Welcome to advent 1, the week that we focus on hope. We dream of a new world with Isaiah – and wonder where or how there is any hope at all in what Jesus says in this passage.

The liturgical year is strange. Advent 1 is the beginning of the new liturgical year, and – we have a reading from the last part of Jesus’ ministry, the last formal teaching recorded in the gospel of Mark. We begin anew liturgically, as Jesus’ ministry nears its end. I suppose this points us toward the idea that this whole God thing, this following Jesus thing, is not a linear experience. If we want to imagine a shape, listening to God or following Jesus is more like a spiral, or even more like a lemniscate, an infinity symbol, with no end.

Jesus knows that the journey toward God does not have an end point; Jesus gives this invitation in Mark to stay alert for what is to come. (Sometimes we hear it more as a warning, than an invitation.) Jesus doesn’t give instructions on how to be saved from what is to come, or how to prevent what the future holds. Jesus says that we are to be alert and prepare for what is coming.

On the other hand, Isaiah describes what he hopes the future holds. Isaiah shares a vision of people from opposing groups and various places coming together, finding ways to make peace, even turning their weapons into farming implements. How beautiful. How impossible. (Canadian writer, Miriam Toews, refers to Isaiah’s wild imaginings in her memoir. She writes about other visions Isaiah has, mountains singing, trees clapping their hands: he must have been on “acid when he wrote” that. (A Truce that is not Peace, p108)

On this “Hope Sunday,” when Isaiah gives us a hopeful vision to live into, we get no hope from Jesus. Please tell me if you can find somewhere that Jesus talks about hope because I can’t find any place where Jesus uses the word “hope.” He does hang out with a motley group of followers and religious leaders who oppose him come near to hear his strange parables. Maybe Jesus doesn’t talk about hope — he lives into it; he embodies the hope of Isaiah’s dream of different peoples coming together.

Jesus’ apocalyptic parables that we hear today don’t seem hopeful; in fact, they are often heard as a threat. A rich person goes away and the servant is put in charge to keep watch. The servant has to be prepared at any moment for the rich one to return. “Be alert, be prepared, even at the four watch times throughout the night and morning, so that you are always ready for the return of the master.” In other words, exhaust yourself as you try to anticipate what the owner will do and when.

Did you ever hear the parable this way? Or feel it in your bones this way – even if the words weren’t quite that explicit? How is it that the parable gets conveyed this way? Who benefits from a reading like this? People with power, people invested in holding onto power and keeping things as they are. This distressing reading of the parable keeps those without power on their toes, off kilter and in fear. “Keep watch, stay alert, God is coming and will find you lacking.”

But what if that is not what the parable says? What if we have misunderstood? What if Jesus asks us to be alert but not to be threatened?

The parable says there are servants, plural, that work together, not alone, for the owner. The owner goes away and puts the servants in charge, each with their assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch. The servants support each other to prepare and they each have a task that they are in charge of. Together they make the household run. If they don’t work together well, things might fall apart. The owner might return when things are in a muddle. So together, they watch, they support each other so that things go smoothly. Isn’t that some hope? It is almost like the reign of God breaking out, as people work together, to help each other keep watch.

How is it that watching and being alert for the reign of God is such a threat? Maybe it depends who is watching. The Reign of God is a threat to those who have power, and want to hold tight to that power, whether in politics or business or education or the church. But for those who work together, alert and prepared, there is new freedom in living, there is hope, even when what is around the corner is unknown.

It is hopeful when we see people in cities across this country work together to protect their neighbors from ICE, when neighbors get creative to help other neighbors have enough food. If one person has to watch out for themselves, to protect themselves from ICE, it is an impossible threat. If one parent is on their own to source food for the family, it is unworkable. But when many people open their cupboards and wallets, many neighbors will be able to eat. (The new term among activists for this kind for sharing is “mutual aid.”) When neighborhoods work together to look out for ICE, community is built, and neighbors have the possibility of safety. And sometimes, like in Charlotte, North Carolina, where people across age, race and class, learn and get training with people in other parts of the country, ICE finds that it can not do its work and leaves town in a week. The reality of ICE coming to town did not change but Charlotte was alert and ready; because of the preparations in Charlotte, neighbors changed the trajectory of ICE in their community.

