Tag Archives: hope

Riding the RCL into Advent

26 Monday Nov 2018

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Christmas lights are going up around the street, but it’s not Christmas yet. Our Christmas tree will go up on Christmas Eve and stay for the 12 days of the Nativity commemorations. Next Sunday readings begin the four week season of Advent that precedes Christmas. Like the season of Lent, it is a purple season of preparation that involves fasting!  To observe Advent in the way it is intended is therefore quite counter cultural. Following the texts of the four anticipatory Sundays of Advent can therefore help us, even if it is for a brief pause of reflection.

Jeremiah 33:14-16

Advent is the season where we meet the prophets pointing forward with hope to the culmination of the big picture. They do so from their own context, but with wider ramifications. They are very much “today.” Jeremiah surveys a bleak political scene and points to the rise of days when the balance of justice and peace will be restored. 
And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”

Psalm 25:1-10

Psalms are both personal and communal declarations we make towards the Holy One, whose inexpressible name is often rendered through print in uppercase letters as “LORD”, the English translation of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton “YHWH,” the sound of breath, or the action of being.  We are always addressing the Mystery, the Ineffable, in Whom we live and move and have our being. To be able to express contrition and hope with such trust and intimacy is a gift that Advent brings us.
 
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Advent preparation involves us as people who are already living the Easter reality. That which we anticipate has already come to pass. This is why Paul exudes such confidence in the joy and love in which the Thessalonian church is called to live. It is possible to simultaneously appropriate and anticipate the realm of Shalom – the Holy One’s perfect reign.

Luke 21:25-36

What a scary passage to begin the year of Luke! But we are in Advent, the season of prophets, who tell it like it is. Jesus is speaking to his disciples about the road of service that lies ahead. It’s not going to be an easy stroll – all sorts of obstacles await and events will mount a daunting and discouraging scale. Hope in the vision of what they have witnessed and the reality of the struggle in which they have participated and the union with Christ that is their continuing experience is what will sustain them, even when the world is falling apart.

Hope when all is hopeless

28 Wednesday Feb 2018

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haggaiHaggai is not a well-known prophet but his words are like fresh spring water bubbling up in a parched paddock. His work is summarised well by Rev’d Peter Walker in today’s commentary on the text in With Love To The World, “he inspired Israel to recognise that a shattered people can rebuild their community.”

I remember how, in my first month of service at Fremantle, WA, we ministered to survivors who had come down from the Christmas Day, 1974, devastation in Darwin from Cyclone Tracy. They believed it was the end of Darwin. Today Darwin is the thriving capital city of the Northern Territory.

More recently, near and far, communities destroyed by wildfire are rebuilding against all odds. No matter how captive we become through depressing circumstances, it seems that, collectively, there is enough of a spark of resilience to start again.

We see glimpses of it in the places of deepest despair – Syria, Manus, Nauru.

Haggai’s strident optimism and hope may still catch us wherever we are.

 

 

Wooing the one who jilted you …

10 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by in environment, international politics, mission, Personal, Spirituality, theology

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door of hopeWho would want to?

The Hebrew prophet Hosea – that’s who! Initially, he nurses the pain of anger when Gomer leaves him for a polyamorous dalliance with others. The patriarchal law of his time and place would have allowed his claim on her life. Instead, we see a tender wooing back, prompted by an insight into YHWH’s yearning for his wayward people,

In a tender love poem, Hosea once again courts Gomer. (Hosea 2:14-23) 

The Rev’d Dr Keith Rowe contrasts the harsh history of the valley of Achor and “a door of hope” (v15).

As much as I baulk at the uncompromising retribution in the face of the greed of Achan described in the above link, I cannot ignore the parallel suffering of the vulnerable caused by today’s uncompromising focus on greed. The “door of hope” that Hosea so eloquently espouses matches much of our yearning for the cessation of violence, comprehensive care for others and nurture of the natural environment.

The contemporary gift of Hosea is a reframing of the context for the frustration and powerlessness experienced by many who seek to act for change against uncompromising commercial and political forces – our valley of Achor. A shift of perspective that focuses on our love (God’s love) for uncomprehending and fickle game-changers will unlock the “door of hope.”

