Signs of Hope

Luke 21:25-36

Advent 1, December 1, 2024

Holy Trinity Cathedral

“Signs of Hope”

Some people, I am told, choose to live in Hope.  It’s a pretty town, located at the meeting of the Coquihalla and Fraser rivers at the far end of the Fraser Valley.  For thousands of year it has been a gathering place for the Sto:lo First Nations, long before smallpox and settlers shaped it as the Fort Hope trading post for the Hudson’s Bay Company.  Going beyond Hope was dangerous territory.  Up one canyon lay the treacherous waters of Hell’s Gate.  East and North were mountain passes before one achieved Merritt.  Many died in the attempts to lay railways or engineer roads.  To go beyond Hope is still dangerous, especially in the winter.  The road signs warn drivers to chain up and obey speed limits, but every year lives are lost when they are ignored.  When the road is closed due to snow, ice, or floods, it is a good idea to get a cup of coffee at the Blue Moose Café and be patient. 

Jesus is telling us to read the signs and be patient when the world gets dangerous.  Although there is a danger of only seeing the downside of events around us, there is a bright note in today’s Scriptures.  As followers of the Christian way, we are invited to live in hope: not literally in the town but in the attitude.  Hope is holding onto the vision of what is intended to be rather than what is right now.  It is believing that as something is ending, something new is beginning.  There is a great reveal taking place, if we pay attention.

It's not easy when there are bad things happening around us.  That was just as true in the time of Jesus’ first disciples as it is for us today.  The Lord holds up familiar memes of “bad omens”.  Signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars.  The oceans will be agitated and even the heavens will shake.  All the nations will be anxious- and it’s hard not to buy into a sense of futility.  Jesus warns that God is not planning to fix what is broken and return the world to some previous state.  But there is a promise: redemption is drawing near.  It is close, not just in time or place, but in the person of Christ.  We can live in the “not yet” because we trust the one who will bring about the kingdom’s completion.

Amongst the big signs that Jesus mentions is one that is perhaps not as familiar to us people here in the Fraser Valley’s alluvial plain we call the Lower Mainland.  Who here has a fig tree?  These grow best in the Mediterranean, not in temperate rainforests.  Still, the determined gardener can still get a harvest.  I leave most of the gardening to my husband, but here is what I know about my fig tree.  It looks like a stick in the winter.  Then that stick gets bumps on its branches, which are the beginning of the fruiting bodies.  In the late spring, the leaves start coming long after other fruit trees.  They protect the continuing development of the figs with shade.  Then things happen fast.  One sunny day the figs are as hard as rocks.  The next they are ripe- and if I don’t pick them quickly, they go rotten or get pecked by birds almost overnight.  It demands patience and attention and then quick action.  Jesus uses an example of the fig tree to remind his listeners of paying attention to the signs of the kingdom around us.  They are what lead us to hope. 

If we dwell on the negative, it is easy to fall into the trap of anxiety and despair.  When we don’t see a difference immediately through what we do, the temptation is to give up.  But what if God is using us to shake up the present so that the future can take hold?  We are told to keep praying for strength so that we don’t fall prey to those things that we use to numb us from fear and foreboding.  If I have a particularly stressful day, it’s an escape to play a couple of word games on my tablet.  But if I spent all day hiding from the other things that need my part in ministry, it would be difficult to justify my time to you, let along to God. 

The best way to keep attuned to what is taking place for me is to look and listen for the signs of God’s transforming action at work.  This is exactly what St. Paul encourages the apostle Timothy to do in his letter to the Thessalonian house church.  Turn forward the about twenty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus.  It is the oldest book in the New Testament, even before the gospel of Luke was written.  And yet, here is Timothy being reminded to live out his baptismal calling as an agent of the kingdom.  Let all of us here take these words to heart: “may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you.  And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints” (1 Thess. 3:12-13). 

There will be a day when the signs of the kingdom will lead us before the throne of God.  The final judgment will not be whether we succeeded in every trial and tribulation.  Nor will it be whether we are blameless or found wanting.  We pray not be led into temptation but to be delivered from evil.  The measure of our hope is not in our own merit but in Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the true sign to the kingdom. He came as the incarnate One to meet us here on earth.  And as the Son of Man, the new Adam that reconciles all things, he returns to meet us in our journey to the kingdom.  Hope is not just a place, or a time in the future.  We live in hope now as we live into God’s advent. Amen.