Hopeful Joy
December 1, 2024 - Isaiah 2: 1-4
These days I wake up in darkness. Most days it is dark when I come home from work. No matter your particular schedule, you’ve probably noticed we are short a few hours of daylight now compared to those long ago bright and sunny July days. The bad news is. There’s nothing any of us can do to change it. We can take Vitamin D drops. We can hang our Christmas lights high. We can dream of sunny beaches. But there is nothing any of us can do to alter the fact that here in the Fox Valley of IL we are approaching the darkest time of the year. Now it’s much worse in countries farther North. I’m told my friend Maria in Denmark will have much less daylight on Christmas Day than we will here. However, do you know what I realized this week in a new way? There are also countries along the equator who never change the amount of daylight they have. In Ethiopia for example, month in month out, they are enjoying 12 hours of daylight! Twelve hours of daylight! Twelve hours! That just doesn’t seem fair.
Of course, there are a host of other things that are unequal in this world. There are things that are unchangeable and things that seem like maybe we could change if we worked together. Sometimes those unequal things move me to experience anger, an emotion that feels a world away from joy or hope. Isaiah sounds rather angry to me in the first chapter of this prophet’s book, which comes just before what we heard read today. He names in vivid detail all the wrongdoings of his people and calls them in no uncertain terms to get right with God.
Anger can arise from the same conditions that foment stress. That is, anger can arise for us any time there is a distance between how things are and how we want them to be. The prophet sounds angry to me as he enumerates the many ways the people have gone wrong, some of which sound specific and obscure. Other misdeeds sound all too familiar indeed and can stir my own sense of anger and injustice. Anger is not necessarily good or bad. It’s just an emotion--a certain type of energy--we all experience. Anger can help us recognize when something is wrong. It’s when we hold on to it, suppress it, or get overcome by it that it begins to do damage.
If we do not want to experience that damage, what are we to do with the distance between the way things are and the way we want them to be? How do we get right with the God who would have us beat our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks? In the beginning of Isaiah chapter 2 we heard today, the prophet paints a beautiful picture of the way things will be one day. The day is surely coming, Isaiah proclaims, when all the nations will stream to God’s house on the Mountain so that we can all live the way we’re made. In that time, God will settle all things fairly. These weapons of war and violence we’ve piled up will be so unneeded and useless that we’ll all agree we’re better off recycling the metal into shovels, hoes, bicycles, and electric-powered tractors.
Okay, I added the bicycle part. But Isaiah’s vision conjures up a picture of the way we all want the world to be. It’s a world where everyone has enough and we all prosper being just the way we are made to be. Isaiah knew things were not all good around him. He saw something coming in the future he could not control. Yet, he trusted in God’s vision of a world made whole and he proclaimed it to his people with hopeful joy.
I love when the trees are in full leaf and the warm breeze blows over the green grass. But that’s not the way it is outside right now. Did you know though that in the winter months trees and other plants are still growing? Quietly, below the surface, those roots are growing deeper. My family learned more about it on a Magic School Bus episode once but there’s a Radiolab episode on it too for podcast fans. With Ms. Frizzle, we learned that in natural wooded areas the roots of trees and fungus can entwine and tangle into a system of sharing food and resources with each other. Advancing technology is beginning to reveal just how sophisticated this extraordinary underground network is. Affectionately termed the “wood-wide-web” by researchers, this network of tiny tubes carries alarms when pests are on the way and shares pest-repelling resources to sustain neighbors amid the attack.
I don’t want to be angry. I don’t want to be stressed. At the same time, I know things aren’t as good as they could be and that I’m often part of the problem. What does it mean to hope in a way that acknowledges we’re not there yet and still somehow leads us to joy? Maybe it has to do with what we mean by hope. Hope is not beating ourselves up for not being better. Hope is not impatient wishing for things to change. Hope is not stressed out anger when things don’t go our way. Hope is confident expectation. Hope is cherishing a desire with anticipation. Hope is a feeling of trust. Where do we rest our hope?
Hope is like knowing you are upheld by a wood-wide-web, so that no matter the season, you can trust your deep roots will find the nourishment you need. Hope is like knowing that happiness is a fleeting emotion that will come and go but joy is a deep abiding source of sustenance that will hold you strong and keep you well even when all is not as you wish it would be. Hope is like knowing that we don’t have to choose between accepting the way things are for right now and joining the work of bringing about all the good that could be.
When we rest our hope in God we can have both. When we rest our hope in God we light a candle for God’s deep abiding shalom to come on earth. When we rest our hope in God we can trust that no matter how bleak the season, those days are surely coming.
Maybe your Christmas isn’t all you want it to be…
For with God we don’t have to always get it right. With God we can shift our focus from perfection to genuineness, vulnerability, and compassion.
With God we can recognize anger and stress more easily when they arise and let them go transform into compost for the fertile growth to come. For the light of God Isaiah invites us to walk in is available to us now, was born two thousand years ago in a manger bed, and will hold us strong no matter what the seasons bring until all is made well, whole, and holy.
So, come thou long expected Jesus. We await your birth in our hearts and in our world once more with hopeful joy.
May it be so. Amen.
