Hope in the Waiting | 11/30/25
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What does “waiting for something that already happened” mean to you in the context of Advent? How does this reframe the way you approach the season?
The sermon described “prolepsis” as imagining the future so vividly that it shapes our present. When have you used imagination or future hope to get through a difficult time?
The story of Suzanne Spaak invites us to consider the cost of acting on our hope. What risks—large or small—might God be asking you to take for the sake of someone else’s future?
What parts of Isaiah’s vision (joy, celebration, unity, justice, peace) feel especially compelling or challenging to you this year?
Think of one concrete act of hope-carrying you could take this week. How might it bring light or peace to someone else?
Transcript:
You know, the season of Advent has always been just a little bit puzzling to me, from the time I first started coming to church. Because, you see, we are counting down the weeks toward Christmas, and we're anticipating the arrival of baby Jesus, who made his appearance in our world over two thousand years ago. And my question has always been: How on earth do we wait for something that already happened a really, really, really long time ago?
Many of us already know the story of Jesus. We have been in churches for a very long time, or even if we are new to church, we've heard a little something about baby Jesus through the grapevine. Are we supposed to pretend like we don't know the end of the story? Or maybe, are we supposed to act surprised when Mary finds out there is no more room in the inn?
Magrey deVega, in his book Awaiting the Already, has helped me reframe this thought about the season of Advent. He said, “Advent is not a time of pretending that Jesus has never been born; it is a time of preparing for what that birth might mean for us today.” So friends, what does it mean for us to carry the hope of Christ's birth in a world that seems to be more chaotic with each passing day?
For the season of Advent, we turn to the prophets, whose job description was to carry a word of hope from God to God’s people in some of the darkest moments of their shared history. One of the most popular prophecies that we hear time and time again during the season of Advent is Isaiah chapter nine. The temptation for us in hearing these words is to immediately picture baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
This morning, I invite you to set Jesus aside for just a moment. That way, we can hear these prophetic words in their original context. Because in and of itself, Isaiah’s words brought a hope that we, on this side of the biblical narrative, need to hear. We have something to learn from the hope that Isaiah shared.
So, to set up the context for you just a little bit, I want to give you a bit of information. Picture this: It is around the year 735 BCE, and we are Jews who are living in Judah. The kingdom of Israel that was once united under the great King David, has been torn into two separate kingdoms. To the north is Israel, and to the south is Judah. This is where we are. It has been a really, really long time since unity or stability were a part of our everyday reality. At this point, they were simply stories told at the foot of grandma's rocking chair of a time when all was really good.
Every day, we live with this deep-seated fear and anxiety of the powerful Assyrian Empire, which was threatening to invade the land and deport all of the Jews who were living there, just as they had done in Galilee to the north. Fathers tended the fields and their flocks with their eyes and ears open for the sounds of looming oppression, with evacuation plans ready to rush their kids to safety. It is there, it is then, that the prophet speaks a word of hope:
Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past, he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future, he will honor Galilee of the nations by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan.
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned. You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as warriors rejoice when dividing the plunder. For as in the day of Midian’s defeat, you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of the oppressor. Every warrior’s boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire.
For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
This is the word of God for us, the people of God — and we say, “Thanks be to God.”
Thank you, Jade. Will you pray with me?
O sovereign God of the prophets and God of us now, by your Spirit, speak a word of hope into our hearts and lives this morning. That by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, our hearts and minds will be shaped by who you are, by who Christ is. That we might take a breath of fresh air. It’s in Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
And like a breath of fresh air, the prophet's words bring a glimmer of hope into the darkness of looming occupation. The prophet's words exchange the reality of scarcity and anxiety with the possibility of a harvest and rejoicing. The prophet’s words replace the fearful reality of masked soldiers and violent raids with images of oppression being lifted and security being restored once again.
The prophet’s words transform the darkness of that present moment into the light of a future marked by peace, justice, and tranquility. These words, these images of a future, were inaugurated with a birth announcement of a son from the line of the great King David. Historians are not sure whether Isaiah intended that leader to be who we know Jesus to be, or Hezekiah, who was the next leader for Judah. But what we do know is that future vision Isaiah brings sparks a hope that plants its roots deep into the fabric of communal worship for God’s people.
Similar images of hope and joy show up in communal prayers and songs, and the stories that were told to small children, because they needed some good news to cling to. They needed a light to guide their way through the terror of darkness they were experiencing in that moment. So, they rehearsed what this vision of hope looks like in their everyday lives. Through their language, they imagined—over and over again—joy, celebration, hope, justice, and peace, like a slideshow of images anchoring them, fixing their hearts and minds to the glimmer of light that is far at the end of the tunnel.
It’s the practice that Magrey deVega, in that book Awaiting the Already, calls prolepsis. Prolepsis is a vivid type of anticipation—experiencing the present reality that we expect in the future. What the Israelites were doing through the prophet’s words was vividly imagining; they were anticipating the future that had yet to be realized.
