THE BIRTH OF HOPE John M. Buchanan
Luke 1:26-36; Romans 3:24-25 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
December 2@, 1981 Columbus, Ohio

The story begins on the beaches of Costabel, the hour before dawn, in that eery
half light that makes it quite impossible to distinguish sea from sky. Tourists, as
always, are out early with flashlight, and professional shell collectors as well.

Back at the hotels are large outdoor kettles for cooking away the hidden occupants of
the shells to prepare them for their future on New York coffee tables. The one telling
the story surveys this scene, observes the beach li:tered with the “debris of life,"
living creatures cast up by the sea without reason or intent, accidental disasters,
tory from life. It is a grim ritual, when looked at objectively. ~ UGQcewm seit”

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On down the beach, framed by an early morning rainbow is another figure, bending
over, reaching down, examining and then throwing something into the sea. Approaching,
the storyteller sees him stooped over a starfish. "It's still alive," I ventured,
"Yes...he said, “It may live...if the offshore pull is strong enough...The stars

throw well, One can help them.”

"T turned as I neared a bend in the coast and saw him toss another star, skimming
it far out over the ravening and tumultuous water. For a moment, in the changing
light, the sower appeared magnified, as though casting larger stars upon some greater
séa. He had, at any rate, the posture of a god."" (Loren Eisely, The Star Thrower,
p< 172)

The story is entitled The Star Thrower, and it was written by the late Loren
Eisely, Professor of Anthropology and the History of Science at the University of
Pennsylvania, a poet-philosopher-scientist and prolific writer, Eisely grappled with a
important and difficult matters of life, death, nature, fate, meaning, in a way that \
earned him the attention of scholars all over the world. .

5
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Hope is the subject of The Star Thrower: not the simple hope for good weather or vs
a propitious turn of events, but deep, philosophic hope. The kind of hope upon which 4

our fragile humanity rests, Sociologists tell us that we can't live for long without

hope, at least as human beings. Take hope away and people become desperate. Without

hope something essential to the fabric of society evaporates, order disappears, chaos
emerges. "Senseless violence" we call it when we see it, and that is what it is,

although it is more accurately described as "hopeless violence." Governmental com-

missions studied it, described it, warned about it after the cities exploded a dozen
years ago. The bottom line in those reports, you may recall, was hope - or the lack

of it. oe

\ led
\\ore Human beings are amazingly resilient, capable of standing up under and living
“YY through unimaginably difficult circumstances - so long as there is hope.) Scotsman,

‘Q. Ernest Gordon, former Dean of the Chapel at Princeton, has written about his experience
in a Japanese Prisoner of War Camp during World War II. Through the Valley of the
Kwai, is the name of the book and in it Gordon describes the gradual deterioration,
physical, mental, spiritual - among the prisoners as the blunt reality of their isolat-
ed jungle camp sunk in, There was very little possibility that anyone knew where they
were, whether they were dead or alive... Slowly the vestiges of the cultured, civil-
ized British life eroded. Men began to be selfish, unkind, cruel - and at the same
time unkempt, uncaring. The turning point came when an allied plane was sighted. Hope
was reborn and according to Gordon's account, the effect was dramatic and immediate,
Life had possibilities, therefore purpose, Order resumed. So did kindness, caring,

a littl2 pride. Humanity made a comeback with an assist by hope, For Gordon, it was
a religious experience; an encounter with a new idea of God as a reality in the future,
beckoning, calling, a God of Hope.

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Humanity seems to depend on hope. Physicians know the physiological reality of
hope in the process of healing. Sociologically, hope is related to civilization,
order, The lack of hope, the fading of hope, in the middle class society we inhabit
is reflected in the two common dynamics of nostalgia and materialism. If the future
looks dismal, one's attention is more satisfyingly invested in the past. My guess is
that historians will one day be amused at our obsession with the decades of the forties
and fifties, I know many people who sound as if they have given up on the future and
have decided that all meaning, all goodness, all gentleness and hope exist only in
memory. Next to sex, it is the most powerful motivator in the market place today.
The fading of hope shows up as nostalgia and then, less graciously, in a cynical
hedonism. "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die." The trouble with that,
obviously, is that more often than not you don't die, at least not tomorrow. But the
sentiment has power. A popular song a few years ago put it plainly:

"Tf that's all there is, then let's keep on dancing. If that's all
there is, let's break out the booze and have us a ball."

