Hope (ft. Ken Shigematsu) | Advent E1
Update: 2024-12-13
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How do we remain hopeful in a world that's falling apart? Ken Shigematsu reflects on the paradox of Advent, where light meets darkness and hope confronts despair. He challenges us to look honestly at our realities, confront the brutal facts, and find unshakable hope in Christ's first coming and promised return.
Key Scripture Passages: Luke 21v25-28; Isaiah 9v1-2, 6; Mark 13v7-8, 24-26
This podcast and its episodes are paid for by The Circle, our community of monthly givers. Special thanks for this episode goes to: Gregg from Monona, Wisconsin; Angie from Pflugerville, Texas, Matthew from Milpitas, California;; Kathleen from Flower Mound, Texas; and Misael from Anniston, Alabama. Thank you all so much!
If you’d like to pay it forward and contribute toward future resources, you can learn more at practicingtheway.org/give.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Hello and welcome to the John Mark Coma Teachings podcast.
00:00:07
I'm strong Coleman your host and part of the teaching team here at Practicing the Way.
00:00:12
Each week on this podcast we share a teaching from John Mark or other trusted voices in the formation space and it's great to have you with us.
00:00:21
Well it is advent my friends and to celebrate we are doing a three part series through to Christmas without good friend Ken Shigamatsu.
00:00:31
Ken is the senior pastor of 10th Church in Vancouver BC and an amazing author of several books including God in my everything about a wall of life and his newest now I become myself.
00:00:43
A book about overcoming toxic shame.
00:00:47
If you've gone through the practicing the way cause you'll remember Ken from our tutorials he is a dear friend of ours practicing the way and a peaceful pastoral voice to guide us into the advent season.
00:01:00
And so today we begin our series with hope as Ken invites us to refuse denial Christianity and to take up a gritty expectation of the incredible good that is the end in Christ.
00:01:13
As you listen you may like to ask yourself what's my current response to the suffering in my world.
00:01:22
His kin.
00:01:24
The psychologist Philip Catlock wrote a book called "Expert Political Judgment".
00:01:33
Catlock studied about 300 experts, prominent journalists, respected academics,
00:01:46
high level advisors to national leaders.
00:01:51
He studied their predictions, their political, economic, and social forecasts.
00:01:58
The study spanned two decades.
00:02:01
Catlock's conclusion was summarized in an arresting punchline quote, "The average expert was roughly as accurate as a dart-throwing chimpanzee."
00:02:17
The average expert was roughly as accurate as a dart-throwing chimpanzee.
00:02:24
Catlock's 20 years of research concluded that it was virtually impossible for anybody to make a detailed long-term prediction about specific events.
00:02:40
The world after all is a messy place.
00:02:44
Small things can have big consequences.
00:02:48
Unforeseeable events are bound to occur.
00:02:52
And those unforeseeable events have consequences that are also unforeseeable.
00:03:01
Michael Oosterholm is the director for the Center for Infectious Disease Research at the University of Minnesota.
00:03:14
He recently said, "Every morning, I scrape off five inches of mud off of my crystal ball.
00:03:24
Any effort to predict a future beyond the course of thirty days is relying on pixie dust, pixie dust as its basis."
00:03:39
Especially in times like this, we would love to know how the future will unfold.
00:03:46
And the fact that no one knows that we don't know is a cause of anxiety for many, joyless blah for others, and for some depression.
00:03:58
So, how do we persevere through times like this?
00:04:06
Early on in the pandemic, I was reminded of the experience of Admiral Jim Stockdale.
00:04:13
I told his story back last year when we were in the series on living in exile from the book of Jeremiah.
00:04:21
Let me retell his story.
00:04:24
Admiral Stockdale was flying on a mission on September the 9th, 1965, over North Vietnam, when his plane was struck by enemy fire.
00:04:38
Stockdale ejected, parachuted, and landed in a small village where he was promptly captured as a prisoner, and taken to the infamous prisoner of war camp,
00:04:51
nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton."
00:04:56
Stockdale would be in that war camp for more than seven years.
00:05:01
He eventually got out, and some years later, the author of Good to Great Jim Collins caught up with him and had a conversation with Stockdale.
00:05:13
Collins asked him the question, who did not make it in the prisoner of war camp?
00:05:18
Stockdale said, "Oh, that's an easy question."
00:05:22
It was the optimist.
00:05:23
Collins thought, "Hmm, that's odd, because everyone talks about the need for optimism."
00:05:29
Stockdale continued, he said, "The optimists would say, 'We're going to be out of this prison camp by Christmas, and Christmas would come and go,' and they'd still be there."
00:05:40
And then the optimist would say, "Well, we'll be out by Easter, and Easter would come, and Easter would go, and they died of a broken heart."
00:05:48
Collins asked Stockdale, "Well, what enabled you to persevere through the camp?"