Did you know that we do this too? As we fret over final exams, we allow ourselves just a brief moment to picture what it will look like as we walk across the stage to receive that hard-earned diploma. As we pluck away at another email or grade another assignment or annotate another chart, we whisk ourselves to Christmas break and to the mountains that form in our minds. As we await the results of our latest scans, we cling to the sound of the bell that is crystal clear in our ears. As we hear of yet another act of gun violence or face the barrage of harmful, divisive rhetoric from our leaders and our neighbors alike, we long for a time where peace will reign, and all violence will end. And as we near the end of our lives, we find hope in imagining what heaven will look like—the reunions that will take place beyond those pearly gates, those green pastures, and that wide banquet table that Christ invites us all to.
So we, like the Israelites, root our hope in the future, rehearsing in our minds again and again what that future will look like. And as people of faith from the Christian tradition on this side of history, that future vision is informed by the incarnation. For unto us a child was born, and that child lived into the description that Isaiah described in this vision in a way that no one anticipated.
As people of this faith, we rehearse what we believe our future looks like every time we say, “Welcome home; it’s great to be home”. Every time we pray, “On earth as it is in heaven,” or every time we take communion and we say that we will be one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world, until Christ comes again and we feast at the heavenly banquet table.
And that hope, we rehearse, week in and week out, is rooted in those images that look very near to the images Isaiah was describing in our Scripture this morning—images of joy, of celebration, of unity. So what does it look like to carry out this vision of hope when it still feels like we are probing our way through the dark?
When I think of a bright light shining in the darkness, I often think of the courageous witness of the activists who spoke and acted out against the powerful and seemingly impenetrable Third Reich. One of those was Suzanne Spaak. Suzanne was a Belgian mother of two young children living in Paris with her husband at the time that Nazi Germany came to occupy France.
She found that her greatest joy in life was raising her children. She had this vision of what she wanted for her children's lives—the experiences of play they would have, what they would learn day in and day out, how they would play with others in their neighborhood, and build those relationships. Then, she heard of the experiences of Jewish children: the fear they held, the tragedy that they were experiencing every day at the thought of being torn away from their families, the starvation, and the eventual death.
She could no longer turn a blind eye to those atrocities and focus solely on raising her own children the way she had hoped. So, in 1943, when the details of a mass deportation of Jewish children became known, she joined forces with an operation that was started by a couple of pastors to help smuggle roughly sixty Jewish children to safety. She provided them with anything that she could offer—much-needed supplies, clothing, and food. She even opened her own home to a couple of the children to await other families and homes to send them to for greater safety.
In October 1943, she was arrested by the Gestapo, and a little less than a year later, just before the end of the war, she was murdered. Her story was shared shortly after her death by B. Aronson, a fellow activist, in a Yiddish newspaper. In that newspaper, he wrote this about Spaak: “She belonged to those idealists who jettisoned their private lives, personal wishes, and material concerns as soon as a great ideal enters their hearts.”
Because, you see, when you have a vision for what the world and the future should look like, and you rehearse it over and over again in your mind and in your heart, that vision begins to shape your decisions. So Suzanne knew that everyone—that every child—deserved a future like the one she was cultivating for her own children. And she let that vision guide her actions in a way that made a significant impact on the future of those children, even though it meant that she sacrificed her own future in the process.
Suzanne carried hope for those children. Suzanne showed us what it looks like to carry hope. And in doing so, she participated in bringing about God’s kingdom on earth as it looks in heaven.
This is what it means to prepare, to anticipate, to carry the hope of Christ’s birth in our world right here and right now. It’s allowing our Christ-informed vision of what the future looks like—a vision of peace and justice—to influence and shape the way that we live and move and have our being in our community. It’s allowing that vision to transform our hearts so that we might actively participate in the glimmer of hope that is already present in our everyday lives.
It’s a hope that moves us. It moves us to purchase gifts year after year for Guardian ad Litem, for children in our community who might not have Christmas without our gifts. It’s a hope that moves us to join a new group you never would have thought of joining, like The Banquet, which is our disability ministry here at Trinity that meets once a month, has dinner together, and listens to stories of people who live day in and day out with disabilities.
It’s a hope that moves us to offer the gift of presence to someone who will be spending their first Christmas and holiday season alone without their spouse. It’s a hope that moves us to step into a new type of service with the unhoused, who will be facing the bitter cold this winter. It is a hope that moves us to do something new, whatever that something looks like, to meet the rising needs of people in our community. That is what carrying hope looks like.
It is a hope that moves us to participate in what God is already doing: to bring light to the darkness, to bring joy out of fear, and to bring peace out of the present chaos. This is Advent. This is what it means to carry hope. Friends, you are the light of the world. You are the light of the world. Jesus said so. So go out, and carry that hope, that light, with you, to all of the spaces you abide this season.
Go, in the name of Jesus Christ.
