St. Mark’s Jonesboro
The Second Sunday of Advent-Year A
December 7, 2025
I’ve been thinking a lot about hope this week. We had our inaugural Advent Teaching Mission and Lecture event for the diocese this weekend, where we got to hear the Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, one of the preeminent theologians of our time, offer her reflections on Hope in Despairing Times. She spoke in very specific ways about how hope is both a practice and an action, and she also spoke about how joy is an essential component to hope.
Also this week, I attended the gathering for the transition officers from Provinces 6, 7, and 8 at Mustang Island in Texas. There were about 16 of us there, representing 18 dioceses, and the numbers of churches looking for clergy in comparison with the number of clergy looking were off-putting, to say the least. Know that I presented you to my colleagues for their consideration for any priests in their dioceses looking for a new cure. And then together, we all prayed for you. It was such a touching and tender moment, as we presented churches like you who had been entrusted to our care, and we prayed that God would send you who you need (and someone who also needs you). (I also got a couple of tips about potential interims, so I’ll be working to follow up on those in the coming week or two.)
But, back to hope….So often we think of hope as optimism, and it so much more than that. Friday night in her lecture, Dr. Douglas stated, “Hope is the release of the resurrection spirit.” And she talked about hope in terms of Jesus’s resurrection, how he was dead and then he was not, and how there is even a sort of playful quality to the resurrection accounts that is essential to hope. “Hope is the release of the resurrection spirit.” I suspect this is something that we can identify in our lives as well. How often have you been surprised by a mini (or large) resurrection moment in your own life or in your life of faith? Have you ever had something that seemed dead that came to life in new and unexpected ways?
The reading from Isaiah for today speaks to this as it begins with the words, “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,/ and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” The passage goes on to talk about the peaceable kingdom that will be ushered in by God through this new kind of king. It’s all about Israel’s future hope: what it means to hope even when the future seems uncertain. And it is also all about the connections between justice and peace.
Because at this point in Israel’s history, things are really bad. The once united kingdom has been divided into two; the king of the southern kingdom has sold out the northern kingdom to their mutual enemies, and the northern kingdom has fallen. The people in the southern kingdom, including Isaiah, know that it’s only a matter of time until they, too, are conquered. So they long for a new kind of king who will hold justice and peace together, a king who will be God’s agent in ushering in the peaceable kingdom where enemies, predators and prey will all lie down together and be at peace.
For Isaiah, he is looking at something that seems dead or dying, and he is hoping that new life will yet spring up from it.
This is not an unfounded hope. It is, in fact, the hope of our calling as Christians, the resurrection hope. It can be true for society, and it can be true for own lives as well. As another writer puts it, “According to Isaiah, the transformation from a culture of fear to a world at peace begins with a stump. Out of something that appears finished, lifeless, left-behind, comes the sign of new life—a green sprig. This is how hope gets its start-it emerges as a tiny tendril in an unexpected place.”[i]
But here is what is so interesting about this image from Isaiah for me today. Hope is likened to tiny, green sprig of new life and tender persistence. It is alarming to think how easily it could get trampled out of existence, and yet it doesn’t.
This week, I encountered a new poem by Denise Levertov titled Making Peace. Listen to the first part of this poem:
A voice from the dark called out,
‘The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.’
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.[ii]
So, a key part of this hope that springs up like a tender, green shoot, is that it invites us to engage our imaginations to discern what are the shoots of hope and what are just weeds. What tiny green shoots do we give energy to protect and nurture that will grow into branches of a once again healthy tree and what parts do we leave for nature to take its course? There is a sort of communal cultivation and practice of hope that must engage our imaginations.
And the final essential component that we see in this dance in Isaiah between peace and hope is that they are all bound together by justice. In her talk on Saturday, Dr. Douglas shared, “If we want peace, we have to create justice. Peace follows justice. [We must] nurture the conditions that foster life.” And in her explanation of justice, Douglas shared what she calls a “reverse golden rule”: “do not withhold from others that which you would not want withheld from yourself.” So peace, hope, justice are all interrelated.
Where are the tiny, shoots of tender new life and hope in your lives; in your midst here? Where are you being surprised by resurrection hope and being invited to imagine how you can nurture it and participate in it? What is the role of peace and justice in the practicing of your hope?
In closing, I’ll offer you a spiritual practice for this Advent season (and beyond) that is articulated in Christine Valters Paintner’s book titled Give Me A Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year that has been helpful for me as a part of my own keeping of Advent this year. You can do this reflection at the end of each day to reflect back over your day; or you can also do this to reflect back over the whole year. You can also use this reflection to think about life here at St. Mark’s and your role in that.
I invite you to close your eyes as I share this reflection with you if that would be helpful.
Take a deep breath in and then out. What are the most life-giving experiences for you? When did you feel yourself most filled with love? With hope? Notice what comes to mind and stay with it. Where are the tiny shoots of growth or new life in your life right now. Is there anyone you want to offer gratitude for in these experiences?
Take another deep breath in and out. What are the most life-draining experiences for you? When did you feel most restless? The least hopeful? Notice what moments come to your mind and stay with them without judgement or trying to change them. Is there anyone you want to offer forgiveness to for this experience? Spend a few moments seeing if you are moved to extend forgiveness, even to yourself.
Take another deep breath in and out. How do you want to move forward? What are your hopes? How are you being invited to follow the Holy Spirit now? How might you nurture the tiny, persistent, green shoots of hope and new life shared within you? What do you want to ask from God to move more fully into your hopes?[iii]
A voice from the dark called out,
‘The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.’
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak
[i] From Feasting of the Word for the Isaiah passage for this week. I don’t have the book with me to cite author and page. Sorry!
[ii] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53900/making-peace
[iii] I made some modifications to what was presented in the following book: Paintner, Christine Valters. Give Me A Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year. Broadleaf Books: Minneapolis, 2025, Chapter 5.
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