Christianity is about hope. Christian faith is essentially hopeful. The Christ-
ian life is fundamentally a stance of hope in the face of long odds, Like throwing a4
star back to the sea in the midst of the debris of death. Isaiah, for instance.
Isaiah, writing to a nation whose immediate future could not have looked more dismal.
Caught in the middle of an international power struggle, the options in front of
Judah were all terrible. What happened, in fact, was defeat, the leveling of
Jerusalem and the temple, and a generation - long exile in Babylon, Isaiah wrote:

"The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall a

rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, ANY

and rejoice with joy and singing. (Isaiah 35:1) WW Ys")
o" Z

Centuries later, that same people, captive again, this time in their own Land,
occupied by Roman troops, and one of their unmarried peasant girls had a vision.
"Hail, O favored one...
you will conceive and bear a son
and you shall call his name Jesus.
He will be great, and will be called
the Son of the Most High:
eohe will reign forever
and of his kingdom there will be no end." (Luke 1:27£ff)

A generation passed. Nero decided the Christ followers sprinkled throughout his
troubled empire would be adequate scapegoats and so he called them traiters and fed
them to hungry lions or burned them alive. Huddled, in Cottnth Ephesus, Philippi,
the catacombs of the capital itself, they drew courage from a martyred preacher
named Paul who had written:

“For in this hope we were saved....we hope for what we do not see, we
wait for it with patience..."

Those early Christians knew, perhaps more clearly than anyone since, that their
faith was not going to protect them from-tarm. They would not recognize popular
versions of hope as a God-given parking place, or special treatment by the manage-
ment of the universe. They had seen too many of their saints thrown to the lions to
engage in adolescent theologizing. Their hope was more profound than that,

Paul wrote - and they read, avidly -
"Who shall separate us from the love of God?
Shall tribulation, famine, peril, sword...No
weeIn all these, we are more than conquerors through
him that loved us."

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—In our day that emphasis has been renewed in the Theology of Hope. It's most
popular proponent, Jurgen Mortmann, writes, "From first”’to Last, and not merely in
epilogue, Christianity is hope, forward looking and forward moving." (Theology of "

Hope, p. 16) ale

Hope in the Bible is not an other - worldly escape from a grim future. Rather
it is a bright light burning right in the middle of the present, however bleak it may
be. Contemporary Theology of hope tries to make some sense of the Gospel in the
midst of situations that seem to deny it, ignore it, or vigorously oppose it. It is
an idea that comes into focus for us in the Advent Season. The liturgies and rituals
of the church in Advent all look forward to the day of the Lord, the coming again of
God. That surprises us occasionally. I can recall as a child wondering why the music
of Advent was about yearning, longing, mourning in exile, in a minor key. We want
Christmas as a joyful anniversary celebration. But the church's focus is forward in
Advent, ahead, future. The problem is that we get the rhetoric of the second coming.
We can't get past the images of the Middle Ages, the gaudy return of the Lord and end
of the age. But that's not it, at all. advent looks ahead to the celebration of the
birth and then the coming again, and again, and again of a God who has said eloquently
and ultimately that earth is where he will be, and that future will find him always
present with love, reconciliation and therefore, hope,

The hope of faith is not serenity, peacefulness only. Moltmann observes:
"Paith, whenever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but
impatience..." (op. cit., p. 21) Hopeful people are always pressing for change - in
the world and, as importantly, in their own lives. People possessed by the Hope of
Christ are not often sa€isfied, patient paople, but rather, the very ones who, in his
name, are out on the edge, pressing, urging, working for the wholeness, righteousness
he promised in situations as political, economic and social as the census in the
midst of which he was born.
l
= gy) wv There is a sense in which the vocabulary of hope is an alien language, in the
_(\Same way that the Christmas Gospel is imprisoned in myth and tradition. Hope, in our
oly society, must go up against a very fashionable cynicism - cynicism with very proper
DS credentials, cool, brittle, blase, detached, it has always been fashionable,
Shakespeare, in Richard II:
“Por God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
and tell sad stories of the death of kings."
Or H.G. Wells, late in life:
"Tt now seems to me that the whole universe is utterly bored by the whole
species of mankind. (See Halford Luccok, A Sprig of Holly)
Or Albert Camus,:
“Hope as a rule makes many a fool, Hence we try to remain on the solid
ground of reality, to think clearly and not hope any more." (Moltmann,
op, C1t., ps 23)
Or the wealthiest nation in the history of the human race, in the process of deciding
that the best it can do for its future, its institutions, its dreams and visions is
build a better bomber,

