A Reason for Hope

 HOMILY, ST. PAUL’S, FOLEY – 1 ADVENT, YEAR B

NOVEMBER 29, 2020 

 

TEXT:                        Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37

 

 

            Jurgen Moltmann was an 18-year-old, reared in a secular society, when he was drafted into the German Army in 1944.  Despite the turn the war had taken against his home country, he was expected to fight for his Fuhrer and his homeland.

 

            His days in combat did not last long.  Soon he was captured by British soldiers and placed in a prison camp in Belgium.  His world had collapsed.  On both sides of the English Channel there was utter destruction.  Coventry in England.  Dresden in Germany.  Countless other sites.  The continent was a smoking ruins.  And soon the war would fully come to Berlin.

 

            Moltmann was moved from prison camp to prison camp.  He was shown pictures of what his people had done at Buchenwald, Auschwitz, and other concentration camps.  He felt near unbearable guilt.  He wished he had died with his comrades in battle.

 

            Then he was transferred to a prison camp, across the channel, in Scotland.  There, he was given a small book containing the New Testament and Psalms.  As he helped the Scots rebuild their bombed cities, he read the book voraciously.  In the midst of the ruins, he began to see light. His eyes were opened anew.

 

            Released and returned home in 1948, he began a prolific academic career.  Out of his despair and the ruination of the continent through war, he wrote a book that is studied to this day.  The name of the book is A Theology of Hope.  In spite of all he had seen, all he had experienced, and all that had transpired around him, he saw the hope of God’s work through a lost and broken world.

 

            The prophet Isaiah lived in a similar world.  The land in which he lived – Israel – was the northern portion of what we call Israel today.  Jerusalem and the nation of Judah were to the south.  But Isaiah’s land was threatened by a nation to the north and east – Assyria.  It would not be long before Assyria would attack and conquer Isaiah’s home country.

 

            This was nearly 800 years before Jesus – much longer in time than between the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World and now.

 

            A prophet is not someone who gazes into a crystal ball and predicts events, a la Nostradamus.  A prophet speaks God’s truth, calls the people back to faithfulness, and points toward God’s ultimate redemption of the world.  That is precisely what Isaiah did.  He pointed toward hope, in the midst of a chaotic world.

 

            Jesus does the same today.  In the gospel lesson, he is living in a puppet state, ruled by a tyrant figure-head king, and oppressed by a Roman army that rules ruthlessly.

 

            Still, like Isaiah, like Jurgen Moltmann, Jesus points toward the coming of God’s kingdom, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

 

            What does that say to us in 2020 – in light of the pandemic, economic upheaval, political tension, and other traumas? What does it say to us in this Advent?

 

            I think you know.