“Keeping Hope Alive” (Advent 1, 2015)
Readings: Jeremiah 33.14-16 and Luke 21.25-36
In a novel called ‘The Cellist of Sarajevo’, the author, Steven Galloway,
tells the story of how, during the Bosnian war, with most of Sarajevo
including its famous Concert Hall in ruins, the principal cellist of the
Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra, plays Albinoni’s adagio on the sniperridden streets
Not that it matters but he is described as ‘a tall man with turbulent black
hair, and almost comic moustache, wearing a dusty tuxedo, carrying a
cello under one arm and a stool under the other.’ There, in the middle of
the rubble - strewn streets, he sits down and positions the instrument
between his legs, and starts to plays, oblivious of the danger he’s putting
himself in.
People ask why he does it? What could he possibly hope to achieve by
playing music in the streets in a war zone? It wouldn’t bring anybody
back from the dead, it wouldn’t feed anyone or quench their thirst, it
wouldn’t replace one building of the destroyed city.
But he did it because in 1945, an Italian musicologist, found just 4 bars
of a sonata’s bass line in the remnants of the firebombed Dresden Music
Library, notes he believed were the work of the 17th century Venetian
composer Tomaso Albinoni, and for the next 12 years he reconstructed
‘Albinoni’s Adagio’ as it became known from the charred manuscript
fragment.
And it is this contradiction that appealed to the cellist of Sarajevo. That
something could almost be obliterated in the landscape of a ruined city,
and then be reconstructed until it is new and worthwhile, and this ‘gives
him hope.’
This season of Advent is more than anything else a season of ‘hope’ and
both our readings this morning from the Bible speak to us in different
ways about how people – in dire straights – nevertheless kept hope
alive.
In today’s reading from Jeremiah in the Old Testament section of the
bible, we read about a people who are caught up in a war, just like the
people of Sarajevo were in the 1990s in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The city of Jerusalem in the 6th century BC, had been besieged by the
powerful Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, and the prophet, Jeremiah,
predicts that the city of Jerusalem, the holy city itself will fall, that it will
be set on fire, and that ‘the houses will be filled with corpses.’ This, as
can be imagined, was not good the prophetic message the people of
Jerusalem wanted to hear! And so, for his troubles, for being a prophet
and speaking the truth, Jeremiah is thrown into jail. (Later, Jesus was to
say, “This is how the prophets who lived before you were persecuted.”
(Matthew 5.12)
But there, in a prison cell, Jeremiah nevertheless tries to keep hope
alive. He says, against all the odds, with the Babylonians hammering at
the very gates of the city, that the time will come when the city of
Jerusalem will be re-built, the people restored to health, and they will
enjoy ‘abundant security and peace.’ And this will happen because God
will raise up from their midst another king, a new King David, who in
times past was, if not the greatest, certainly the most powerful of the
kings of Israel/Judah. King David whose rule had been blessed with
formidable political and military power.
“At that time (God says) I will choose as king a righteous descendant of
David… The people of Judah and of Jerusalem will be rescued and live
in safety.” Jeremiah 33.14-16
A new king so powerful and commanding such military might that by
force Israel’s enemies would be defeated and the walls that had been
torn down would be rebuilt unopposed. And so it was that for 600 years
that one thought, the coming of a second King David, kept the people of
Israel’s hope alive.
And then it happened. One there was whom people said was the new
‘anointed king’ of Israel or the ‘Messiah’ by any other name. For three
years – maybe more maybe less – this messiah, this descendant of David
went about doing good, healing the sick, counseling those who came to
him, teaching and preaching about what he called the Kingdom of God.
But he never defeated Israel’s enemies with the sword. He never re-built
the city’s walls. He didn’t bully and brag. He didn’t act like a king. And
because he didn’t live up to people’s expectations of the new King
David, because he criticized Israel’s leaders, because he refused to put
up any kind of fight – in the end he was put to death.
So let me ask you this. Living as we do in a war torn and terrorist fuelled
world, with the shooting dead of people in Paris very much to the fore,
in what direction does people’s hopes lie today?
Does our hope for the future depend and rest on a political process that
will form a coalition of nation states that together and using every
weapon of war at our disposal defeat the caliphate in Syria and the
terrorist group known variously as ‘Isis’, ‘Isol’ and ‘Daesh’, a breeding
ground for terrorist attacks world-wide… or does our hope for a more
peaceful and secure future lie in a somewhat different direction?
And, certainly, from the Christian point of view, to defend Great Britain
from our foes – whoever they might be, real or imagined - and by using
every violent means at our disposal, to put to the sword those who
would threaten our way of life, is you would have to think a very unChrist-like way to go about things. The Christ, that is, who asks his
followers to ‘turn the other cheek’ and ‘to carry the enemy soldier’s
heavy pack an extra mile’, but who at the same time by his words of love
changes his enemies into friends, and who ‘changes our fears to
freedom and helps us to live our lives for others.’ (Matthew 5, 2
Corinthians 5, Galatians 5).