On the seventh day of Christmas… hope that envisions a new heaven and a new earth.

31 Wednesday Dec 2014

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800px-Justice_statueThis morning another eight Christian leaders face court in Perth on charges of trespass, a result of advocacy for asylum seeker children in the face of political intransigence and obfuscation. A particularly disturbing feature of the incidents of these arrests was the decision by the police, for the first time, to introduce strip-search procedures, evidently designed to intimidate and deter further protests. A year of like protest actions has turned a dark corner. However, those charged would still direct our thoughts to those languishing in detention in the tropical hell-holes of Manus and Nauru, where minors fear for their lives and remain devoid of hope. Christmas has something to do with the climax of the apocalyptic terror in John’s Revelation where a new heaven and a new earth are revealed. Revelation 21:1-6 is replete with prophetic imagery of hope realised. For two millennia, it has sustained the hopes and aspirations for followers of Jesus, the Alpha and Omega, contained for a while in a vulnerable infant. It is the vision and hope of a redeemed society that drives the thrust for mercy and justice behind the #lovemakesaway advocates who stand before our land’s magistrates. Such a hope, such a vision, is a gift of the seventh day of Christmas.

Advent Voices: a candle in the dark

19 Friday Dec 2014

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candleAdvent draws expectant attention to an arrival of one divinely anointed to fix the mess we’re in. It’s a season that both highlights the chaos of a violent world and the pregnant promise of its resolution. Advent’s themes are in tension – no more so this week than when the siege in Sydney and the horrendous Peshawar school massacre heightened the world’s sensitivities. Can the Advent themes of hope, peace, joy and love really win through? Expressions of community solidarity gave life to the maxim “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”

This morning’s text from Romans16:25-27 serves a similar “lighting of the candle” function. It is sometimes repeated at the conclusion of church services as worshippers prepare to leave the sanctuary to return to the chaos of everyday living.

Now to God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the Gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith— to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory for ever! Amen.

Advent Reflection: Hope, not optimism

28 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by in Spirituality, theology, Wembley Downs

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Pollyanna and friends

Image by linniekin via Flickr

Pollyanna gets a bit of stick these days. The name of the main character from Eleanor H Porter’s work of classical children’s fiction has become an epithet for anyone deemed to be unrealistically optimistic. In the novel made even more well known by Walt Disney’s cinema version in 1960, Pollyanna invents “the glad game.” No matter how bad the circumstances, there’s always something to be glad of. Pollyanna receives, as a gift, a pair of crutches instead of the anticipated doll – well, she’s glad she doesn’t need them. Her stern aunt punishes Pollyanna for being late to dinner by banishing her to bread and milk in the kitchen with the maid, and Pollyanna thanks her profusely because she loves bread and milk and can think of no better pastime than chatting with the maid.

I was ten years old when I saw Disney’s movie, and Pollyanna, I think, ingrained in me one of those life commandments – “look for the good in all things” – probably not a bad corrective to my default melancholy disposition.

It strikes me that the season of Advent seems to begin from a melancholic stance. The Isaiah passages emerge from the experience of a people exiled and abandoned, crying out for their loss of culture, connection and place. Their pain reflects the continuous experience of displaced peoples – whether it be the life-threatening journeys of the world’s refugees from hunger and violent conflict, the inheritance of generations of systemic neglect and abuse, or the intervention of sheer bad fortune on hitherto lucky lives. To suggest playing “the glad game” would be inadequate and insensitive. A person who is in dire distress cringes at light-hearted ‘cheer-me-ups’ from the village optimist. At least, allowing oneself to enter the fullness of despair is to engage the honest parlousness of the situation. Sometimes optimism is simply another word for denial.

Isaiah allows us to enter and meditate fully on the archetypal experience of feeling abandoned and adrift. However, he does not leave us there. His whole work is predicated on hope. Hope is different from optimism. It allows full expression and ventilation of that which is wrong; it scrabbles through the rubble to find something that is foundational upon which meaning can be built, and uses this as a means of planning and constructing a way forward.

