The Third Sunday of Advent

A Season for Gathering Hopes
Isaiah 35:1-10

In the discussion in our EFM class this week, Dante’s Divine Comedy came up just in passing. At the very beginning of the first volume, l’Inferno, as Dante’s journey is just beginning, he finds himself at the gates of hell.

There is a notice posted there, as there often is at border crossings. It’s the last line of that notice that many people know and remember. “Abandon hope, you who enter here.”

I think I’ve always heard those words as descriptive of the land that lies beyond the border. It is a grim and hopeless place on the other side of the gates of hell. And there is a momentous finality for any who make that border crossing.

I took one year of Italian in college. Just for fun mostly and to increase my enjoyment of Italian opera. I’ve forgotten much of it except for a very interesting assortment of operatic phrases. But that notice over the gates of hell is something else that I know in Italian, as Dante originally wrote it.

And it might be more accurately translated: Leave behind every hope, you who enter. Leave behind. Give up and put aside. Every hope. Ogni speranza. Every single hope.

Maybe the notice is not so much generally descriptive of the land of hell. Maybe it’s more about the people making the crossing and the actions and experiences that characterize that journey. To enter hell is to discard every hope you are carrying.

In my imagination I envision a metal detector at the gates of hell—the kind you walk through, like they have at federal buildings and airports. And then there’s the guy who doesn’t seem to have a clue how much metal he is carrying. He walks through and it beeps. He takes a handful of coins out of his pocket, leaves them behind, and goes through again. It beeps. He takes his keys out of the other pocket and tosses them aside. It beeps. Leave behind every hope, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant. So he takes off his belt buckle. Even he thinks that surely that’s everything. It beeps. He takes off his signet ring. There can’t be anything else. It beeps. Leave behind every hope, even those you’ve forgotten you’re carrying. He takes off a necklace under his shirt; maybe it’s a cross. Having stripped himself of absolutely every little bit of metal, he passes through.

Leave behind every hope. Empty your pockets. Strip your heart and soul of absolutely every single hope… even those you didn’t know or didn’t remember you were carrying.

And again in my imagination I see a great mountain of literally discarded hopes looming like a landfill there in Dante’s dark wood outside the gates of hell.

But if we think of hopes as things that can be left behind or cast aside, then maybe hopes are also things that can be picked up or gathered in.

Advent is a time to gather hopes. To pick up hopes and gather them in.

We often associate hope with hopefulness, with feeling hopeful. To have hope is to have an optimistic or cheerful or sanguine disposition. But Christian hope really isn’t a feeling or a disposition. Christian hope really is more of a thing that can be held on to. A thing, or things. Statements or experiences of assurance. Assurances that, in various forms and settings, convey the reality that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. The Christian hope is a collection of statements or experiences that assure us that nothing can separate us from God’s presence and love. Those statements and experiences are things that we can hang on to, regardless of feeling or disposition.

The assurance that God comes to us intimately, as Immanuel, God with us, to share and bless human life.

The assurance that new life born, miraculously in darkness. New life is born to enlighten the darkness of our own lives and the darkness of the world around us.

The assurance that we, as human beings, are created in the image of God and are destined for good and reconciliation.

The assurance of God’s inspiring breath within us granting us the mystery of love and the capacity to create.

These assurances, in whatever form they come to us, are Christian hopes. Think of them as things that God has scattered about the world in which we live. Left there for us to discover and pick up.

Advent is a time to gather hopes. Pick up hopes and fill your pockets. All your pockets. Like gathering seashells on the beach. Or like children gathering Easter eggs. Pick up the assurances of presence and love that God has abundantly strewn throughout the world. Gather them to yourself. Collect them, cherish them. When I think of all the stuff we lug around…. Think, instead of all that stuff, think of carrying hopes with you. In addition to your pockets, fill your tote bags, your book bags and backpacks, all of your eco-friendly grocery bags. And your heart. Fill these with hopes.

And where to look if you want to find and gather God’s hopes? Where to look for those statements and experiences that assure us that nothing can separate us from the love of God?

Probably not the malls.

But do look in the Scriptures. They are full of God’s promises and assurances. Just this morning’s reading from Isaiah contains a bushel basket full of hopes. The lame shall leap. The mute shall sing. The desert shall bloom.

Experience the Sacraments. Cherish and cling to the assurance of God’s living presence that the Sacraments convey. I wouldn’t recommend that you literally put the host in your pocket. But metaphorically, yes, carry with you wherever you go the assurance of God’s grace that the sacraments impart.

Look to the quiet of your own heart. Especially this time of year where that God shaped hole within you throbs with yearning and will know fulfillment.

And look in your own life to the places where creativity and love are to be found.

In all of these places, you will find hopes to collect. Advent is a time to gather them in. Gather hopes.

And as you do, as you tune your eye and ear to notice and collect hopes in the world around you, you may come to notice other people who are losing or discarding their hopes. Tossing out hopes to make room for other junk in their brief cases or tote bags. Or just losing their hopes like lost winter gloves in the rush and anxiety of the season. Run after them. Pick up their lost hopes and run after them. Return their hopes to them.

You’ll also realize, once you start collecting hopes, gathering them to yourself, that you have lots. So share. Another place God stashes hopes for us to find is in one another. Perhaps you are meant to be the source for someone else’s gathering of hope this Advent.

Advent: A season for gathering hopes.