We just heard a few moments ago the very same blessing that Paul, the Apostle, sent to the Christian community in Rome: "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."

So let us ...
dwell upon the meaning of hope

So let us this second Sunday in Advent, dwell upon the meaning of hope, because our God is the God of Hope, and because by the power of the Spirit that we received in baptism we may, as Paul said, abound in hope.

There is a second reason, and it has to do with the liturgical season of Advent. Advent is the time of the year when Christians, by recalling the mystery of Bethlehem, look forward to Christ's second coming in power and majesty. This is the eschatological dimension of our faith, that is grounded in hope, in the longing for Christ return, in the expectation of our final liberation, of the messianic times so well described by the message of the prophet Isaiah that we also just heard.

post-modern society

We live in a post-modern society, and we well know that post-modernity is defined by a different definition of the space-time co-ordinates that have bounded human experience for ages. Darkness doesn't constrain what we do any more. We have plenty of artificial light. The short winter days are no longer a restriction for human activity. Distance doesn't mean anymore that we cannot reach and communicate with somebody in real time, as we say in the computer jargon. We have phones and cellulars. Even, 24 hour TV news brings us the unfolding of tragedies and wars as they happen in far away places. Our senses have expanded almost beyond the limits dreamed of a few years ago.

In this brave new world of expanded awareness and communication, we have also learned that meanings are a social construction determined by culture, rearing, gender, history and the socioeconomic environment. We know that we build our meanings, and some times quite different ones from the very same experiences and almost identical perceptions.

And it is in this context, that we come here today, to this church, to hear the word of God, to be nourished by him, to be fed at his table.

We are who we are and we live in the society in which we live. In this here and now is where the message of hope has to make sense. Does hope haves a meaning for us? Do we have a meaning that we can attach to this word? This is not a rhetoric question. It is a question tied intrinsically with the question about the meaning of God in our society, and the meaning of God in our own personal lives.

Pre-modern societies

In Pre-modern societies, the so called primitive societies, humans explained the world by referring to myths and mythology. There was somewhere a story that would give sense to every day afflictions, joys and events. If somebody was sick, if somebody died, there was a reason, natural or supernatural that would explain it.

Nature was conquered by rites. If rain was needed, some sort of ritual was performed to move the gods or the demigods, to fix the problem. If it didn't happen, some explanation was provided as to why the rite did not achieve its purpose.

We don't need myths any more. We have science. We can scientifically explain almost any thing. And we know that if something is not yet quite explained, it is just matter of time till some scientist will solve the puzzle. We conquer nature with technology. And here again, if we don't yet have the fix, we know that is just question of more time and some investments till we will have the required technology.

So we do not need either god or hope, or so we think, because we have ourselves and our brain power and our will to succeed. On top of this we have the blessing and the opportunity to live in a beautiful and peaceful town, in a prosperous and plentiful post-industrial society, usually far away from the major devastations of nature like earthquakes, hurricanes, or tornadoes, just maybe an ice storm, or some floods, but they really don't destroy our livelihoods. In recent decades, we have been spared from the horrors of war, and in a rather tolerant and multicultural society, we have been shielded from the fears and terors of belonging to a persecuted minority. We hear of those things, and we are horrified by them, but we do not really experience them ourselves.

We have shelter and food, and health care with doctors and nurses, and treatments and medications. We have plenty. So there is little need for God and very little place for hope. In our society, in the world we live, day in, day out, God has almost become superfluous. There is no need for him. We take good care of ourselves. WE have become self sufficient.

you came here today
because you care,
because you believe

But when I think about this aloud with you, and to you, in this season of Christmas and carols, and bells, and stores, and shopping and Christmas trees, and reindeer, and Santas coming from the north pole down the chimney, I realize that I am complaining to the wrong people, because you came here today because you care, because you believe, because you want to be strengthened by the Lord, so as to bear witness to the world that I just described. You are here because you want to tell the Lord that we need him, that without him we fall, and we hurt ourselves, and the people around us. Only he can make us so selfless as to care about others beyond what can be reasonably expected from humans.

We are here because we take seriously a God that has taken us so seriously that he became one of us. This is the mystery of Christmas. The mystery of God incarnate. The mystery of a helpless God-infant, the mystery of a God for whom there was no place in town and he had to go to a cave to be born, in the same way as the poorest of the poor are born today.

a faith grounded in hope because
we have a hope grounded in faith

WE have a faith grounded in hope because we have a hope grounded in faith, so that we may dream of a different earth and a different world, an earth and a world that will be recreated anew, by the resurrected Lord in his second coming. A world of peace and joy where there will be no solitude, no tears, no despair.

Even in the opulence of a rich society, humans experience the pain and suffering of sickness and death. We know by our faith, Chapter 5 of Paul to he Romans referring to the first chapters of the book of Genesis, that death came into the world as a consequence of sin, and that death and sin was conquered by Jesus through his own death and resurrection.

If we believe and have hope, it is because we have received the promise of the Spirit that dwells in our hearts as token of our resurrection in Christ, the first born from the dead. Hope means that we take seriously the incarnation of God, so seriously that we are fully committed to this earth to build a different world, a world of understanding and tolerance, of true tolerance, a world that doesn't discriminate against the ones that are different from us, a society that is all inclusive, not exclusive; that doesn't pre-assigns roles based on gender, race, age or anything; a society in which we all are children of God and live in harmony as we hear in the scriptures today.

This new world is a world that we, by the way we behave and interact with others, start creating right now around us. Being Christians means being different from those that neither care nor are committed to loving one another, because they are unable to really see Christ in another human being, specially the poor, the outcasts, the different in human eyes.

Christ became one of us, one like us so that we may be able and empowered to love as God love us. In this context the second coming of the Lord is not something to be afraid of but to long for.

Come Lord Jesus, come and stay with us this season and all seasons of our lives. Amen.

The Rev. Mauricio Ferro is an Associated Priest of St. John the Evangelist.
He comes to us from Bogota, Columbia and is currently working in the City of Ottawa.