2nd Week of Advent: Hope

"They shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more."
Isaiah 2.4

"They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea."
Isaiah 11.9

Hope is one of the primary themes in the Advent season.

But what is Christian hope? And what, exactly, does the church hope for during Advent? In this post, I'll look at these two questions.

Christian hope is centered on the coming of God's kingdom. The hope of the gospel is all about God's Word going out to minister to all peoples and to all of creation. Thus, when the church hopes, it actively seeks to bring God's redemptive love to bear in the world. When the church hopes, it brings with it the shalom (peace, wellness, welfare, wholeness) of God.

Hope is not static. It does not stand still. Hope is always on the move, envisioning new and imaginative ways to live out the good news of Christ's saving grace in the world.

And as we see in Isaiah chapters 2 and 11, what the church hopes for (and actively anticipates) during Advent is for God's peaceable kingdom to come in all its fullness. We hope for the complete restoration of all creation. Against the odds and against much of the evidence around us, God calls us to hope and to work for justice.

The prophet Isaiah's vision, and indeed the vision of Advent, calls us to foster life, to open up new life-giving opportunities, to cultivate creation in such a way that God's justice and righteousness roll down like an ever-flowing river (Amos 5.24).

In specific, God calls us to transform our weapons of war, aggression, and destruction into implements of cultivation and new creation. The Spirit of God is leading us to take bold steps that move us toward a commitment to the way of Christ - that is, to the way of non-violence, to an economics of care for all people, to the elimination of global poverty, ect...

We do this as we hope and wait for the time of great renewal - the time when God's kingdom will come in all its fullness!

"Living out of messianic hope is therefore different from just waiting passively. It requires that we leave our protective shelters behind and put our future, our prosperity, and if necessary our whole lives in jeopardy for the sake of love, truth, and justice. Indeed, growing into God's story implies growing into a living obedience to the risen Lord" (Hope In Troubled Times, 177).

A concluding thought to ponder:

In 2003 the world spent more than $950 billion on its militaries, with the "the land of the free and home of the brave" contributing nearly 50% of the total.

Thus, world military expenditure in one year is greater than would be required to fulfill the Millennium Development Goals in 11 years (the MDG is an 11 year project designed to cut global poverty in half). If 10% of world military spending, or 20% of US military spending, were diverted yearly, the MDG could be fully funded!

The above information is gleaned from Economists Allied for Arms Reduction, "Military vs. Social Spending: Warfare or Human Wlfare" (2004), l. Go to: http://www.epsusa.org/publications/factsheets/facts.htm.

What should the response of the world-wide church be to this shocking reality? Well, as a start, all Christians should call upon citizens, governments, and decision-makers to embrace a life-affirming and life-sustaining peacebuilding paradigm. We must challenge ourselves and our governments to integrate development and peace initiatives and agendas at both policy and practice levels. This would involve reallocating resources freed by refusal to continue developing weapons, and then delivering those resources to a wide variety of peace initiatives.