Translating Advent

The word “hope” may be one of the most difficult in the Bible to translate. Hope means different things in different languages. In Spanish, the verb “esperar” means both “to hope” and simply “to wait.” I remember being slightly amused the first time I realized at a dentist’s office that I was in a “Sala de Espera,” the place we usually describe in English as “the waiting room.” I smiled because I realized it could also be translated “the hoping room.” Which, frankly, may be a useful way to spiritually encounter that space. Though, I admit I struggle to be very hopeful in the dentist’s office.

Hope is difficult to translate. Yet it is our Advent work to ask How do we translate hope in 2024? How do we describe what hope means today? I know for some of us, recent days have been difficult. I know immigrants and LGBTQ+ folks who are spending time and money on lawyers, working to secure their rights and paperwork. I also see our food pantry line growing longer every week. I know folks are struggling with rising rents, rising utility costs, rising grocery store prices. The current moment makes talking about hope all the more challenging.

Which is why, I think, Advent begins where it does. Today we encounter Jesus talking about the end of the world. Jesus begins with ominous signs in the heavens, the rushing of the seas, the distress of the people. Jesus begins where all hope for change begins, with disruption. Before we rush to the major chords of Christmas, before the loud trumpet blast of Joy to the World, we spend some time here in the minor chords of Advent, in the dissonant world of the prophets. Advent begins with disruption. Hope begins with disruption.

Richard Rohr talks about a pattern for wisdom: Order, Disorder, and Reorder. The shift from the first to the second, from order to disorder, is tough. We don’t give up our order very willingly. We liked the world as we knew it, or at least we knew the rules. We may not have chosen the disorder, but we do get to choose how we respond. Will we try uselessly to cling to the old order we had, or move forward to Reorder? To rebuild?

This first moment of Advent, let me say, I know Disruption isn’t fun, but it is the only way to what’ next.

The Prophet Jeremiah

Speaking of things that aren’t fun: I want to talk for a moment about the prophet Jeremiah. We have just these few lines from the end of the Book of Jeremiah today, and that’s probably for the best. Because much of Jeremiah is terribly depressing. Jeremiah is so negative that still today in English, We call a long speech lamenting our doom “a Jeremiad.” Jeremiah is a tough read because Jeremiah prophesied in disrupted times. He is the prophet of the Exile, of Babylons removal of the people from Israel.

Remember, the job of the prophet is not about guessing what the future might be. The job of the prophet is about naming the present in vivid terms. Jeremiah named the present. And Jeremiah’s words were not popular. Reality often isn’t popular.

In fact Jeremiah is so unpopular that at one point, they throw him into an abandoned well. Jeremiah starts sinking in the muck and pleading for his life. From Jeremiah we learn, God’s words don’t tend to come from the powerful. God’s words aren’t often popular. It’s one of the difficult truths of the Bible: God tends to speak through those who get stuck in the muck of history.

God spoke through Abraham, a wanderer, an immigrant. God spoke through Joseph, the rainbow-wearing kid whose siblings sold him into slavery. God spoke through Moses, a revolutionary fleeing charges of murder. God spoke through Ruth, a Moabite, an ethnic outsider. God chose a little shepherd boy, the youngest son, to slay a giant and become king. God’s own Son, we learn, had no place to lay his head, and Jesus shared his table with tax-collectors, sinners, women of ill-repute.

Prophetic words don’t tend to come down from the top. Prophetic words are directed up from the bottom, up toward the powerful, up toward the folks who, for the sake of their comfort, have insulated themselves from the world around them. Prophetic words tell the story of how things really are to those who need learn to listen. Prophetic words are words of hope, precisely because they envision a new order. Prophetic words call down the end of the world of exploitation and unfairness. Prophetic words invite us to see the truth and to do something about it.

Prophets help us to name disruption, and to move through it toward the third stage, from Order, through Disorder, to a Reordered world. Even if they don’t get all the way there, prophets help us to translate hope in the midst of disruptive days.

Hope and Waiting

Because hope, it turns out, unfortunately often includes an element of waiting. If I’m honest, I’m terrible at waiting. And here I am in the land of mañana. I need a season like Advent, a season to remind me that waiting is part of hope. There’s a reason the Spanish language doesn’t strictly delineate between hope and waiting. Patience is always a part of hope.

