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Hope

“ ‘The days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel
and to the house of Judah.  ‘In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line;
he will do what is just and right in the land.    Jeremiah 33: 14-15


There is a tree which sits along an interstate highway just outside of Fort Worth, Texas. It's an unlovely tree in an unlikely place with an unmistakable message. It is a mimosa tree that appears lifeless, except at Christmas. Each December, for the past ten years, the tree has been decorated, its scraggly limbs bearing a few ornaments and a garland.

The original decorator was a homeless woman whose health has prevented her from the task for several years. Other hands have carried on the work ever since. "Everyone sees it, but no one knows who does it," said one woman.

Sitting on an isolated hill absent of other vegetation, the existence of the tree itself is a bit of a mystery. When gardener Neil Sperry first spotted the tree, he was surprised because a mimosa tree should not be growing in such a place. "It's just a God thing when a tree grows where it's not supposed to grow," he said.

Passersby say they have never noticed a single leaf on the tree, but every December life blossoms in the form of a few Christmas decorations. Jodi Hodges, a member of the Texas Department of Transportation, acknowledges that the decorations are technically not permitted on state property. Hodges says, "We have motorists call in thanking us for the tree, and we have nothing to do with it. It's just a mystery…. It's just a tree mysterious people decorate. It gives us hope."1.

Hope itself is really quite a mysterious force, but incredibly powerful.
What brings hope can be varied, but its effects are profound.

Elderly people who have a negative attitude toward growing old are literally thinking themselves into an early grave. A Reuters News report from a journal published by the American Psychological Association has found that people who had positive views on aging lived about 7.6 years longer than those who had negative views.
The researchers, led by psychologist Becca Levy of Yale University, recorded that "the effect of more positive self-perceptions of aging on survival is greater than the physiological measures of low systolic blood pressure and cholesterol, each of which is associated with a longer lifespan of four years or less."
The study also found that such factors as smoking or not smoking, body mass index, and amount of exercise did not have as great an influence on lifespan as the participants' attitudes about getting older.2

Hope.
In the 1960's up to the early 1970's, Hodgkins disease, among other cancers was pretty much a 100% death sentence.
But through the 1970's new chemotherapy treatments started to bring about a significant turn-around in prognosis.
Complete remissions took a significant upturn.
But when doctors began telling their patients that there was now real hope for remission, there was a second upturn in remissions. Just the fact that people believed there was hope, led to a better outcome. Now Hodgkins is one of the most treatable of all malignancies.

Hope is the belief that things can be better or at least that pain and suffering is not lost and meaningless.
Hopelessness can be a kind of despair that comes when we give up on hope, or it can be something quite different.

I recently attended the Restorative Justice symposium at William Head prison. One of the speakers was Jodi Patterson, from the Times Colonist newspaper. She works with women in the sex trade industry. Their organization is called PEERS.
Jodi says that among the women who work the streets, addiction and hopelessness are virtually always present.
She said something interesting about hope.
She spoke of the hopelessness of street prostitutes and said it is not some deep existential angst in which a person would wring their hands and say, "I feel so hopeless!"
She said most of them would not even talk in terms of hope. Hope is just a totally foreign concept to most of them.
Their form of hopelessness is just never even considering that life could possibly be better and simply being enslaved to the notion that this is how it is, how it always has been and how it always will be. Hopelessness is simply accepting that nothing ever changes.

I suppose a person need not feel despair from that form of hopelessness. You learn to make do.
It made me wonder how many of us live in an upscale form of hopelessness.
Do we believe that life can be different...if not for us, at least that we can be a part of making life different for others?

Is there such a thing as well to do hopelessness?
We may be content that things are fine for us, but have no vision of how things might be for others or our world at large.

What does our scripture reading have to say about hope?
‘The days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah.  “ ‘In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness

Jeremiah's time was a time of darkness. Babylon's army was just on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
The king of Judah was being counselled to defy Nebuchadnezzar and resist.
Jerusalem was a fair fortress and capable of resisting invasion, which was why David chose it as his capital in the first place.
They had resisted the Assyrians under the leadership of king Hezekiah, and believed they could resist Babylon
But Babylon was much stronger than Assyria and God had told Judah, through Jeremiah that they would not received divine help this time because God had sent the Babyoniians as an instrument of punishment. Very dark times were at hand.

But God issues a promise: As dark as the present and immediate future will be, they are not abandoned.

Hope can come in many ways.
Sometimes hope is a person. Someone who cares and brings you the right word at the right time.
Sometimes hope is a change in circumstance. A new job, a change in health or even a new relationship.
Hope can take many faces.

For Jeremiah, hope was God's promise to send the Promised One, an ideal king like David who would rule over God's kingdom bringing peace and justice...the Messiah, the Annointed One.
God had not abandoned the people to their fate. Hope was coming. Hope was the Person of God.

At Advent we remember that Jeremiah's words were fulfilled in the coming of Jesus, God in the flesh.


And sometimes hope is the assurance that you are not alone and that your life is not in vain.

Some people live and die in most difficult circumstances, and do not see the big event or change they hoped for.
For them hope can be the assurance that their life has not gone unnoticed.
But they know that Jesus has come and has laid down his life for them and offered them the promise of an eternity with Him.

And in another way, maybe you are the face of hope to someone. Undoubtedly you are the face of hope to someone, maybe to more than just one someone. You may not know it, but believe that you are.
You may be the hands and face of Jesus in your world.

The staff at Raymond James financial services here in Victoria put together a creche scene at their office. They put the Rev. Al Tysick in the scene as one of the wise men. Al is pastor to the street population of this city and is the face of hope to many, just as Jodi Patterson is the face of hope and of Christ to street prostitutes.  At advent we use the word, 'incarnation' to mean that God takes on a flesh and blood in the person of Jesus. He continues to take on flesh in blood in the work of these people. Just as you are the face of Jesus to someone.

Collectively we are the face of hope.
God has put us here to be hope to someone who comes through those doors.
Hope means you are welcomed.
Hope means that you are significant. Your life counts. You are needed.
Together we can face more easily what would be hard to face alone.
You are and you will be the face of hope in someones dark days.
That's why God sent you here.


Preached  December 3, 2006
Dr. Harold McNabb
West Shore Presbyterian Church
Victoria, British Columbia
Notes
1. Jennifer Briggs, "Fort Worth's Forlorn Tree Inspires I-30 Commuters," USA Today (12-23-03)
2. Reuters News, "Study: Think Positive, Live Longer," worldhealth.net (July 2002)
Online Resources Consulted
http://www.preachingtoday.com/
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