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19 Hope is a central theme of Advent. Yet if we're paying attention to the world around us, this annual Advent focus can feel painfully naïve—even hopeless. Political turmoil within and between nations never really ends. Campaign promises never come true in the way they were pitched. Even when progress occurs, setbacks are often just around the corner. Hopelessness seems far more realistic than hope. Psychologists tell us that hope can get us through tough times even if it is only the sensation of hope. Is that all there is to our annual Advent "hope-fest"? A psychological coping mechanism couched in Christian language? Matthew records Jesus' words to a crowd after a tense engagement with some Phar- isees. Allowing his hungry disciples to pick grain, healing a man on the Sabbath, and presuming the authority to make those calls, he had threatened their assumptions about what God values. Somehow they had lost the main point—that God cares about peo- ple, justice, and redemption. Jesus identifies himself with the figure God described in Isaiah 42:1-4: the one who will "proclaim justice to the nations" and "lead justice to victory." Doesn't seem like much of that has happened, does it? Yet perhaps between those two references to justice lurks the clue we need in order to calibrate our hope. God's chosen servant would not bring justice in the way we normally expect. He would not be contentious or combative. He would not campaign with loud claims and denouncements. John Goldingay points out, "Yahweh's servant will support bent reeds rather than trampling on them and will fan flickering flames rather than dousing them." Frederick Dale Bruner insists, "[H]e exercises his Lordship in a fresh way—as Servant of the Lord, as Son of Man, as the Quiet Savior." THAT, surprisingly, will be the hope of the nations! THAT frees us from looking for hope in familiar mechanisms, promises, and resources. THAT even allows us to work for justice aggressively and tirelessly, with our hope in God for the final results. Offering that type of hope will never get a person elected. That type of hope, however, is aimed at the only One who can and will ultimately bring righteousness at the core of the problem. Thus, Advent actually chastens, clarifies, and redirects our hope in the only realistic direction. Don J. Payne, PhD AssoCiAte professor of theology And ChristiAn formAtion discovering hope December 14 "In His name the nations will put their hope." – Matthew 12:21