Staying alert and finding hope is not simple. As organizer and activist Mariame Kaba says, “Hope is a discipline. It’s less about ‘how you feel,’ and more about the practice of making a decision every day, that you’re still gonna put one foot in front of the other, that you’re still going to get up in the morning… It’s work to be hopeful.”

This is the kind of hope that Palestinians have to exercise every day to be able to keep going when there is a “ceasefire” and yet the bombing and the killing continue on and on. This is the kind of hope that Life After Release practices when they show up and advocate for women caught up in the criminal legal system. Even when it looks like there is no way out, the women of LAR show up. “Hope is a discipline.”

This past week Richard Rohr’s daily meditations about gratitude noted that it takes conscious effort to live into gratitude. He writes, “Brain studies have shown that we may be hardwired to focus on problems at the expense of a positive vision. The human brain wraps around fear and problems like Velcro.” So how do we not get bound up in fear? We practice gratitude (and I would include hope) daily. We can retrain our brains. Rohr writes, we can deliberately practice … a positive response and a grateful heart. Following through on conscious choices, we can rewire our responses toward love, trust, and patience. This is the gift of neuroplasticity. We can change our brains, we can change our responses with practice. Gratitude is a discipline. Hope is a discipline and we can be more hopeful if we practice.

And hope is best lived out with other people. Or perhaps it is barely hope until we live it out with others. Because it is so easy to get overwhelmed by the chaos that keeps coming at us every day.

I was in Goshen and Elkhart for a week in February. It was the beginning of the new administration and the good-hearted people gathered in Indiana were enraged, aghast, befuddled, and overwhelmed by the new policies and promises of what was to come. I was too. (We were wrapped in the Velcro of fear like Richard Rohr says.) This outrage amongst good-hearted people unsettled me. It felt like an unproductive swirling disconnected from action or hope.

It made me wonder if any of these good people were alert and connected to their neighbors who were most at risk. Were they working with others to prepare for what was on the horizon in their own state, in their own towns? How were they going to find any hope in the midst of the horrors? “Hope is a discipline.” Be alert and prepare.

I don’t have any right to question the people in Indiana or Isaiah’s vision given how cushy my own life is. I don’t personally have to worry about food or housing or healthcare, about detention or deportation. Still I wonder what Isaiah himself did to live into his impossible dream of people coming together, of people turning swords into plowshares. Did Isaiah assist those who decided not to train for war anymore? How did Isaiah act on his vision from God? Or was he just the messenger and not the one to help bring the vision to life?

Isaiah certainly continues to inspire people with his vision. As strange as his dreams may seem, some people take him literally. Michael Martin, in Colorado Springs, learned blacksmithing so he could turn guns into actual garden tools. And he teaches other people to do this too through the group Raw Tools. How amazing that this ancient vision continues to inspire and bring hope.

In a meeting last week, I heard Julio Hernandez, the executive director of Congregation Action Network say, ‘We are living the beloved community now that we hope to see in the future.” We are the workers, cooperating, working together to prepare for what is coming. Our work as Congregation Action Network, together across churches and synagogues, is a practice of hope for the future. How will we ever get where we want to be unless we practice now?

In this season of preparation and being alert to where the Holy is showing up, let’s not give up hope. Let’s figure out ways to practice hope, to connect with others who are also preparing for the places where Love can break in, will break in. Who are the people in your neighborhood, or even right here in this congregation that you can connect with. How can you prepare your heart or your home for the unpredictable presence of God in our midst?

Even in our waiting, in the midst of terror and fear, if we are prepared, if we practice, we can make room for Holy Hope.