Hope is imminent
By Orvin Lao
THE FIRST 39 chapters of Isaiah describe God’s displeasure with the crimes and infidelity of His people. The prophet goes on at length condemning Israel and pronouncing divine judgement against them – it does make for rather miserable reading! There are only a few sporadic words of hope. But then, the first seven verses of chapter 9 come out of nowhere. They come unexpectedly. It’s the first time in the Book of Isaiah that hope is described with really tantalising details – details we could never have imagined.
Within only seven verses, Isaiah describes hope as having four qualities: it’s imminent, it’s universal, it’s humble, it’s eternal.
First, hope is imminent
Isaiah mentions the land of Zebulun and Naphtali. It’s the northern part of Israel, and so it was the first to get ravaged by the Assyrians invading from the north. The Jewish inhabitants were displaced and, eventually, pagan people repopulated the area.
The land became multicultural and multireligious. In later times, the people of Israel regarded the area as religiously unclean, impure, filled with “mixed-breeds.” That’s the backstory. Isaiah described the northern realms as being in gloom, in anguish, brought into contempt by the darkness of its past and by the darkness of their ignorance of God’s Word.
For some of us, we feel we are in gloom, in anguish, brought into contempt. Hope seems far off, elusive, detached from present life like a balloon that has floated away from a child’s grasp.
Back in the summer of 2019, Toronto, and even the nation of Canada, got to experience the possibility of hope from a very surprising source.
The Raptors needed one more win against the Warriors to become the next NBA champions. It was game five and we held our breath at the last minute. But we lost game five by just one point.
Immediately after the game, a few media outlets published the wrong headline saying that the Raptors had won. The anticipation of victory was so real that they jumped the gun and declared the Raptors champions.
Victory was delayed but our hopes became reality at the next game, and Canadians all around the world erupted in celebration.
People who could not care less about sports hopped on the bandwagon. There was renewed fascination for basketball. Hope was so imminent and palpable, we became entranced, surprised to be enamoured by the game of hoops.
The Raptors brought us all together as it were. They gave our city something to anticipate, something to long for. That’s the possibility of hope.
Isaiah jumped the gun and he saw a future hope for Israel so imminent he talked about the northern lands as having already been transformed!
In verse two onwards, Isaiah was describing it in the present perfect tense: “they have seen a great light, a light has shone, you have multiplied, you have increased, you have broken the oppressor.”
When everything around you is collapsing, the debris of despair is heaped on your head, your knees give way and you fall flat on the ground, and yet you pray even through tears, you sing even as you sob, you believe even as you doubt. That is when hope is imminent.
Secondly, hope is universal
In verse three, we read that God multiplied the nation and increased its joy. The word for “nation” means Gentile. Isaiah is saying that future hope has a global, international scope.
Now, as Canadians, it’s self-evident to us that hope is for all people. But in Isaiah’s time, hope was exclusive to the faithful and the pious, those who had God’s Law and obeyed it. That meant you had to be Jewish to have any hope at all.
For Isaiah to say that there is hope for non-Jewish people was a radical statement. And especially at the time of Israel’s pagan occupation, that would sound anti-nationalist and even treasonous. But God is offering hope to all people. His offer of hope is universal; he is extravagantly generous to all.
During the Great War in 1914, on Christmas Day in Belgium, there was a ceasefire between the British and the Germans. Very early in the morning, German soldiers emerged from their trenches, crossed no-man’s land, and were calling out in English “Merry Christmas” to the British lines.
The British soldiers thought it was a trick. But they saw that the approaching Germans were unarmed. Soon, men from both sides met halfway into no-man’s land, they shook hands, exchanged cigarettes, wine, and plum pudding, they sang hymns and carols, and played soccer. That Christmas morning was remembered as the Christmas Truce of 1914.
It was a short-lived morning when enemies became friends, soldiers became people again, hope and peace were felt between warring factions. And nothing like it has ever happened since.
Isaiah saw the future hope as joy stacked upon joy for all people, swelling the harvest times and increasing the boundaries of every nation on earth. You can partake. People who annoy you can partake. People who hurt you can partake. We are all invited.
Thirdly, hope is humble
In verse four, we read Isaiah forecasting the coming promise of final justice and freedom as in the day of Midian.
Centuries earlier, before Isaiah’s time, the people of God were subjugated by the ancient Midianites. God commissioned a young man named Gideon to be Israel’s military leader who would lead them to freedom.
So Gideon assembled a huge force, but God pared it down to just 300 men. One night, they surrounded the Midianite camp. At a signal from Gideon, they smashed their pots, lit their torches, and blew their horns. The Midianites were thrown into total confusion. They thought they were surrounded by thousands, and in the chaos, started slaughtering each other.
That day of Midian refers to the complete overthrow of the Midianites by the most unconventional, most unlikely, and the weirdest method of warfare. Victory was won in the most teensy-weensy way.
Isaiah is saying that hope is coming, and indeed has come, in the most teensy-weensy way – as a tiny baby.
In verse six, “for to us a child is born, to us a son is given.” The toppling of worldly powers, the monkey wrench to the war-machines, the coup d’état to the ancient dominion of evil comes as a teensy-weensy child whom the world overlooked, disregarded as insignificant, inconsequential.
Yet all power and authority are given to Him. He will carry His divine charge to rule the cosmos, not as a tyrant, not as a fascist, but as a counsellor, a comforter, as the God of infinite power, as the fountainhead of endless time, as the administrator of cosmic harmony.
If you call yourself a Christian, the hope that resided in the Christ-child has found its home in you. The Church, wherever she exists in the world, is a beacon of hope. We are hope’s humble abode. Hope is the flame and we are its furnace, animating our lowly humble bodies, stoked by the wind and breath of the Holy Spirit.
Lastly, hope is eternal
In verse seven, the messianic age will be forever. There won’t be another election. There will be no opposition. There will be no minority government. Jesus will sit on David’s throne and will rule the universe in peace and justice for all eternity. And we will all live happily ever after.
This present life will seem like a strange, unsettling dream when we wake up to eternity. There’s a reason why Jesus and Paul called dying “sleeping.” For Christians, death is but a night’s rest; then we’ll be wakened by the eternal sun that shall ignite the Day immortal.
It is in this life that we learn to hope, to struggle, to toil for what is to come, to groan for what was promised: to be roused from sleep and open our eyes to immortality, to justice renewed, to unending peace, to indescribable joy, to the reunion of all things parted and departed.
Can you imagine it: a world more solid, more real, more durable than our own, painted with never-seen-before colours, pulsating with the heartbeat of God, where death, evil, and sin are no more.
Our Lord Jesus Christ will see to it. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will do this! Hope is eternal.
It’s my prayer that we would be a hope-filled people. We live in a time when hope is in deficit. Our world longs to witness a people who live as though hope is nigh, that hope is for all people, that hope comes in humility and trust, that hope is forevermore. TAP
The Rev. Orvin Lao is Community Connections pastor at Little Trinity Church in Toronto.
