Advent 1: Hope Jeremiah Style

Hope is a word that is often used – I hope it rains or I hope we find a carpark, or I hope we make it on time. a child might say I hope we have spaghetti for tea.

Sometimes it seems we use the word hope when we mean wish.

““Hope is a feeling of desire and expectation that things will go well in the future”  ^[i], or to “expect with confidence” ^[ii]

Jeremiah is writing while imprisoned. Jeremiah was a prophet; he lived and spoke God’s word even when it made him unpopular.

Jeremiah spoke of the impending doom because of the sins of the people; “unethical economic practices, violating the Sabbath, sacrificing young children”; these actions, and others, hurt not only God’s people, but the land itself. ^[iii]

Jeremiah had predicted the coming destruction and exile, and the King of Judah puts Jeremiah in prison. [iv]

Jeremiah spoke the word of God, both messages of doom and messages of hope. In the midst of turmoil, where leaders were in exile, the people of Jerusalem who were still in the city were running out of food and water and Jeremiah was in prison, he spoke the words of hope we heard this morning.

This is not hope that things will return to how they were.

This is not wishful thinking.

Here Jeremiah anticipates the future messiah, the future saving by the hand of God. He announces what will be.

Jerusalem will hear the laughter of celebration; the land will be productive; the king will rule with justice and people will live in peace.

Hope is not necessarily happiness. Hope is trusting on God’s promises. Putting our faith in what is possible, even when it seems impossible.

A little earlier in the book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah buys a field. Who buys land when you are about to be overthrown by a neighbouring empire? [v]

Jeremiah did not speak of hope, he lived in hope and acted on that hope.

I have a story book now – A Child’s Garden: A Story of Hope.

The theme of advent 1 is hope. I wonder how hopeful the people effected by the ongoing drought are. I wonder how hopeful the people who have lost homes and animals and livelihoods and loved ones in the bushfires are feeling this advent.

In Advent we wait, with the people of Israel who waited, who yearned for a different future.

In Advent we wait, not just for the birth of the baby Jesus, though that is important, but we also wait for the coming of Jesus, day after day;

that our living may more closely resemble the life of Jesus

that we may see the signs of the kingdom, the green shoots of new life that grow in the midst of despair and turmoil.

And just as the boy in the story watered, protected and cared for the green shoots, we need to not only wait for a new future, but to actively work towards God’s promised future.

“In Advent, the church proclaims an alternative reality that grows out of confidence in God’s righteousness. The promise of God’s righteousness both convicts and makes new. Advent invites us to name the places in our lives and society that are at odds with the divine vision of justice and righteousness. There may be a wide gap between what is and what we wish were so. And yet the promise of Advent is that the Lord is our righteousness. This promise allows us to proclaim an alternative reality in which all things will be made new.” [vi]

This advent, what will you do in the waiting?

The waiting for God’s Kingdom – a kingdom of love, forgiveness, reconciliation over self-preservation. [vii]

“Advent is not about what God will do in spite of us
 or about waiting to be saved,
but about what God will do through us and
within us to save the world.”[viii]

How will you be like Jeremiah, not only speaking hope, but actively living into the hope we have in God.

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[i] https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/hope

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope

[iii] https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4219

[iv] https://www.monasticpastor.com/2019/11/good-days-coming.html?fbclid=IwAR1umvrv8R9WP3g1teQ_JewzkYPKAlwl211n3n_zuMQoZtARKyEpMTshZfY

[v] Kathryn M. Schifferdecker | 2 Comments

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=448

[vi] Anne Stewart | 1 Comme

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2693

[vii] https://www.pulpitfiction.com/narrative-notes/2-13?fbclid=IwAR1QH7lJisqwgp-zLesFdLkmIbjgf4INYanBJPJp73ecsn6fgI_9aUuB9K8

[viii] https://www.pulpitfiction.com/narrative-notes/2-13?fbclid=IwAR1QH7lJisqwgp-zLesFdLkmIbjgf4INYanBJPJp73ecsn6fgI_9aUuB9K8

you are dust

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

this is from the Ash Wednesday service, as the ashes are marked on your forehead, one of the options to say is:

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

The reading we have just heard is the second story of creation, though it is likely that it originates during the time of King David, and the version found in Genesis one, originates later, during the exile.

