to the
lives that people were living in her day.
Life in the 14th
century was not easy. England was engaged
in the 100 years’ war with France and “the Plague” hit Norwich three times in
Julian’s lifetime, with the war and disease combining to kill a full 50% of the
city’s population. Amidst all of this, a
vision of Christ on the cross said to Julian a message summed up in four words:
ALL SHALL BE WELL. When so many around
her were dying because of war or illness, at a time when she wondered if she
would survive, Jesus looked at her with love, and said “ALL SHALL BE
WELL.” Here’s the full quote, from
Julian (Manton p.110, 68.16.66-73):
And
this word: you shall not be overcome, was said sharply and mightily, for
sureness and comfort against all tribulations that may come. He did not say: you shall not be troubled, he
did not say you shall not struggle, he did not say you shall not be diseased;
but he did say: you shall not be overcome.
God wills that we take heed at this word, and that our faithful trust be
strong in well and woe, for he loves us and delights in us…and all shall be
well.
Over
the past six centuries, the words of Julian of Norwich have brought comfort, in
great part because they did not come from easy times. But not only that, in Julian’s writings, the
earliest existing writings by a woman in the English language, we are reminded
that hope does not tend to come from happy, untested thoughts but neither does
it just automatically appear as a product of hard times. Hope is a gift from God – a gift from the Christ,
who lived and died and lives again.
And so on this first Sunday of Advent, may hope
be much more for you than wishful thinking.
May the hope spoken from Christ on the cross to Julian of Norwich, speak
to your heart. May the hope that Mark
Giuliano spoke of, experienced as a hurting community of faith came together to
sing songs of faith, speak to our gathering today. May the learnings that can come from hard
times, described by Brene Brown, help us as we learn to find hope. And may the age-old resilience of the Church
in Thessalonica, hopeful amidst persecution, hopeful despite all their
idiosyncrasies, encourage your search for hope in times of calm, in times of
chaos, and in times of challenge. May
all this be so. Amen.
References cited:
Brown, Brene. Atlas
of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human
Experience. NYC:
Random House, 2021. pp. 88-110.
Giuliano, Mark. “Where we Find Hope”, pp.
68-69 in Hardy, Nacy (ed) Singing a Song of
Faith: Daily Reflections for Lent. Toronto: UCPH, 2007.
Manton, Karen (text) and Muir, Lynne (illustrations/calligraphy). The
Gift of Julian of Norwich. Leominster, UK: Gracewing, 2005.
© 2024 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United
Church Pastoral Charge.
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