Hope and Change

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

We were all expecting…all hoping…that the Bears would win the Superbowl.  They were primed for the game, and as far as we knew…they were ready!  The gamed kicked off…and TOUCHDOWN, Bears! We were off to a fantastic beginning, but it was not to last.  Soon, our hopes were dashed as the Colts quickly regained the ball…and the lead.  Before we knew it, the game was pretty much over and the Bears had been defeated.

  So much for hope.

            Our world seems like it runs out of hope a lot.  The more things change, the more things stay the same.  Can there be any more cynical statement than this.  Underlying this simple statement is just an understanding that nothing ever really changes.  Nothing ever gets better. We can hear it in the desperation of our friends looking for work, those dealing with sickness, and those dealing with the heartbreak of broken families.

            Advent can be difficult for a lot of people, because in the midst of brokenness, in the midst of war, and in the midst of suffering, the church dares to declare hope. 

            We can imagine what it would have been like for the ancient Israelites.  In a lot of ways, their situation is the same as our situation: the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Ancient Israel was surrounded by their enemies.  The economy was taking a down turn and people were desperate for good news.  It must have seemed like the world was falling apart.  There was increased emotional distance between parents and children.  Newer technology scared older generations as the new generation embraced different values.  Politicians promised hope and change for the future, but people found that this hope and change seemed much like the  way things have always been done.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

            Today, the message of hope can feel as an empty promise, a veiled attempt to cloud the pessimism of the future.  Our politicians have promised hope for the American people…a change in the way things ought to be.  But we see this hope diminished.  Our unemployment rate continues to be large, people continue their downward spiral into poverty.  Morals seem to be slipping as families continue to break up.  Addictions soar and drugs are celebrated in some parts of our country as others pretend not to notice the dreadful effects of addiction.  The sex trade continues to soar as millions of young men and women are enslaved every year to provide entertainment for people.  Our culture celebrates violence, anger and vengeance and peace feels that much farther away.

            The more things change, the more they stay the same.

            That might sound too grand…but our own lives echo the desperation we feel out in culture.  We try to change ourselves, hoping that our family will improve…or we medicate ourselves hoping that the pain will go away. We try to tell ourselves that things will be get better, but deep down in our heart, that refrain echoes in our brain: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

            But Isaiah points to a day when things will change…and there is hope that things will be better.

            There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. (Isaiah 11:1)

            When YHWH established David as king, he promised that a descendent would always ben on the throne.  The Davidic kingship was supposed to be the way that God established his kingdom…his justice and peace here on earth.  But David’s descendants had other plans.  They departed from YHWH’s ways and justice and peace got obscured and the people of Israel lost hope that anything would change. 

            But now there will be change.  Because out of the ruins of the Davidic dynasty comes the promise of the Messiah.  This has been part of the plan since the beginning.  Because  all of those kings point to the promise of God that has been with us since the beginning of time. Genesis 3:15   I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. God had promised one offspring would come and set all things right, all things new.  This is the promise that Isaiah now picks up again.

            He describes this ‘branch’ as a king that will establish peace and justice.  He is filled with God’s Spirit, which creates in him the fear of the Lord (v. 3). 

            What this results in is a different type of a regime.  This king is not interested in politics as usual, he is not interested in maintaining the status quo and he is not interested in perpetuating a bureaucracy.  Rather, he redefines what is important.  With righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide with equity or meek of the earth (v. 4).  While most modern politicians are good at rhetoric and sound bites, this ruler proves his concern by his actions.

            So great is this transformation that will happen, that the entire creation will be renewed.  Isaiah describes the highly unlikely pairing of a wolf lying down with a lamb and predators eating grass and ‘prey’ living in a world without fear.  What we see is a world at peace, a peace at rest, and a peace without fear.  Life will be valued for what it truly should be.

            Instead of “the more things change the more they stay the same,” in Isaiah’s prophesy we see ‘the more things change…they really do change!’

            This prophesy became the backbone for how Israelites viewed the world.  Sure things are difficult now….but change is coming!!! Victory is coming! The Messiah is coming!  

            But the further away from this event the people were…the more they began to sink back into their depression.  War gave way to more war, poverty became more prevalent and invaders came from the four corners of the earth to occupy Palestine.  First came the Babylonians, the the Greeks, and finally the Romans.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

            But eventually, a new voice came on the scene.  After four hundred years of complete silence a young man appears on the scene.  He is wild eyed and crazy sounding….he dresses funny and eats bugs!  And yet….people flock to see him.  People come from all over Judea and all over Jerusalem to come and hear this man preach.