This is a different process than the one used in Pollyanna’s “glad game.” It is radical surgery of the collective and individual soul. Yesterday my congregation presented the results of some fund raising to Fresh Start, a Perth based drug rehabilitation program pioneered by Dr George O’Neil. Thousands of clients from around the world have successfully found help and hope through the holistic approach of  a program of physical relief, residential accommodation, community support, and spiritual conversation.

I point to Fresh Start as a living sign of hope in our midst. And I am sure Pollyanna would approve!

Creating Communities of Compassion and Hope

13 Friday May 2011

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From a previous church camp at Landsdale Farm School

Our church is in camp this weekend. It’s our annual pilgrimage to Landsdale Farm School, a state education department residential facility about 20 minutes from home. We hang out, eat, converse and have fun. There are lots of animals to keep the kids enthralled and we have a couple of group sessions around a theme – hence the headline, inspired by a TED talk which I blogged on back in February.

We will explore creativity in relation to community, compassion and hope – looking to some of the most overlooked to assist us. We never come back from a church camp feeling we have not gained something in bonding, growth in maturity and understanding, and confidence in being who we are called to be.

“Avagoodweegend!” – ‘cos we’re going to!

Melancholy optimist

02 Monday May 2011

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In early adulthood I was fascinated with the work of Victor Frankl, holocaust survivor and author of “Man’s Search for Meaning” and logotherapy. His psychiatric practice was based on observations of those with whom he was interned in the concentration camps. Given similar opportunities to survive, some succumbed to the horrendous conditions and died of “natural causes” and others (including Frankl) not only survived, but were able to build productive lives from the ashes.

This gave me a foundational understanding of the theological concept of “hope” – not wishful thinking in some naïve Pollyanna universe, but a drive to survive and thrive in spite of dire circumstances. The much maligned Hebrew prophet, Jeremiah is probably the biblical version of Frankl. He was given the unpopular charge of warning Israel that its unjust ways during its economic “boom” time would lead to its downfall. After the nation’s population is invaded and relocated faraway in exile, Jeremiah becomes the tender voice of hope and encouragement.

Has there ever been a time in our collective history where the melancholy optimist has not played a significant role?

Bushfires

09 Monday Feb 2009

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Fire is one of the banes of this country. The nature of our landscape and weather patterns provides an ogoing banquet of fuel for this red marauding beast. Nevertheless, we live with it and many, over time, have died with it. It has ever been in the background of my awareness. As a kid I most enjoyed holidays with family in the Adelaide Hills. You could see the escarpment from our house down on the plain. Scarcely a year went by when you could not be aware of  the smoke on the horizon and we would wonder if the fires were “anywhere near Uncle Ron’s place.” I recall leading a youth camp where fire from an exploding kerosene fridge leveled the kitchen and main hall in five minutes flat. Fate or fortune or providence had us all down at the river at the time. One bushfire we scarcely noticed was the one razing the mountain behind the Ainslie manse the day we brought our infant son home. We were somewhat preoccupied that day. The years we lived in Bridgewater – again in the Adelaide hills – had us well tuned into the fire season with our action plans ready to go if needed. My sister’s place a few ridges away came dangerously close to being burnt out one year. 

The Victorian fires this weekend have a strange “here we go again” feel. Amongst the angst and the despair that is in the air, even on the West Coast that is as far from the fires as you can get on this big island, there is a sense of resignation. You can fight nature, but you can’t master it.  One thing you can do is to tap into the community spirit that rises above the devastation and loss and seeks practical ways to give muscle to hope. Not Pollyanna “everything’s going to turn out alright” hope – but the kind that grants a due and respectful acknowledgemt to the grieving process that must yet unfold, a sifting of memories from which can be extracted the values and inspiration that have survived, and using these as building blocks for a new thing.

We’ve had a lot of experience in this land of doing just that. There’s no reason why it won’t happen again in the months and years ahead for the communities destroyed in the weekend’s fires.