These stories tell us a lot about what was happening in the life of the people, they were not written to be scientific explanation of the beginnings of the world and people.

Does your family have origin stories, how you came to live in a particular place, or in a particular country? Or stories about a close shave that almost wiped out the family, or lost fortunes.

These are origin stories that speak into the life of the people of Israel, they speak of the creativity of God, the orderliness of God, the place of people in creation and the responsibility given to people to care for the creation.

“The Lord God took a handful of soil and made a man.”

Unlike Genesis 1, where God speaks creation into being, here, God makes people from dirt. In my mind I see God making mud pies. I thought of bringing clay or play doh this morning and you could all make a person. “God breathed life into the man, and the man started breathing”

This reminds me of the valley of the dry bones in Ezekiel.

But we are not God, even if we made a person from clay, we are not able to breathe life into it to make it live.

God sculptured the dirt of the ground and formed a person. In the Hebrew there is a word play, Adam from Adamah – or earthling from the earth.

And God placed the person in a beautiful garden.

Then, God realises that it isn’t good for the earthling to live alone.

I wonder why?

Then we hear how God created animals and birds from the dirt and had the person name them. Naming the animals made the person a partner in the creation process.

In summary, God made a person out of dust, put him in a garden, looked for a companion in the animals and birds, and we know that then God a partner for the person, one person became two people.

I am not a Hebrew scholar, but I am told that the word Adam is grammatically male, but that does not imply that Adam was male. It isn’t as obvious in English, as our words for ‘a’ and ‘the’ are gender neutral. In some languages, the words for ‘a’ and ‘the’ are different depending on the gender of the word. For example, in German the word for Friday is masculine, and the words for trees are generally female, which means different words for ‘a’ and ‘the’. In Hebrew the word for person, Adam, is male.

Then when the person becomes two people, different Hebrew words are used ‘ish and ishah’ – man and woman.[i]

One thing that I am guessing you are waiting for me to talk about are the trees, the two special trees in the middle of the garden.

 ‘One of the trees gave life—the other gave the power to know the difference between right and wrong.’ And we know that the people did eat from the tree they were told not to eat from. When i was thinking about this passage this week, i wondered what God expected. Have you ever told a child not to eat another lolly or biscuit? What do they immediately want to do?

What did God expect, as soon as you say – you cannot, don’t even think about it, what do you do?!

In this story, God made people to tend the garden, to be gardeners, but they decided they wanted to be gods rather than earthlings.[ii]  

What happens when we decide we know better than God?

This story reminds me of to whom we are accountable. We are accountable to God for the state of the garden we were made to tend; as humans we are part of the ecosystem that encompasses all that God made. As we have become more mechanised and modernised, life expectancies, health and education have all improved. But with these advances it seems we have forgotten, that we too are creatures not gods. The earth is not an infinite resource for us to plunder. In this version of the creation story, the earth is a beautiful garden which we are to tend and care for.

with plastic in our oceans, and silt in our rivers

with fires in the Amazon and rising sea levels

we have not tended the garden well.

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

I think sometimes the biggest issues of our times come from us not wanting to recognise that we are part of nature. When we try and separate ourselves, and our future, from that of the plants and animals, we damage ourselves as well as the rest of creation.

When we forget that God created us to live in community; to work together and to care for each other; it is easy for people to be overlooked and isolated.

What do we need to live?

………………

Two songs came to mind as I was pondering this passage, one is a Bob Dylan song: Man gave names to all the animals; and we are not hearing that one today.

and the other is Beautiful things by Grungor.

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[i] https://www.stevethomason.net/2019/09/06/a-cartoonists-guide-to-genesis-218-25/?fbclid=IwAR2c8QMQ7MpZNFT6EPy7TWHSs250kHy2kGTCPvEz2riFLbk0ND0xEze7VaI

[ii] https://robertwilliamsonjr.com/reading-eden-time-ecological-crisis-genesis-2-4b-