Tag: Eternal Hope

Prisoners of Hope

Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of Hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double. – Zechariah 9:12

Some phrases just dwell in the imagination.  Prisoners of Hope. That’s one of them. Two words that you wouldn’t normally put together. Prisoner and Hope. Prisons of various types are famed for the words put over their entry.  The entry is Hell in Dante is “Abandon Hope All You Who Enter Here.” The entry to Auschwitz was “Work will set you free.” On Riker’s Island (NYS Prison) you will find the correction facility motto “New York’s Boldest.”  On one Soviet Gulag it said, “Shock labor is the path to early release!”  It is absurdly funny that Hell might have been the most honest.  In most ways we might think of prison as being the opposite of Hope.  Yet the prophet Zechariah ties these two things together to describe faithful Israel, prisoners of Hope.

Zechariah is prophesying to Israel in exile.  Their kingdom gone, their temple destroyed, the reality of their covenant with God at least in question.  Would any God with any reality allow this for his people?  Israel’s exile for most of Christian history has been used as a metaphor for the church in this world.  Wherever you find the church, that is not its native ground.  That is a beachhead in Satan’s territory. The people of God an infiltrating Army in this old world.  And often an army surrounded.  Maybe an army in chains.  Most of the apostles found themselves in various prisons. Yet they were always prisoners of Hope. As Paul once said, “it is because of the hope of Israel that I am wearing this chain. (Acts 28:20)”

And what is that hope?

That you would behold your King coming to you righteous and having salvation. That the chariot and the war horse would be cut off.  That the battle bows would be broken.  That your King would speak peace to the nations.  That his rule would be from sea to sea, from The River to the ends of the earth.

That sounds great, by why is this my hope?  Why would I endure chains now, for that hope?  Why would I consider myself a prisoner held by this hope?

“Because of the blood of my covenant with you.”

Christ has shed his blood for you.  Christ has given you his body and blood.  He has marked you in your baptism as one redeemed.  And these things – these sacraments – are the acts of his covenant with you.  Now we might break contracts or covenants.  We might be faithless, but God is faithful.  God fulfills his promises, his covenant.  And He has given us a covenant sealed with the blood of his Son.  “I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.”

We have been washed in the waters of Holy Baptism.  The Good Shepherd will lead us beside still waters. Today, we might find ourselves in chains of various kinds.  Worldly chains of fame and status and want.  We might find ourselves in personal chains of besetting sins. But God has set us prisoners free in the blood of his Son Jesus.

Today we might be prisoners of Hope.  Tomorrow, God declares, “I will restore to you double.” As Jesus said last week. “You will not lose your reward.” We are prisoners of this hope. Even the shiniest and most gilded cage of the world’s prisons can’t promise this.  They all lied, other than Hell which has no hope.  But with Christ, we have hope. 

Hope Amid the Weeds

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Biblical Text: Matthew 13:24-45

The gospel lesson continues the parable sermon of Jesus, the 3rd of 5 sermons that make up the Gospel of Matthew. The parable is often called: the wheat and the tares. I remember it by a line from a hymn – the wheat and weeds together sown/unto joy or sorrow grown. It is a hard teaching parable, as may or may not be apparent from that hymn line.

The background summary that I’ve taken in my sermons on the parables is that these are some of the deeper teachings that would be taught to newbies in the faith. The sermon on the mount is rather straightforward first teaching. The missionary discourse (Matthew 10) is a presentation of how the Word comes to us from outside of us and how the call to discipleship is not all sunshine and roses. But then Jesus turns to parables for what are harder questions. Why are the reactions to hearing the word all over the place? (The Parable of the Sower and the Soils). And the biggie of the Wheat and Weeds – Why is their evil in the world?

And the answer of the parable isn’t the most satisfying, but it is an answer. While that might be the question that the parable is an answer to, the parable wants to turn our attention to something better. Yes, there is evil. Yes, we live amid weeds. But there will be a harvest. The weeds do not stop the wheat from being fruitful. And polished by the parables sandwiched between the parable and explanation, that eternal hope is not all we have. The Kingdom is working now, like a mustard seed, or like leaven. The devil sowed his weeds, but the kingdom has its own trickery that overgrows those. And that is Hope. The eternal Hope seeps and grows into this life. And Hope does not disappoint us.

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