Advent - Week One
Liberation Lectionary ~ Soul Holidays
“We are the only hope we have” James Baldwin
HOPE AGAINST HOPE
Read Romans 4 / Key verse ~ Romans 4:18
Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed, and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
While the Lord uses Their own mind and image to perform acts of creation, it is creation itself that God engages to perform acts of hope. Every season has a story, and in different seasons of God’s moving in human life, an announcement is made. When an angel, or the angel of the Lord (a moniker for a pre-Christ version of embodied God) visits a person to tell them about what is to come - it is often from their family, from their body. And it always connected to an opportunity to hope.
The term “annunciation” is a fancy/ ancient way to say announcement from a heavenly being in human form. When the term is used today, it is applied only to the annunciation to Mary - about Jesus. But we hold other announcements in high regard. God was doing the work of deliverance through Eve, and Hagar, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and more.
Tradition invites us to begin the Advent season by remembering the announcement of the angel to Mary that she will carry the Messiah, Jesus, into life on earth, as a gift from God to all people. This encounter, recorded in three of the four gospels, is often named “The Annunciation”. But in the bible, a few very special encounters are recorded, which hold significance for our faith practice, and our understanding of the context in which God’s story is told.
This week, please take time to study the stories of HAGAR in Genesis 16 / SAMSON’S PARENTS in Judges 13 / and the Annunciation to Zachariah of John the Baptist in Luke 1.
There is a root - a resilient purpose - for the message of annunciation. That hope is available to us in the form of the most innocent. Hope is a renewable resource that God’s plan will reveal in the form of a brand new human, and it is this same form by which we ourselves entered the world. And whew this weary world. The hymn “O Holy Night” gives us the phrase “the weary world rejoices.” The anthem Lift Every Voice reminds us that God is present in our “weary years and silent tears.” This type of fatigue often follows failure of self, family, community, or society. It is a sign and a signal; we are ready for, in need of, actively working and eagerly waiting - for the arrival of a great change.
Eve, Mother of everything living, was informed that hope would come through her seed, making her both the original ancestor of human nature, and god-given power.
Hagar named the God of her hope when the Lord themself appeared to her in the desert.
And Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, holds a historical place in God’s story because he is the only dad visited by God to receive annunciation about the child his wife would have.
Samson’s parents - side note, did both meet the angel of the Lord who announced his coming greatness, but mom saw him first and dad didn’t realize he was in the presence of God.
And look at the throughline for each of these announcements, the time and place wherein God shows up to communicate with the people in need of change.
We know Mary and Elizabeth knew what it was like to be colonized and controlled. They lived in a time after years of what their people had labeled silence from God. Scripture says that Zachariah was serving as a priest under a King whose very name the reader would recognize as evil and bought by empire.
Samson’s birth is foretold amidst the cycles of foolishness - discipline - foolishness - discipline that God’s people were going through.
Hagar’s very existence was reduced to a role unfit for any image bearer. She held an anti-status akin to our women ancestors who were labeled “breeder slaves”,
Adam and Eve were in the middle of experiencing a major shift in their lives. They would be gone forever from God’s garden, and the only way back to goodness would be through their descendants who would be part of God’s plan.
In every instance, the command of God is tied to the creation mandate: to multiply, to increase. And even in the instances that put the mess in message, the active ingredient of God’s encouragement is that THERE IS HOPE for you. And that hope will make it’s home WITHIN YOU even as you work to build a world that feels more like home for all God’s children.
See, after the announcement to Eve, God’s most grounding annunciations are that of a blessing for all people. An invitation to have hope so deep, it endures even when it seems that there is no possible way that seed of hope will bear fruit.
This is what today’s scripture references. Abraham’s hope against all odds.
The scripture calls him dead. Calls his wife’s womb dead.
And even after the Lord tells them that they will be parents to infinite numbers of God’s children, they mess up - bad. We cannot deny Hagar’s torture and exploitation. We will not deny the misogyny marring the stories of Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Mary. We will not regard David’s actions to Bathsheba as honorable.
What we will preach, over and again, is that the God of hope brings healing to and through losers and fools, through the mess-ups and the melted down. If faith is substance of what we hope, then what we hope for ultimately is liberation.
illustration
Connecting all the children of Yaweh with the people of Allah, as all God’s children are children of promise.
The only hope for the modern state of Israel is the liberation of Palestine. God has intentionally set up the story of shared ancestors.
The only hope for planet earth is the massive corporations run by people whose main concern is hoarding wealth. And boycotts, a human activity, are in fact the proof that hope still exists. The movement cannot run on rage alone. If the coming weeks of advent are going to show us the fruits of love and joy and peace, then hope is the seed that seems sunk into the ground and invisible. Gone, because we cannot tell where and how deep the root system travels.
This story is your model. Hagar is proof that Abraham got it wrong, God showed up in the midst of Hagar’s hell - which was caused by the very people who originally received God’s promise. Samson’s life is proof that even the chosen golden children move with their own motives and need to re-align with God’s purpose.
Can we do the same? Against all the factors that tell us NOT to hope… will we hope? Because God has made us people of the promise. As innumerable as the stars. As the sands. Can we look to the God whose story centers us in our own liberation? God is grounding us in hope.
Mariame Kaba wrote “Hope is a discipline. Hope doesn't mean emotion. Hope doesn't mean you don’t feel sadness or pain. Hope isn’t optimism. Hope is believing in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change.”
And here is where that focus on FAITH is involved. For we know that faith is the substance, the material tangible good, for EVERYTHING we hope for. And faith is tne evidence of things unseen. We are the evidence of the seeds of hope, God’s coming to sit with us in our reality, in our bodies, is evidence that God participates in hope too. And They already know the end, they wrote it and sealed it as the promise that will surely come to pass.