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Building on a foundation of  hope

Isaiah 11:1-10

December 7, 2025

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If you really think about the history of the Jewish people, it is amazing that we ever heard of the Bible at all. 

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From the time of the conquest of northern Israel by Assyria in 722 BC to the lifetime of some of the people in this room, the Jewish people have struggled off and on under the thumb of one oppressive ruler after another. Any other religious or ethnic group would have disappeared into the pages of history long ago.  

 

The sheer fact that the Jews have not done so is itself an interesting argument for the belief that God has been guiding them all along through both joyous and painful times. A similar thing is true of Christianity in many parts of the world. 

 

For example, when the Communist Party took over China in 1949, they began to severely repress the Christian faith. The Rev. Deng Fucun, who was himself the target of a great deal persecution  during Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution because of his Christian faith, came to believe that the church in China was dying. 

 

The damage done to the church was so great that even when China started to allow churches to reopen in 1979, Deng believed it would be a miracle if there were a million Christians in China 20 years later. Instead, when that date rolled around, Chinese Protestants alone numbered more than ten times that amount. 

 

Thinking about Deng said, “God has always done so much more than I would have expected.” And that reason is why religious people can always find reasons to feel hope regardless of the circumstances they may currently themselves entangled in. 

 

We all know that one of the most egregious and horrifying acts of mass murder was exposed 80 years ago this year when the Nazi regime collapsed at the end of World War II. Millions of people were sent to concentration camps, which doubled as both a source of slave labor and as gruesome death factories. 

 

One of those camps was called Ravensbrück. In that camp as many as 1,100 women were jammed into barracks that were designed to house 240 people. The overcrowding was intentional. As planned, it led to many of the unmates being crushed or suffocated. So even so, Rochelle Saidel writes in her book, In The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück that while they suffered, those women continued to create graphic art, write and perform plays and teach each other scripture. 

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Surprisingly, one of their most popular outlets was to share any recipes they could remember. Saidel writes, “Exhausted, cold, and hungry, they would talk endlessly about the food they longed for, about family meals they had shared, and the dishes they planned to make if they survived the war. 

 

“Rebecca […] a Belgian Jew who was in Ravensbrück for 17 months, even hid away small pieces of paper and an indigo pencil, and set about recording these recipes, so lovingly retold.” Believe it or not, that was an act of great courage because having any kind of paper — even toilet paper — was labeled a crime by the Nazis, one that would be instantly punished by death. 

 

In the face of their starvation and all their other forms of suffering why did those women focus so much on recipes? It was their way of expressing hope that a time would come when the horrors and inhumanity of the present would fade into the past. That hope was not a mere misguided hope, but a firm trust in the ultimate justice of God coming into play. 

 

Dr. Cornel West defines the difference between optimism and hope in these terms:  “Optimism tends to be based on the notion that there’s enough evidence to say it looks pretty good out there, things are gonna be better. Hope looks at the evidence and says, ‘It [doesn’t] look good at all.’ But we’re gonna make a leap of faith, go beyond the evidence, to create new possibilities based on visions that [will] become contagious to allow people to engage in heroic action, always against odds, no guarantee whatsoever. That’s hope.” 

 

Another significant description of hope comes from the late Vaclav Havel, former President of the Czech Republic, who once said this about hope:  “It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not [...] a willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. Hope is […] not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.” 

 

Doesn’t that have a lot to say to us as we journey through the season of Advent? We remember the many long centuries the people of Israel waited for the promised coming of the Messiah, never losing their faith that God would fulfill that promise even when that fulfillment seemed further and further away with every passing decade. Isn’t that faithful anticipation our job now as we await the seemingly endless delay of the Second Coming?

 

Our Old Testament lesson today is a prophecy of the first coming of the Messiah. Isaiah wrote during a time of devastation and shattered dreams. The nation of Judah — the last remaining vestige of God’s Chosen People — had been defeated in war, its leading citizens had been marched hundreds of miles away to the homeland of their enemy and the last king of Davidic dynasty — which God had promised would last forever — had died in exile.

 

The survivors were deeply demoralized and filled with despair. It seemed as if the destruction had been complete and all connection to the past had been permanently severed.

 

Isaiah compares their situation to that of a massive tree that had been felled and carried away by the brute power of a lumberjack, leaving no evidence of its previous existence except an axe-scarred stump. And yet, Isaiah promises that new life will grow out of that stump, which he symbolized by the first feeble shoot of greenery popping out of the apparently dead remains. Isaiah is telling his people — and us — that even when everything seems to be lost and we’ve tumbled into utter darkness, a realistic hope still remains.