Jeremiah, the old grump, is a prophet of patience. Patience and persistence are how we respond. Jeremiah answers a famous question from Psalm 137, the question also appears in that old song “By the Rivers of Babylon where we sat down, and there we wept when we remembered Zion.” Do you remember the question in the song? The people ask: “how can we sing God’s songs in a strange land?” How can we sing songs of hope? How can we sing our songs when we don’t recognize the world around us. When we don’t speak the language. How do sing God’s songs of hope in this strange world?

Do you know what Jeremiah says to the people? He doesn’t sugarcoat. He doesn’t say, “don’t worry,” He doesn’t say, “you’ll be headed home soon.” Jeremiah does not make light. He tells them yet another unpopular truth. The exile will last. The world will be strange for awhile. But Jeremiah also tells the people what to do while they wait. He says put down roots. The people ask “How can we sing the God’s songs in a strange land?” And Jeremiah gives us one of the most challenging lines I think, in all of scripture:

“Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because your future depends on its welfare.”

Jeremiah’s words actually read “Promote the SHALOM of the city, for in its SHALOM you will find your SHALOM.” Shalom is another difficult word to translate. Shalom is not a shallow sense of peace. Shalom is the very peace of God. Shalom isn’t a peace we would think Babylon would get to know. Shalom is meant to be the peace of Jerusalem, of the ideal city, the holy city, and yet, Jeremiah says, promote the Shalom of the city where you find yourself.

Draw up plans for gardens. Plant fig trees and wait for the fruit. Shalom is slow, patient, work. Promoting shalom requires a commitment to community and to the uncomfortable truths. Work for the reordering of your world, even now, even in this strange disordered land.

So today, on the first day of Advent, Jesus says, yes, the world as it has been is ending. And there will be signs in the heavens. Jesus says, yes this world is ending. The world as it has been will be disrupted.

But notice how Jesus invites his followers to respond: Jesus said, “when you see signs of the world ending: keep alert.” Keep awake. When the sky is dark. When the news is dim. When all the disordering of our world is frustrating do not let your hearts grow weary. That is exactly, exactly, when you need to stay alert. Pay attention and watch for signs of the Reordered world. Translate those signs into hope. These are the days for growing roots, for planting fig trees, for building your capacity for hope. Being a Jesus follower means being a translator for the vision in a world that does not yet comprehend. In a disrupted world, following Jesus means keeping your head up, looking for ways to name hope.

One last note on the translation of hope

One last note on the translation of hope. In Biblical Greek, the word hope, like the word faith or the world belief, it’s not entirely comfortable as a noun. You’ve probably heard this before, but all these terms in the Bible are fundamentally verbs, and all of them: faith, hope, trust, belief, they’re all connected. They get even more connected when you start looking at the original Hebrew or Aramaic words the Greek was translating. In the spiritual life, we are always translating. Hope, like faith, trust, and belief, they’re not really things we have in the Biblical languages. They are all active verbs. We don’t just hold on to hope passively. We actively hope a new world into being. We don’t passively have faith in the Gospel. We put faith into action by reaching out to our neighbor, by bringing good news to those who need good news. Hope isn’t some intangible thing, it is a way of being, a way of acting. Hope is a verb.

I raise this questions of translation to say: if faith, and hope, and belief all feel a little inanimate, a little lifeless, this Advent season I’d encourage you, where you can, to make them into verbs. Practice hope. Practice it, by reaching out, by spending some time in service or working for justice. Practice hope in community, reach out to someone you know just barely from church and invite them out to coffee. Visit someone who you haven’t seen in awhile, someone who is home recovering from surgery or who can’t drive anymore. Practice hope. Seek the shalom of the city where you find yourself. You just might find that the work of hope, like all this faithy stuff, translates better when you make it into a verb.

On this first Sunday of Advent Jesus says “Lift up your heads. Lift up your heads. Know that Christians are always a people of the horizon. We are always watching for the bright coming of dawn. Our work is to speak the word afresh even today. So, how will you translate hope this Advent?