Hope is Alive - An Advent Meditation

Did you know that there was a time when people around here thought of Clinton as a Christmas city? I learned this from a facebook group called Old Clinton Pictures. They posted an album of old scenes of the downtown all lit up. Von Maur and JC Penney were booming. Old cars parked on the streets with the parking meters just barely visible above mounds of white snow. 

Some of you have living memories of coming to downtown Clinton during Christmas when there were still department stores. People say it was like a wonderful life or a Christmas story. 

There’s a bitterness to those memories now, because of how far we’ve fallen. The old streets and buildings are still there. But they pale in comparison to their former glory. As one writer puts it, they send out echoes of a failed delight. Looking at those old pictures reminds us of a time when things seemed more wholesome, more family oriented, when the community was stable and times were good. 

Part of living in Clinton means living in the shadow of some older gloom. In this place there seems to be a record spinning some sad song reminding us that we have lost something. There is an inescapable sense of grief over what used to be. As the singer songwriter Noah Gundersen put, “this city was built on the back of a spirit that I can’t feel anymore.”

This mood. This condition. This malaise is what happens when a person lives in what the Bible calls a state of exile. And a person Living in Exile is prone to lose hope. 

Exile is a state of homelessness. A person living in exile is in a condition of separation and grief over the loss of a fuller and richer life. Think of a character from a Bruce Springsteen song sitting at the bar talking about the glory days. The exile reaches into their memories and longs backward in search of a home that is no more. The melancholy cloud of nostalgia follows the exile wherever they go.

The exile also longs forward for home. Deep in our guts we long for a return to our true far of home. We long like the sea sick elf Legolas in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings who cried, “The sea! Alas! I have not yet beheld it. But deep in the hearts of all my kindred lies the sea-longing, which is perilous to stir.” We long for our homes like the prophet Jeremiah who wrote, “Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored! Renew our days of old…” (Lam 5:21).

So the exile possesses a double longing. Both a nostalgic longing backwards and an aspirational longing forward to return to a place called home.

It’s not just Clintonians who feel the dread of exile. All people are born into spiritual exile. All humans have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God as the Bible says. All humans live in the aftermath of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from their Garden home. Since Adam and Eve were separated from Eden, the human race has wandered this earth in exile, longing to return to a home that has been lost.

What is that home? That home is first and foremost a Reconciled relationship with God. As the Psalmist wrote, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations” (Ps 90:1). God is our home. And therefore we will never return to a place of wholeness until we are reconciled to a right and personal relationship with God our creator. 

But in another sense, even those who have faith in Jesus are still exiles. Because we have not yet arrived at our final eternal home. We live in a cursed world. Things wither and die. Families break apart. 2x4’s rot. Concrete returns to dust. Iron rusts. Neighborhoods, cities and nations rise and fall. We have not yet arrived at our stable forever home. Our forever home will only be brought to us in the New Creation when Jesus returns for the second time. 

So one way or another we all live In the inescapable condition of Exile. and therefore all of us one way or another struggle with hope.

It is the struggle for hope that makes exile so difficult. But hope is exactly what Jesus brings. That's exactly what this time of year is meant to highlight. Advent, Christmas, the New Year's,  these traditions only have meaning because they point us to the person of Jesus who gives us hope.

The Bible is a story written for hopeless exiles. And the main problem, the main dragon, the thing keeping us on the edge of our seats is this: How will we ever get back home? The answer: Follow Jesus on the long adventure of faith. Jesus will lead you to your destination.

The season of advent is a perfect time for exiles to reflect on and long for the eternal home that we have been separated from. Advent is a season the church has traditionally observed as a time of waiting and expectation. The purpose of advent is to focus our deepest longings and expectations on the coming of Jesus. Because when he comes he will bring us home. 

But the Christian does not hope for the second coming of Jesus like a child hopes for presents. When a child says ‘I hope I get that for Christmas,’ he is expressing wishful thinking. Christian hope is not wishful thinking. Rather, Christian hope is anchored in the promise of God. God the Father promises a forever home. Jesus Christ unites us to this forever home by his death and resurrection. And we have access to claim the promise of God to unite us to our forever home through the work of Christ by faith.

This is what the apostle Peter communicated to the early church who struggled in a state of exile. He wrote to them that they were “born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (1 Pt 1:3-4).

What God does when he makes someone born again is change their destiny. Instead of a person living in the grief of exile, where their best days are in the past, a born again person has their best days ahead. God takes the old man of our soul, who’s bitter about all the glory days of Clinton gone by, and immediately makes him a young boy, and premises that in the future there will be a Christmas city where he will live forever that will be better than anything he could ever imagine. 

The Gospel of Jesus makes us alive with hope. And yet we cling to dead hopes.

A dead hope is hoping that JC PEnny will return to the main floor of the wilson building and that our great grandparents will return to take us shopping for red ryder bb guns and homemade candy. Yesterday’s visions of the good life are dead. They are gone and not going to come back. 

But the hope of the CHristian is alive because Jesus is alive. Grandma and grandpa’s generation is not coming back. But Jesus is. And this is what this advent season is all about. Despite what the commercials say this is not the holidays. It is Christmas. And it is Christ that makes this season come alive with hope. 

Hope means the future is good and the future is secure. The resurrection proves and secures our future hope.

Our future hope is what Peter calls our inheritance. There is a storehouse of gifts God is holding for you in safe keeping. One of those gifts is your forever home.

In the Bible the promised inheritance is described as the promised land, a stable home that flourishes. Our forever inheritance is described as the New Jerusalem, a city that is like the Garden of Eden but better. Our forever home is a real city, with real people, with real bodies, on God’s real earth. Your inheritance that Peter is speaking of is your destiny to live in the new creation. 

This is a city so utterly unlike Clinton, yet the memory of old Clinton faintly points to it. The City we are destined for does not dim with the passage of time. It does not flounder when industry changes. It does not wax or wane in its glory. It does not fall into complacency, apathy, or disrepair. It cannot be squandered by the mismanagement of city leaders. Because it’s leader is King Jesus forever. The city of God will be unblemished forever. It will be forever pristine because GOd is keeping it for you.

Peter writes that “by God’s power [your inheritance is] being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 

There is no threat to your future. Not when the power of God is keeping it safe. 

And to prove it to you, to give you assurance that you will receive what God has promised, God has made his home in you first. By faith in Jesus God first makes his home in you before he leads you to the eternal home in the New Creation.

Ephesians 1:13–14

[13] In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, [14] who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. (ESV)

Think of it this way. You hear news announced by the King that there is a perfect city. You hear this news and respond in faith. So you trust in this news and head on toward this better city. You leave the city you are in. God doesn’t just wait for you in the new city. He sends his spirit like a porter or a guide to help you on your journey. So that you MAKE IT. Your eternal destiny is preserved by God through your faith. 

So even though your New City Home will not be revealed until Jesus returns a second time, we don’t hope alone. We hope with the Spirit of the resurrected Jesus living inside us. And therefore, our hope is alive and well.