00:05:55
And Stockdale said, "I never lost faith in the end of the story.
00:06:05
I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end, and turn this experience into the defining moment of my life."
00:06:20
Stockdale said, "You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end,
00:06:32
which you absolutely cannot afford to lose, with the honesty and discipline to confront the brutal facts of your reality, whatever they may be."
00:06:42
And so, in order for us to persevere through difficult times, we need to avoid a kind of naive and toxic optimism that will break our hearts.
00:06:58
We also need to have the capacity to honestly confront the brutal facts of our situation.
00:07:09
And never lose faith in the end of the story.
00:07:16
Where do we get the hope that lifts us to believe that in the end we will prevail?
00:07:26
Well, we won't get that hope from the pundits and the experts who do not know what the future holds.
00:07:34
We'll get that hope as we look to the one above the sun to our creator who alone knows and guides the future.
00:07:43
Today's we've heard is the very first Sunday of Advent, and as we heard from John and Connie's family.
00:07:54
The word Advent comes from the Latin word Adventus, which means coming or arrival.
00:08:00
This is the time of year when we look back to Christ's first coming and ahead to His return.
00:08:07
And on this first Sunday of Advent, we're going to look at how Christ's coming and how His return inspires hope.
00:08:13
Next Sunday, we'll look at how Christ's coming and how His return produces peace.
00:08:19
And then we'll look at how Christ's coming brings us joy.
00:08:24
But today on this first Sunday of Advent, we'll be looking at how Christ inspires hope.
00:08:31
Fleming Rutledge is a gifted preacher and writer, and I want to acknowledge how her work has helped to inform the arc of this message.
00:08:41
One of the famous passages of scripture for Advent comes from Isaiah 9.6, where the prophet writes,
00:08:51
"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given."
00:08:56
These are familiar words to many of us, but their backstory is less well known.
00:09:02
In the eighth century BC, so this would be 700 in something years before Christ was born.
00:09:10
The people of Israel were in a dark place.
00:09:14
They were feeling anxious and depressed.
00:09:18
In fact, they were terrified because they sensed that the superpower of their day, Syria, would seem to be growing in an overwhelming might end.
00:09:31
Ferocity was about to invade their homeland.
00:09:36
In Isaiah, in chapter 9, verse 1, writes these words, "In the past, he humbled the land of Zebulin and the land of Naftele.
00:09:47
Even though these words are written in the past tense, biblical scholars believe that Isaiah wrote them before Syria actually humbled the lands of Zebulin and Naftele.
00:10:06
That Isaiah foresaw this happening."
00:10:11
Now, as you can see on this map, the lands of Zebulin and Naftele are in the northern part of Israel,
00:10:22
and so they would have been the first natural targets for an Assyrian army coming from the north.
00:10:29
And in and around the year 730 BC, the Assyrian army invaded, humbling this part of northern Israel,
00:10:41
flattening this part of the world.
00:10:46
If I may acknowledge the gifted preacher and writer points out that when this happened, when the people of Israel were defeated and then deported into exile,
00:10:59
they experienced not only a historical crisis, but a, quote, theological emergency as they ask, "Where is God?
00:11:07
Has God abandoned us?
00:11:09
Does God even exist?"
00:11:11
But after Isaiah writes about the land of Zebulin and Naftele being humbled,
00:11:24
he goes on and he offers these words of promise.
00:11:29
Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress.
00:11:39
In the past, he humbled the land of Zebulin and the land of Naftele, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations by way of the sea beyond the Jordan.
00:11:52
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light on those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned.
00:12:00
So Isaiah foresees that the lands of Zebulin and Naftele will be humbled that they'll be defeated,
00:12:12
that darkness will set in on this part of northern Israel.
00:12:17
But then Isaiah prophesies that one day a light will dawn in this part of the world.
00:12:27
In 700 years, after more than 700 years after Isaiah prophesied these words, the living God decides to be born as a human being,
00:12:40
as a baby in this part of the world.
00:12:44
He's given the name Jesus.
00:12:45
He grows up and is described as the light of the world.
00:12:49
And where does he have his ministry?
00:12:52
Where does he have his ministry?
00:12:55
In the ancient lands of Zebulin and Naftele also known as Galilee by the sea.
00:13:03
And the gospel writer of Matthew points out that Jesus has his ministry here to fulfill what the prophet Isaiah had spoken centuries before.
00:13:17
Isaiah does not give us this vision of flowery optimism.
00:13:27
He honestly and brutally names the reality that northern Israel, that Zebulin and Naftele will be humbled that they'll be defeated.
00:13:39
But Isaiah also never loses faith in the end of the story.
00:13:47
Thanks to the revelation of God, Isaiah lives with the hope that God's purposes will prevail.