I know that in one way this doesn’t make much sense in the modern
world where - despite 2000 years of Christianity – we have been forced
to fight fire with fire. If they bomb us then, of course, we will bomb
them but with even more bombs! (I think it was actually Adolf Hitler
who first said that in a speech at a Nuremburg Rally during the Second
World War). This, let it be said, goes beyond the old Jewish maxim of “an
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” a course of action that – as
someone once said – can only result in making the whole world both
‘blind’ and ‘toothless’.
As I said last Sunday, on Christ the King Sunday, to attempt to bring
about peace and security in this way from the Christian point of view is
to get the whole thing badly wrong!!!
In recent weeks, we have witnessed those affected by the terrorist
attacks in Paris speaking out often with what someone has described as
‘surprising good grace’ given the harm done to them and so many in
Paris by Kalashnikov touting gunmen.
One young father who had lost his wife in the attack on the Bataclan
Concert Hall, reassured his grieving son who was worried that because
of terrorists they would have to leave their home in Paris, their family
and friends. Seeing the banks of flowers that had been placed ‘in
memoriam’ outside the Concert Hall, the father reassured his son with
the words:
“They might have guns but we have flowers.”
Whether that young Parisian father was a Christian or not his words and
thoughts seem to place him ‘not far from the Kingdom.’
Of course acts of terrorism is one thing but there are other things in the
world that contrive to disturb our sense of peace and security. They are
too many to mention ranging from ill health to unemployment to broken
relationships to homelessness to old age which, as they say, ‘doesn’t
come by itself.’ And all of these things combine to disturb our peace and
security, a veritable Tsunami, as some might describe the assault on our
senses today.
It’s not so long ago we were remembering the Boxing Day Tsunami of
2004 when a wall of water crashed into the villages of Sumatra,
Indonesia, Thailand and India, killing
an estimated 230,000 people.
Luke in today’s gospel says –
“On earth whole countries will be in despair, afraid of the roar of the
sea and the raging tides.” Luke 21.25
For the people of the first Christian Church, the people for whom Luke
was writing his gospel, for a people bruised, battered and beaten by a
wave of persecution it was proving difficult not to despair and yet they
somehow clung to the hope that the Christ who had been crucified but
‘rose from the dead’ – the king who was not a king - would come into
the world a second time and bring about his kingdom of justice and
peace. In fact, they went so far as to say that their present troubles were
a sure sign that Christ’s return was just around the corner.
In this way too hope was kept alive.
Does this hope still resonate with us today – or should we look for
another?
Barclay following John Robinson thinks that the idea of the Second
Coming is a mistake. He points to the fact that Christ comes to us again
and again in and through the work of the Holy Spirit. And he says that
even though we have to abandon the idea of a literal and physical
‘second’ coming of Christ nevertheless a great symbolic truth is
enshrined in the doctrine. The supreme truth, he says in the doctrine of
Christ’s second coming is that …history is going somewhere. That history
is not an aimless journey to ‘nowhere’ but that there is an ultimate
purpose and goal in the universe.
Whether we believe in an actual Second Coming of Christ or not, Christ’s
promised return does not protect us or anyone from an uncertain
present and future. Our lives today rest on ‘a shoogly peg.’ What it does
do, is to give us the promise that we do not need to face life with its
‘slings and arrows of misfortune’ alone. Come hell or high water – and
this seems as good a phrase as any given the gospel reading in Luke for
today– come hell or high water Jesus will be with us in spirit even as
once he was with his disciples in the flesh, granting us courage in the
face of danger and remaining with us even to the point of death and
beyond. “I will be with you always” he says, “to the end of the age.” And
Paul says “Nothing will ever be able to separate us from God’s love in
the person of Christ.” Not danger, not death. (Matthew 28 and Romans
8).
This is the hope that is in us and this is the hope we are asked as Christ’s
followers to keep alive in the world today. In fact Jurgen Moltmann, the
great German theologian and writer of “The Theology of Hope” goes so
far as to say that this is the purpose of the Church in the modern world.
It is why we are here. The church that remains true to Christ’s teaching,
that seeks justice, shows kindness, promotes peace and shares Christ’s
love with others can still be ‘a beacon of hope’ for all sorts of people.
In the end, therefore, as Christians, and as members of Christ’s church,
Jesus is calling us today to not so much look for signs of his coming
– second coming or otherwise - but rather to be signs of his coming.
Jesus is calling us to be a voice proclaiming God’s love louder
than the roaring of the seas and the raging tide. Jesus is calling us
today to shine brightly – sun, moon and stars - as we by our hopefilled life and living show forth the light of Christ in a dark and
dangerous world.