Blog Layout
Advent Hope
Grace Cramer • Dec 06, 2023
Grace's Reflections on Hope
In 2021, we shared some reflections throughout Advent. We want to make these available on the blog and share them with you! We pray that you are blessed by them as you enter into the waiting of Advent.
We learn only a few things about Zechariah and Elizabeth in the first chapter of Luke. We learn Zechariah is a priest and Elizabeth is shamefully barren. They are also well along in years. But we know “they were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly.”
Disgraced and faithful.
In hope and faithfulness, Zechariah and Elizabeth persisted.
As the story is told, once when Zechariah was serving as priest before God he was chosen by lot—by chance!—to go into the temple to burn incense. And God, through the angel Gabriel, met him there.
“Do not be afraid, Zechariah! Your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord.”
Many of us know how the rest of the story goes. Zechariah questions Gabriel. (I mean do you blame him?) and I imagine Gabriel sighing and shaking his head. “Zechariah man, I am flipping Gabriel the Angel. I stand in the presence of GOD! And He sent me to you to tell you this good news. And you don’t believe me! So now you won’t speak until the day you see I was right.” (My paraphrase.)
Lo and behold, Elizabeth gave birth to a baby boy and Zechariah’s tongue was loosed the minute he wrote the boy’s name, John, on a tablet. And he was immediately filled with the Holy Spirit and praise poured from his lips.
In hope and faithfulness, Zechariah and Elizabeth persisted. And God met their hope through the coming of John.
Advent & Esperanza
Last year during Advent I was introduced to the Spanish words for hope and wait through a comment on an Instagram post. The word for “wait” in Spanish is “espera” and the word for “hope” is “esperanza”. When you put them side by side, the word for wait is written into the word for hope. There is no hope without wait. Waiting is hope in action.
Advent is all about waiting for Christmas. But sometimes our seasons of advent and waiting are long- months, years, decades even. It’s hard to hold on to hope when our advent is dark and we don’t know what day Christmas will come.
None of us are strangers to the fact we have been in a dark season of advent. We are two Christmases in to a global pandemic and all the upheaval the last years have wrought. Our communal grief is great. And for some of us, our personal grief even greater. Whether by death or division, or both, we have all lost much. It’s tempting to lose our hope as well.
Where is our hope to be found then in this “month of endless night?” What is the nature of our hope? Is it rooted in the impending change of our circumstances? Or is it rooted in the sheer confidence in what we know to be true about God, that he will ultimately prove victorious?
Our ultimate act of rebellion in Advent is our hope. Our waiting is our hope in action.
Like Zechariah, and Elizabeth, we may be disgraced, but faithful. And in our faithfulness we persist. We wait. And in our waiting we hope, for our hope is not fulfilled without waiting.
We hope because we have a God who chooses the weak and lowly things of this world to shame the strong. We hope because we have a God who chose an unwed teenage mother (Mary) and a barren old lady (Elizabeth) to bring us good news. We hope because God chose the births of these miraculous, yet helpless babies to remove the shame and disgrace of their mothers. Like Zechariah and Elizabeth, we can be confident that God hears our prayers. And we can be confident because our hope is in a resurrected, victorious Jesus who came to us as a baby.
(And here
is a podcast from Esau McCaulley, which inspired some of this reflection. Blessings!)
Some resources on the Atonement
Some thoughts on why we do things the way we do at RCB.
How do we walk when we feel attacked and alone?
Going through Lent, allowing God to tune our hearts to worship.
An invitation into knowing God's faithfulness through pain.
A review of Christianity and Critical Race Theory
On trying to follow Jesus in a consumerist culture.
Mario's reflections on Lent and privilege.
This is how I remember Lent as a kid: go to mass on Ash Wednesday (I have no memory of any sermon, lol), vow to give up something (that lasted as long as a New Year’s resolution), and eat Long John Silver’s fried fish on Fridays (their hushpuppies and crunchies…mmmm). We didn’t eat meat on Fridays (unless we forgot, but we prayed, so it was ok); it was something everyone in the church did, right? I knew it was leading up to Easter--other than that, I had no real understanding or connection to it. Lent was taught more like an obligation rather than an opportunity. An opportunity to reflect, rejoice, rest, repent (what other “r” words can we think of?) on Christ’s journey to the cross. The next 40 days is an opportunity, an invitation to draw closer to the Giver of Life. For some, this might look sacrificial (giving something up), for others it might be a genesis (starting something new), or it can be a combination of the two. “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, On earth, As it is in heaven” Our Lord doesn’t just teach us to pray, he embodies prayer. He inaugurates God’s kingdom on earth through his presence with us; through his faithful obedience, we get to see and experience heaven on earth. This does not come without temptation, and trials, and wandering astray at times—yet our loving God invites. He invites us to remember, to reengage with the One who creates and holds all things; He invites us to lay down our lives and pick up our crosses. We want to invite you to participate with RCB, as we journey with Christ to Calvary, praying for the strength to be obedient… Your kingdom come, Your will be done, On earth, As it is in heaven.
A book review of Peter Sung's excellent The Post-Church Church.