00:13:56
He says in Isaiah 9.6, "For unto us, age child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders,
00:14:06
and he will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, the prince of peace, and of the increase of his government, there shall be no end."
00:14:17
Isaiah has this unmovable peace because he knows that the government rides on the shoulders of God,
00:14:31
that there is a power beyond history that is working itself out within history.
00:14:37
He knows that history is really his story.
00:14:42
Androokarnagy was a Scottish born tycoon who made a fortune here in North America.
00:14:52
Some of you know one of our Vancouver libraries is named after his family.
00:14:56
Androokarnagy was raised as a Presbyterian.
00:15:01
But when he became an adult, he grew suspicious of religion.
00:15:07
He had read Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution.
00:15:11
And in what was called the Guilded Age, in a time before the Genesides and the World Wars of the 20th century, Carnegie was writing his autobiography and he received what he felt was a kind of illumination,
00:15:29
causing him to get rid of God and hope and those kinds of things.
00:15:33
And so in his autobiography he wrote these words, "light came in, I got rid of theology and the supernatural.
00:15:44
All his well he wrote since all grows better.
00:15:48
All his well since all grows better.
00:15:52
This became my motto, my true source of comfort.
00:15:56
There can be no conceivable end to man's march toward perfection."
00:16:03
That was sort of go, "Come on today, you got to be kidding me, but remember Carnegie was writing these words before World War I."
00:16:14
And then the war broke out and he had a dramatic shift of perspective.
00:16:22
In the last paragraph of his autobiography, he writes, "As I read now what I had previously written today,
00:16:34
what a change!
00:16:35
The world is now convulsed with war, men are slaying each other like beasts as never before, I dare not relinquish hope."
00:16:45
So while Carnegie assumed that the world was just improving and getting better and better and perfect,
00:16:56
he had no need for God, no need for hope, but with the outbreak of the war he said, "I dare not give up hope."
00:17:03
Now admittedly, our world is not engulfed in a world war as was true of Carnegie's world.
00:17:15
But we have no reason to embrace a naive optimism either.
00:17:24
The world, as we've seen in this past year, is a messy place with fires and floods.
00:17:34
We dare not embrace a flowery optimism that will only break our hearts.
00:17:42
But we also dare not live without a faith in the end of the story.
00:17:49
We cannot afford to live without hope that in the end we will prevail.
00:18:00
That hope will not come from the pundits and the experts who do not know the future.
00:18:07
That hope comes as we look to the one who exists above the sun and not upon whose shoulders rides the government of the world,
00:18:18
the future.
00:18:19
700 years after Isaiah's prophecy, while the people of Israel are living in ancient Palestine,
00:18:30
technically on their homeland, but under the iron-fisted rule of the Roman Empire so they feel like they are in exile.
00:18:39
They feel like they are in this place of theological emergency.
00:18:45
As they're asking, "Where is God in the midst of all of us?
00:18:47
Has God forgotten us?
00:18:48
Has God abandoned us?"
00:18:50
It is then that the living God chooses to be born into their world, enters the womb by his spirit of a peasant teenager and then is birthed into a stable under the misty breath of the cattle and the sheep.
00:19:12
And as we've seen, grows up, and this Jesus is described as the light of the world who carries out his ministry in the lands of Zebulin and Naftali also known as Galilee by the sea.
00:19:33
And so this advent, we look back at Christ's first coming.
00:19:40
The first coming which inspires hope as we see God has guided history, but we also look ahead to Christ's second coming.
00:19:50
In the Gospel of Mark, chapter 13, Jesus speaks of his second coming, "Nation will rise against nation Jesus as in kingdom,
00:20:03
against kingdom.
00:20:04
There will be earthquakes in various places and famines.
00:20:08
These are the beginnings of birth pains."
00:20:10
And then later in the Gospel, Jesus says this, "But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light.
00:20:24
The stars will be falling from heaven and the powers in the heavens will be shaken."
00:20:29
As Jesus speaks of his second coming, he doesn't describe a scene of flowery,
00:20:42
fancy optimism.
00:20:44
There's no talk, no nostalgic reminders of sheep and shepherds and angel singing.
00:20:51
In fact, for 200 years before the genocides and the world wars of the 20th century, many biblical scholars believe that Jesus could not have said,
00:21:02
"Nation will rise against nation and tribulation and trial will come into the world that these words must be the result of some editors tampering."
00:21:13
This must be what we would call today "fake news."
00:21:20
But Jesus himself in Advent gives us no reason to believe a message of naive and flowery optimism.
00:21:35
But Jesus in Advent does call us to live with a certain hope and unfailing belief that even in the midst of a world where some of us have lost our health,
00:21:57
where some of us have lost loved ones, even in a place where we have seen fire and flood and a larger world where nation has risen against nation,
00:22:10
we can live with unfailing hope that the God of the universe terries the government of the world upon his shoulders that God guides the street.