Hope has to go up against some very fashionable cynicism, which always masquer-
ades as realism. 12/22

Hope is durable. Hope may be the best evidence of God. It keeps appearing in
unlikely places; sublime and ridiculous. John U dike wrote a short story, "The Carol
Sing" describing the annual event in the town natt of Tarbox, Massachusetts, with
dusty piano and the doughty, dour citizens lifting strained voices..."Why do we?" he
asks..."Why do we come every year as sure as the solstice to carol these antiquities?"

udp

(Short Stories and Poems, p. 147) Why do I stop raking leaves or pulling weeds when
the carillon of Christ Lutheran breaks through my daydreams with "Fairest Lord
Jesus,"' to listen and hum a few bars? Why do I listen for familiar strains of "0
Little Town" nearly lost in the hurried voices, cash registers and car horns of High &

Street?

Hope is durable, strong in us, always looking for an opportunity to emerge. It
is so strong that tragedy seems to call it out of us. Henry Longfellow, near devas~
tated at the news that his son was wounded in the Army of the potomac, took up pen
and wrote:

"J heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play.

And in despair I bowed my head

There is no peace on earth, I said.
For hate is strong and mocks the song
O£ Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep,
God is not dead, nor doth he sleep.

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men."

Hope is strong in us. It keeps popping up in unlikely circumstances. In
Isaiah's dreams of crocus blooming in the desert: in persecuted Christians become
conquerors in the face of death, in the poignant sense of the future which happens
everytime birth occurs and we are privileged to hold in our arms - a baby - a person ~

a future.

Hope is strong and reborn in the dark night, by the light of a bright star hurled
into history. It is the birth of hope which we celebrate in the nativity of Jesus

Christ. It is the birth of the Savior..cusees

The man returned to his room, after watching the star thrower. He lay all day
on his bed, wrestling with fate and death, and the grim scenario played out on the
beach of Costabel each morning before dawn., And then he decided....

"I picked and flung another star. Perhaps far outward on the rim
of space a genuine star was similarly siezed and flung. I could feel the
movement in my body. It was, like a sowing - the sowing of life on an
infinitely gigantic scale...

"I picked up a star whose tubed feet ventured timidly among my
fingers while, like a true star, it cried soundlessly for life. I
saw it with an unaccustomed clarity and cast far out. With it, I
flung myself as forfeit, for the first time, into some unknown 4
dimension of existence. ‘ we
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ad

"Somewhere, my thought persisted, there is a hurler of stars, oth
and he walks, because he choeses, always in desolation but not in at
es

defeat." (ob. cit., p. 185)

And the angel said... ri
behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son il wr\
and you shall call his name Jesus... fat! Ss
And he will reign forever. AMEN, a

Goa:

Gabe:

God:

Gabe:

God:

Gabe:

a7] ¥ |

Yes, Gabe, what is it?

This letter came this morning, Your Excellency.
I assume you've read it.
Yes, Your Excellency.
And do you have any recommendation?
Well, Your Excellency, since the matter is rather personal,
I thought it best to have you read the letter and then we
could discuss possible responses.
Hmm. Yes. Well, I suppose you're right. OK. Let's have it.
(Gabe hands him the letter - God reads: )
Dear God,
Are you real? Some people don't believe it. If you are you
better doe something quick,

Love, Harriet Ann
Am I real, indeed! I am Reality Itself! Without me Nothing
is Real! That Tillich fellow said I was the Ground of all Being.
Calm down, Your Excellency. I warned you that this was a rather
personal matter. We must keep a clear head and decide what is
to be done,
Right, Gabe, A clear head. Do you think this is serious?
Are people really asking this question?
Oh, yes, Your Excellency. In fact a book has been written

called, The Search for God.

