We hope for what we do not see : First Sunday of Advent

Our Scripture today talks about waiting for God’s presence to become visible in the world — looking around for signs of growing goodness, the establishment of truth, an increase in justice. 

Let us listen for the Word of God to us this morning, as I read from Romans 8:18-25.

“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.  For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

“But we hope for what we do not see”

The people of God have always practiced hope through storytelling — as an act of prediction, an act of encouragement. God’s people look backwards to discern the intentions of God for the present and future. We glimpsed this posture of standing and looking in our call to worship, voiced by the prophet Habakkuk.  In fact in all our scripture readings today we see this stretch across the ages. Feet planted on the ground, looking at God’s faithfulness.

The people of God, standing firm in hope, have looked back to the abundance of creation and the assurance of their place in it. They've looked back at the covenant that God established with Abraham, the one he renewed with Isaac and Jacob. They looked back at the long-awaited deliverance God wrought for them — coming out from under the heavy load of enslavement in Egypt. God’s people have held dearly the law and the prophets, listening for God’s ever-living voice, renewing and keeping God’s people. All this looking back was the grand pattern for anticipation when times were dark, full of despair, desperately unclear.  

In this annual Advent season - we too participate in storytelling - we know that we stand on the brink of the familiar story of God’s light breaking in on the darkness of the world through the coming of Christ, God to dwell with us and grace us. 

As we approach the birth of Christ, one week at a time, one flickering candle at a time, the stories we tell are not only reminders to be more patient, or to be more active in good works.  Hope is not sentimental - it knows that we are not always the ones to see the morning dawn. Hope is not an expectation that what I want I am soon to receive. 

No, our hope is a direction, an orientation, not a settled destination. A gritty, keep-going kind of hope.

Our hopes are seeds planted, dormant through the long winter, waiting to unfurl in the spring’s warm sun.

Our hopes are like parables, giving layer after layer of meaning, but never closed, never solved, never dry. 

We wait, not only declaring God’s patterns of justice and belonging— we also wait silently, knowing that the work of God is new, always being birthed, it has yet to be revealed to us.

And in the waiting, there is not only confidence, but tremendous longing. 

Particularly on this Sunday of Hope, we remember what it feels like to be in the yearning.

In our sermon passage, from Romans, the Apostle Paul describes yearning with bodily intensity, with metaphors and references to embodied longing.  Even as he writes in expectation of our own transformation - that the bodies of the earth, of all creation, will experience salvation from decay, because of Jesus’s resurrection and eternal life, even as he expects the ongoing incarnation and transformation of the created world, Paul yearns and groans with frustrated desire. Paul says he has tasted the first fruits of the harvest of the Spirit’s work with us, and it leaves him aching for the fullness to come.

The language here is that of poignant family ties. Paul describes this waiting as the waiting of a pregnant person, a person in labor — caught up in a process that cannot be rushed, though the labor is agony, though the desired outcome would be a source of immense joy. Paul also describes the waiting as a child looking for a home, looking for safety, for a soul-deep sigh of utter relief. 

There are other experiences like this as well: deep, gut-wrenching longings for arrival and alignment - the longings that LGBTQ folks have nurtured and fought for - to love openly and safely. Or the longing our trans siblings have carried - to celebrate a seamless relationship between body, self, and others. I think too, of the longings that our refugee and immigrant siblings may experience - to settle and belong to homeland, with families safe and in tact, not threatened, not restless.

In these bodily experiences of longing we recognize how urgent it is that we pursue and practice justice and love, how much we long, like Paul, for the reign of Christ’s love to become evident here and now. In these examples it is not difficult to hear in our own imaginations, the great groaning of creation that Paul describes. 

And yet, just as a birthing parent does not yet know the face of their child, just as that child will be a whole world in and of themself, the coming of Christ - entering into the world through the church, Christ making all things new when he comes again in glory - we know from the pattern of God’s faithfulness that it will be good, and yet the day and the hour and manner? That - we cannot see – cannot see the how, or the when. 

And so I invite you, invite all of us, to allow the questions and the yearning, to take up full-throated voice in our own lives. Paul did not avoid the deep groans that accompanied his anticipation of the coming reign of God. Let us, in this season, on this day, yearn. Let us yearn for an end to war, for a world in which each child grows up, and lives a full span of years. Let us groan for an end to hunger. Let us grieve as we long for a healthy planet.

The reason we long for better and for more is because of the ground we stand on, the great foundation of our hope: God is with us. God before us, with us now, and still to come. Christ’s presence among us – revealing to us the abiding love of God, the free grace of God, God’s own longing to make and re-make in pursuit of the reconciliation – the wholeness – of all things.

Even as we increase our longing to see the transformation of the world, there is rest. Our knowledge of who God is, what God has done, calls us to rest. We are allowed to lay down our burdens, because the faithfulness we are called too is part of a longer and larger faithfulness, which belongs to many people, and to God.  There is longing — and there is rest. Rest like the stillness of winter. Like a willingness to set a book down in the middle of the story, and pick it up again tomorrow. Satisfied rest, like that of a stranger who has found refuge. After all, God is still coming.

Where do you find yourself this morning? This advent season. Are you embracing the stories of God’s faithfulness? Are you leaning in to active participation in the work of the kingdom? Are you longing for Christ to come into the dry and weary places of the world, of your own life? In any of these stances, still, I encourage you to make room for the work of patient waiting. Just as spring follows winter, morning will follow night, and when it does, the Christ child will be there, ready to take up the growth and work of human life. For now, we rest, knowing that our unseen hopes are safe in the intentions of God.