00:22:26
Fleming Rutledge describes seeing two art images juxtaposed that express the paradox of Advent in a powerful way.
00:22:40
The now and not yet of Advent, the suffering and the hope of Advent and the darkness and the light of Advent.
00:22:53
The first image that Fleming Rutledge saw was the self-portrait of the famously tormented artist Vincent Van Gogh after he had mutilated his ear,
00:23:07
and as you can see in the image his face looks sad and haunted as he is in great distress.
00:23:13
And then Rutledge saw the image that we all know.
00:23:19
Stary night.
00:23:21
Stary night.
00:23:23
Van Gogh painted this image while he was a patient in the psychiatric ward at the hospital, wondering whether it was worth living at all.
00:23:36
He was in great turmoil, but as he was looking out the window, he was able to paint this image with its vast celestial realm and the magnified stars that dwarf the village below.
00:23:53
And I know that Stary night has become somewhat cliched as it's seen on posters everywhere, even on mugs and on napkins.
00:24:04
But as we consider Van Gogh's self-portrait with a mutilated ear in his haunted, sad, distressed expression, and then see Stary night.
00:24:16
It does communicate to us the paradox of Advent.
00:24:21
The now and the not yet of Advent.
00:24:24
The suffering and the hope and the darkness and the light of Advent.
00:24:33
An Advent is that time where we look back at Christ's first coming.
00:24:47
And perhaps you are in a place of darkness even right now.
00:24:52
Your world seems very dim.
00:24:54
Know that the light of Christ, no matter what your situation can come to you.
00:25:03
He came for you that first Christmas.
00:25:06
According to the angel Gabriel, Mary would give birth to a son and give him the name Jesus because he would save us from our sins, ask Jesus, and He will forgive your sins.
00:25:17
And the light of God will enter into your darkness.
00:25:21
And the darkness according to the gospel of John shall not overcome it.
00:25:27
The light will enter you, and the darkness shall not overcome it.
00:25:33
Advent celebrates Christ's first coming and proclaims that Christ shall come again.
00:25:49
And in the final book of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, we read about how John describes this vision of the city of God coming down out of heaven to earth,
00:26:00
creating a new heaven and a new earth.
00:26:02
And we know that Advent is supposed to be a joyous season, but in this past year, we have experienced darkness in our midst,
00:26:14
even as some of us hear the music.
00:26:17
There is the darkness.
00:26:18
Some of us in this dark season have lost our jobs.
00:26:28
We've lost our health.
00:26:32
We've lost loved ones.
00:26:36
I've been there.
00:26:37
Some of us have struggled with anxiety, battle against depression, or like the famous artist Van Gogh have even thought about ending our lives.
00:26:50
Advent calls us to look directly in the darkness and name it to confront the brutal facts of our reality.
00:27:01
But Advent also calls us to have faith in the end of the story.
00:27:09
Advent calls us to have hope that we'll serve as an anchor for our soul, a hope that will make us believe that in the end we will prevail.
00:27:23
Where do we get that kind of hope?
00:27:26
Not from the pundits and the experts who do not know the future, we get that hope as we look to the one who exists above the sun.
00:27:36
Jesus said in the last days, "Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom."
00:27:45
There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars.
00:27:49
There will be great distress on the earth and people's hearts will fail them for fear.
00:27:54
But then you will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds with great power and great glory when you see these things happening.
00:28:07
Look up, lift your heads because your redemption draws near.
00:28:15
Amen.
00:28:19
Man, that was an incredible invitation at the end there to sit in the hope of Advent.
00:28:33
To sit in the rawness of life as it is and yet to just orient our hearts and minds towards the incoming kingdom,
00:28:44
the fullness.
00:28:46
So let's not leave that space but just sit in that scripture.
00:28:53
Lift your heads because your redemption draws near.
00:28:59
Maybe with me just take a few deep breaths, open yourself up to God.
00:29:08
And just for half a minute let's lift our heads for our redemption is near, the sad wind and our clothes will not mean.
00:29:26
Amen.
00:29:35
Amen.
00:29:42
This podcast is from practicing the way.
00:30:05
We develop resources to help churches and small groups apprentice in the way of Jesus.
00:30:10
And all we make is completely free because it's already been paid for by this circle, a community of monthly givers who partner with us to see spiritual formation integrated into the church at large.
00:30:21
Special thanks for today's episode goes to Greg from Manona, Wisconsin, Angie from Flugaville, Texas, Matthew from Milpetus, California, Kathleen from Flower Mound,
00:30:33
Texas, and Missail from Aniston, Alabama.
00:30:36
Thank you all very much.
00:30:38
To join the circle or to learn more about running a practice in your church or community, visit practicingtheway.org.
00:30:46
Until next time, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
00:30:58
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00:31:08