 

That's a hard thing to believe in at certain times. When you’ve lost your job or your friends have abandoned you or a loved one is serving halfway around the globe in harm’s way, when injustices abound and peace remains elusive, when you feel that you’re dangling at the very end of your rope, hope may be in short supply.

 

Think of 11-year old Tyesha Edwards, who was sitting in her living room doing her homework in 2002 when a stray bullet from gang members crashed through the wall of her home, crushing her chest and killing her. Or Darrell Bisson, a blind man living in Cass Lake, Minnesota. He was out walking his dog at night when two drunken teenagers decided to beat him to death for no apparent reason. 

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Or the utterly senseless shooting deaths of 20 children and six adult staff members at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Or pick any of the far too many school shootings that have tragically darkened the recent history of our country.  

 

The families of each of these victims have had to struggle with the waste and apparent randomness of the events that struck down their loved ones. At least for a time, hope would probably be the last thing on their minds. But ultimately, hope is the only thing that will give them any comfort — hope for a resurrection, hope for some meaning beyond the tragedy, hope for a healing on the other side of their grief. Perhaps even hope for understanding and forgiveness for those who caused that grief.

 

Fred Kane tells of a lecture on American culture give by the same Cornel West I quoted earlier. In that lecture, West’s “[...] talk covered the landscape from democracy to rap music, from drug addiction in the inner city to wealth addiction in the suburbs; from the false promise of materialism to the plight of the homeless. It was an interesting and provocative talk. However, during the question and answer period, Dr. West was asked about the dismal state of our inner cities; the depressing poverty and especially the plight of our young people of color.

 

“He responded, ‘I am not optimistic, but I am hopeful. We cannot fix these problems tomorrow or next week. But we can make a difference. The future is open, it’s not determined. As a Christian, I am a prisoner of hope, because in Jesus God has taken hold of us and will not let us go, nor will God let us quit. Jesus faced the cross trusting in God’s resurrection power. I am not optimistic, but I am hopeful.’ He said [...] Jesus was a prisoner of hope and he calls us to become prisoners of hope [also].” 

 

In fact, that’s not just good theology, it seems to be hard-wired into our human nature. And isn’t that the real meaning of Advent? No matter how tragic and painful the world around us may become, God will never forget his promises nor abandon his people. God has already planted seeds of blessing that will ultimately bring good, even if that may come out of unexpected places or if the darkness surrounding us may blind us to its slow blossoming. 

 

Many people feel a huge contrast between our culture’s insistence on the joy of the Advent season and the dark despair they feel in their private life. That contrast only serves to deepen their pain at this time of year. For them, this isn’t “the most wonderful time of the year,” but a bleak season that serves to underline the emptiness in their hearts. So where’s the hope for those people? 

 

It’s exactly the same as the message Isaiah gave the people of Israel in their darkest hours as they faced foreign occupation and exile. That is, even when everything seems lost and desperate, genuine hope is possible through trust in God’s promises. That’s the spirit of Advent:  waiting in hope. 

 

The Hebrew word for hope has the root meaning of “to twist” and it’s closely related to the word for a spider web. The image behind those connections are that of God’s hope is twisting around you and clinging to you. It also provides us with the image of incredible strength coming from apparent weakness. 

 

In that regard, Paul Kabo writes, “For the ancient Hebrew, hope implies confidence in something which one knows is going to take place, though it has not yet taken place. […] The contemporary person sees a quantity of doubt in hope, but Isaiah sees a quantity of certainty in hope. 

 

“[…] Advent hope enables you to face every kind of circumstance, while aiming for a more humane society. Biblically inspired hope looks forward to the birth of Christ and [the coming of] the Kingdom of God — where peace, justice and equality prevail.

 

“In a sense, Advent hope is a catalyst for change as God is bringing something new into this world. From the Divine perspective, all our efforts are incomplete in their outcome. Divine hope leads you beyond, never allowing you to be smugly satisfied with past accomplishments. Advent expects you to transcend present short-comings and invites you to participate in a journey guided by God.”

 

Near the beginning of this service today, we lit the candle of hope on the Advent wreath. Allow God to light the candle of hope in your heart, so that you may live forever in the quiet power of hope. Amen.

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by Jim McCrea