The Narrow Ridge Between

Hope and Disappointment

The Third Sunday of Advent                                                                                                                                    December 12, 2010

Texts: Isaiah 35:1-10; Matthew 11:2-11                                                                                                                The Rev. Dr. Ross M. Wright

            The scriptures appointed for this Sunday reflect two very different human experiences: hope and disappointment. 

Isaiah’s vision of the returning exiles on pilgrimage through the desert is radiant with hope.  We see a large, rag-tag group of people slowly moving through the Arabah, that “dry and forbidding” area south of the Dead Sea.[1]   These people are weary.  They have been walking a long time, and their legs are giving out.  Some are crippled.  Others are blind or deaf; still others suffer from all manner of disabilities.  It looks more like a death march than a pilgrimage.    

Then a voice rings out:  Don’t give up!  Your God is coming!  And suddenly, as they walk, there is a miraculous transformation: blind people regain their sight; cripples throw away their crutches and leap out of wheel chairs; deaf-mutes break into praise of the living God.  As they realize what is happening, they break into a run –singing and shouting; some begin to dance as they run.   

Isaiah’s vision of this miracle in the desert is the text which inspired Charles Wesley’s hymn, O for a thousand tongues to sing my dear redeemer’s praise:

He speaks; and listening to his voice, new life the dead receive,

the mournful broken hearts rejoice, the humble poor believe.

Hear him, ye deaf; ye voiceless ones, your loosened tongues employ;

ye blind, behold, your Savior comes; and leap, ye lame, for joy![2]

It is a beautiful vision of human life restored, with the indignities of sickness and disease removed.  Isaiah’s vision includes not only human life, but the entire created order.  Even the landscape is healed and miraculously transformed.  Out of the dry cracked ground, where previously nothing could grow, there is a riot of wildflowers: crocus, anemone, buttercups, tulips and poppies.  The landscape itself rejoices, joining that great chorus of praise to God. 

            And then, there is John the Baptist’s poignant, haunting question to Jesus: “Are you the one who was to come, or shall we wait for another?”[3]  Can you hear the profound disappointment in that question?  This is John, the preacher extraordinaire, whose fiery sermons stunned the nation.  John, the first person to recognize and publicly identify Jesus as the Messiah.   But that was three years ago. Now, he wastes away in the bowels of Herod’s prison because of his witness to the messianic hope.  Things begin to look different from the inside of a prison cell. 

Even more disappointing is Jesus’ cryptic answer to John:

Go and report to John what you hear and see: the blind regain their sight, and the lame walk.  Lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear.  The dead are raised, and the good news is announced to the poor.

 I wonder how comforting John found those words.  We don’t know.  What we do know is that he never made it out of that prison: shortly after this, he was beheaded.  Apparently, Jesus’ signs and wonders did not include breaking open the prison doors of John’s cell.  What is particularly poignant is that earlier in his ministry, Jesus spoke of his “release to the captives.”[4]  “Can we imagine John’s pain,” one commentator asks, “ in recalling that Jesus has, in [answer to his question] omitted something he said on the occasion of his first homily in Nazareth?  Jesus declared ‘release to the captives’ on that occasion, but on this, he beckons John to consider only the astounding healing of others.”[5]  It is easy to imagine John hearing Jesus’ reply as: There is a Messiah, but not for you – or, at least, not yet.   

So, here we have two texts, side by side – one radiant with hope, the other expressing profound disappointment. What are we to make of this strange juxtaposition?   I for one am glad that both passages are read this morning, because I believe with all my heart that the Christian life includes both hope and disappointment.  Indeed, the Christian life is a walk along the narrow ridge between hope and disappointment. 

We are often told: Don’t get your hopes up – you’ll be disappointed!  But that kind of caution is the wisdom of the world, not the word of God.  No, God gives us hope – the kind of hope that enables us to take the great risk of faith – “the venture of faith,” as Barth liked to call it.  This hope-filled enables us to stake everything – everything! – on Jesus’ claim that he is the way to authentic life.  “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” who has blessed us with “living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”[6] 

And because genuine faith involves risk, there is always the possibility that we will be disappointed.  There is disappointment when we fervently seek God, only to feel that the door has clanged shut and double bolted, like the door of John’s prison.  And then there is the disappointment of waiting for God to bless some venture that has every indication of being in accordance with his will – only to find that he never shows up.  To be sure, much of our disappointment is with ourselves or others rather than with God.  Still, we wouldn’t have been disappointed if God hadn’t gotten our hopes up.  Trust God, and you risk being disappointed.  You can count on it. 

But it also works the other way: disappointment can lead to the renewal of hope.  Often, dashed hopes reveal our foolishness and the extent to which we have placed our hope in what St. Paul calls, “the things that are passing away.”[7]   Here, we begin to see how disappointment is fertile soil for the renewal of hope.  Disappointment detaches our hopes and desires from idols and reattaches them to God, so that we can say with the psalmist: “O Lord, you are my portion and my lot.”[8]  “Whom have I in heaven but you?  And having you, I lack nothing on earth.”   

“Then the eyes of the blind will be opened; then the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.  Then the lame will leap like a stag, and the tongue of the dumb will cry out with joy.”  “Then”?  Well, when?  Is Isaiah describing events in his lifetime, when the exiles returned to rebuild Jerusalem?  Yes, but only partially.  Clearly, this is no ordinary pilgrimage that he is describing.  The miraculous healings and transformed landscape point beyond the events of his day to a future Messianic age, which he could only see and welcome from a distance.  Was his vision fulfilled 800 years later, when Jesus opened the eyes of the blind and lifted the lame man from his pallet?  Yes, but only partially.  Jesus’ signs and wonders signal the inauguration of the Messianic age, but they too, point beyond themselves to his coming kingdom. 

So ultimately, Isaiah’s vision points us to Christ’s second Advent at the end of human time.  It is to this hope beyond hope that his vision points us: hope beyond what we can see or imagine.  Christian hope looks to this future.  It is the divine, defiant Nevertheless! that looks beyond present disappointment and dashed hopes and says: Nevertheless, God . . . !”[9]  It is a Nevertheless that is grounded in what is utterly beyond us or anything we can imagine, because it is grounded in God himself. 

“There is a highway there; where no unclean thing can go; there, the redeemed of the Lord go, there they return with singing unto Zion.”  There is a way in this world – a way from hope to hope; or to be more accurate, from hope, through disappointment, to hope, thorough more disappointment, to hope.  Hope is the last word, because God has the last word, as in our Lord’s promise on the night before he died: “I am going to prepare a place for you.  And I will return and take you to myself, so that where I am, you may be also.”[10]