Do you have hope?
It’s hard to be
patient. It’s hard to wait for God to
fulfill God’s promises. When, in the
Book of Micah, God promises the people that from
you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, the people
have to be patient, have to accept that God works in God’s own time, have to
remain obedient to God’s will even as they struggle. But the promise is worth waiting for, because
God assures the people that the messiah shall
be peace. And with peace comes
justice, harmony, and wholeness, so that God’s victory shall reach to the ends of the earth. Psalm 80 further assures the
people that the son of man sent by
God will rule through mercy, saving
the people who turn to God and are obedient to him.
For Christians,
the promises made in Micah and the Psalms are fulfilled in the person of Jesus,
whose Incarnation is met with the consummate example of the obedient servant,
Mary herself, in Luke's Gospel. Mary approaches Jesus’
coming birth with absolute faith and is obedient from the moment the angel
announces the Incarnation to her. Later,
at the moment of the Visitation, the baby in Elizabeth’s womb proclaims the one
who is to come with a definitive leap in
the womb of faith; the future John the Baptist will also be obedient to
God’s will, believing in the power of God’s work in him and proclaiming the Incarnation,
the coming of the Lord. The ultimate
example of the obedient servant is Jesus, of course, who, the Book of Hebrews
tells us, came to do God’s will. The offering of his body, of all that makes
him human in the Incarnation, is an offering for the sins of humankind; Jesus will
die for the sins of all, obedient, that he might achieve the salvation of all.
Like the people of
Israel, like Mary, John, and Jesus, we are called to believe that the power of
God is at work in us – and that all God has promised will be fulfilled. In short, the Incarnation calls us to
hope. But how do we maintain hope in
today’s society? How do we maintain hope
in face of human sin? We know that Jesus
came to take sin away through his obedience to God’s will, an obedience born of
absolute love. And that love, the love
he created us with and the love that caused him to send Jesus in the
Incarnation, is same love he calls us to.
It is that love that calls us to hope – to hope for the peace, and justice,
that is Christ.
This post is based
on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordle.net
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