Hm. Didn't know I was lost.

Furthermore, Your Excellency, the seriousness of the matter
can hardly be exaggerated. A world in which your Reality
seems to have disappeared will not stay empty long. It will

soon be filled with all kinds of substitutes. There will be

God:

Gabe:

God:

Gabe:

God:

Gabe:

God:

Gabe:

God:

Dom

persons and things, causes and movements pumped up into being
substitute gods, and then the whole enterprise will go wrong.
People will quarrel and suffer, they will oppress and exploit
and even kill each other in the name of their gods. They will

become evil.

That's why she said, "Do something quick."

Of course.

But what?

I was hoping you would have some ideas.

But isn't that what I have theologians for?

I don't think Harriet Ann wants theology, Your Excellency.

I see. You suggest action, and not just taik. Ali right.

I'll wipe out the human race and start over.

But, Your Excellency, you made them that, remember. You insisted
on making them free creatures, even after my office warned you
about the risks. Remember ~ you wanted them to love you and one
another. But if they are really free to love you, then they are
also free to ignore you and hate one another, or to Love some-
thing in your place, It was your idea to make love and freedom
go together. Even if you started over you wouldn't change that,

would you?

Glad you thought of that. But it doesn't solve the problem.
"Do something quick," she wrote. How about a miracle. Something

to dazzle people. That should convince them of my reality.

Gabe:

God:

Gabe:

God:

Gabe:

Gabe:

God:

Gabe:

God:

Gabe:

~3—

I'm sorry to be a nuisance with these objections, Your Excellency.
But one of your own theologians, a preacher in Columbus, Ohio,
USA, tells his congregation that miracles really don't convince
anyone, People only say, "Do it again, slowly," and we are

right back where we started.

This is becoming more difficult than I thought. De something

quick, she said.

If i might be so bold as to suggest it, Your Excellency, perhaps

the problem lies in the word, "quick".
You mean it's bad English? It should be "quickly?"
No. I mean it's a bad idea. It should be "slowly."

Brilliant. Of Course. Why didn't I think of that? Slowly.

That changes everything. I'll go myself. I'll become one of them.

Brilliant, Yourself, Your Excellency. Only God could think of

that. But how will you do it?

Well, that's where your suggestion of doing something slowly

triggered an idea. I'11 start the way they do. I'll be horn!

A tremendous idea! But do You realize what that means, Your
Excellency? You are not talking about magic, apparitions,
visions -- here one moment, gone the next. You are talking

about total commitment.

i know, I know. Let's pet on with it.

Now, just stop and think a moment. Remember, no one builds a

tower without first counting the cost.

Gabe:

God:

Gabe:

God:

Gabe:

God:

Gabe:

4m

That's a good line. Remind me to have one of my speech writers

use it sometime.

I just want You to be sure You know what becoming one of them

means. Once You get involved with them, You will be subjecting
Yourself to intrigue and accusation, to suffering, pain, sorrow,
to all the evil things people do to each other. Once You enter
that mess, I'm afraid there is only one exit. You will have to

experience =~ dare I mention it - death.

True, true. But is there really any other way? If they don't
experience my Reality, they have gone wrong. And if they have
fone wrong, then the question whether I am real is no longer

the one they need answered. My Reality is not their need. My

commitment is.

Of course. Becoming one of them is the ultimate investment in
Your creation. You will be taking their history into Yourself.
Their suffering, their evil, their death will become part of

Your experience.
And if they trust my love, they will become free to love again.

But that will only add to the risk You took when You made them

in the first place.

I know. I know. Nothing else has a chance of saving them.
And who really knows where and when and how many of them will
respond, Maybe even some in that Columbus, Ohio, you mentioned

earlier.

Love and risk go together, Your Excellency.

God:

Gabe:

God:

Gabe:

-5-

Thanks for getting me to think about "slowly", Gabe. Love
is not quick. It is slow. It grows and builds and ripens
over the years. It is the investment of Myself. It means

hanging in there - no matter what.

But that is what Your Reality is.

Now I want you to handle all the publicity, the press releases,

the media.

I think I have an idea already. The first press release will

pegin, "In those days a decree went out..."