            And yet…they do! It should be no surprise to us that John speaks to a hunger…a desire to the people of Israel.  He speaks to the underlying yearning for the people.  His message is simple: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”  It is a short simple statement of what John has preached.  There is no simpler sermon that has been preached and yet it connects with the Israelites on such a powerful level…because it addresses their deepest need.

            The key phrase in this passage is ‘the kingdom of God.’  The kingdom of God represents the sum total of Jesus’ preaching and of the New Testament message for all people.  We may find ourselves scratching our heads at this because we very rarely hear sermons preached on ‘the kingdom of God’ and besides a few praise songs, kingdom preaching is usually very limited to a couple of Sundays.  But this is not because the Church has abandoned the idea of the kingdom of God, but because we have found new ways to talk about the reality that John and Jesus preached about.  Paul emphasizes the gospel and talks about being ‘in Christ,’ which is the way that he expresses the kingdom of God. 

            So what is this kingdom of God?  Biblical theologian Geerhardus Vos suggests that the kingdom of God is the ‘end time rule of God.’ In other words, the kingdom of God is that time, at the end of time, when God himself will reign and establish the world as it ought to be.  It is the hope of the Old Testament, the yearning of the ancient Israelites and the point of the prophets.  We may take it as ‘shorthand,’ but there is a large theological significance to this phrase and so when John uses it, he is tapping into a cultural buzzword that people would have been familiar with.

            God reigning…all things created new…sinners judged, the righteous restored and the end of death and of sickness.  These are the principle things that the kingdom of God entailed.  We see this language all over the Old Testament.  Of course we saw this earlier when Isaiah talks about the root of the throne of Jesse.  We read that the messiah is coming to establish this kingdom, because the messiah is the king who establishes it.  But towards the end of Isaiah, we also read

"For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.  ¹⁸ But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness.  ¹⁹ I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress.  ²⁰ No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.  ²¹ They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.  ²² They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.  ²³ They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity, for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the LORD, and their descendants with them.  ²⁴ Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear.  ²⁵ The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain," says the LORD.  (Isaiah 65:17-25)

            Now that sounds hopeful.  That sounds like there is something to change, that sounds like things just might get better.  All of this is captured in John’s phrase, ‘the kingdom of God.’

            But it gets better for John’s listeners.  Because he says that not only is this kingdom is on its way, this kingdom is at hand!  In other words, it’s here! It’s now! This great kingdom that Isaiah talked about is here in the present.  That’s hope that nobody in Jerusalem or Judea could find anywhere else. 

            But so what? What does this have to do with us? It’s been two thousand years.  Lions still eat lambs, the poor are still persecuted and the sick still die.  Isn’t this just the same old case of ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same?’  Has anything really changed?

            Well yes, something has changed.  Jesus came and died and was resurrected to new life.  That’s a change.  He also came and he changed us!  God established His people as a New Creation, as part of this New Kingdom and as ambassadors for the rule of God. 

            Sure, we may not see some great changes like Bears eating grass or children playing with snakes…but we see change.  We see communities that are dedicated to reaching out to the poor and the needy.  We see Churches establishing hospitals to care for the sick.  We see monasteries established to educate the outcast.  We see a redefining of values for an entire world. 

            We often grow cynical because we don’t see change happening fast enough.  When we do so, we fail to recognize two things.

            First, we fail to recognize that change takes an awful long time.  Think of how long it takes to change yourself, and compare that to changing the world.  Gandhi once said that we needed to become the change that we wanted to see in the world.  But that doesn’t happen overnight.  I know for me, change can be scary and it can take me a long time to get used to it.  For instance, even something simple like learning to not chew my fingernails took me years….and I still do it.  Why wouldn’t it take a long time to change the great things of the world like the foundations of justice and the values of society?

            The second thing is that our sin often clouds the work of God in the world from our eyes.  It is very easy to point out the negative things that are happening.  We are used to them and we see them everywhere.  But it is much harder to see positive change and to see the hand of God working in the lives of very ordinary and mundane events.  We often don’t want to see these things, because we want to wallow in our self pity and in our cynicism.  We want to disbelieve, because our hearts are prone to disbelief. 

            But the message of Advent invites us to chuck our disbelief.  Instead of falling into the cynical trap of believing that things can never change, Advent…and Christ….call us to trust in Him and to believe in hope.  It is the Enemy that wants to deny us hope, for us to fall into living out our hopelessness.  As theologian Jurgen Moltmann says, “to live without hope is to cease to live.  Hell is hopelessness.  It is not by accident that above the entryway to Dante’s hell is the inscription, ‘abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’”  The devil would see us spend eternity rotting and wallowing in hopelessness, but the root of stump of Jesse brings new life.  The devil robs hope from us, but Christ restores us to hope and to life. 

            The more things change, the more they stay the same? Absolutely not! Christ has come…Christ is coming…and that changes everything!