My father used to be a very keen surf fishermen. When I was a young child, he would sometimes take us with him. On these occasions, neither my brother nor I would fish, instead we played on the beach collecting shells or fossicking in the rock pools for hours on end.

However, my father’s  love of fishing fascinated me.

 I couldn’t really get my head around why he was prepared to spend hours and hours standing all alone in the hot sun or cold wind holding a fishing rod, waiting for some random fish to spot his little baited hook and decide it would make a nice snack. Why would you waste all that time when you could just as easily go down to the fishmonger and buy a fish?

I remember that he used to stare fixedly in the direction his rod was pointing, only occasionally removing his eyes from the line of his rod to check that we were still ok.  But for those occasional glances he would stare silently waiting patiently for the tug on the line that would alert him to a potential  catch.

Secretly I admired his tenacious hopefulness.

I admired the way he always believed that he would catch a fish.  He had his favourite spots which were also the favourite spots of some other regular fishermen like himself and he would stand near but not too near to them and it seemed to me that he had a kind of radar,  because he would always know if they were catching anything or getting any bites.

There seemed to be a right time to fish, as the tide was coming in as I recall and at dusk or dawn. We would arrive and there’d be the familiar ritual of setting up the rod and baiting the hook and a mantra which he always cited, ‘today for the big one!’

The only thing that would ever put him off was the sight of porpoises.  Whenever he saw porpoises he would cuss and then pack up and go home in disgust, for, he said, ‘porpoises  chase away the fish’.

As I reflected on the theme of the first Sunday in Advent, I was reminded of my dad’s fishing days. Somehow they epitomise hope for me.

Hope, that  interesting mix of expectation and desire. 

See my dad was ever hopeful. He not only desired to catch a fish, he fully expected to also.  Sometimes his expectations were disappointed but always the desire to catch one refuelled his determination and he’d be back the next week waiting for the big one!

It has been said that Hope is fundamental to being human.

Dostoevsky, the famous Russian author who wrote ‘War and Peace’ once said ‘to live without hope is to cease to live’.

Hope belongs to life and it is interesting to consider that: ‘What we hope for and the manner in which we hope, makes us what we are’.

I am sure that each one of us here today has a hope of a fish we would like to catch.

It may be the hope of a new relationship or a new job; the hope of reconciling a broken relationship; the hope of a son returning home from a year of OE…. Perhaps we could pause for a moment and reflect on our hopes and dreams for the immediate or distant future.

In the Isaiah reading for today, we learn that God is like a father and like a good father he cares about the hopes and dreams of his people.

This Isaiah reading is part of a wonderfully beautiful prayer of hope in God.

This prayer expresses the hope of a people who find themselves in very difficult and dangerous circumstances, under threat of foreign domination.

Yet despite their circumstances they find they have hope. Their hope is in God.

They confidently hope that God will act on behalf of those who wait for  him;

They hope in  God who has done great things in the past for them and who has proved himself trustworthy and reliable;

            They hope in  God who can and will save them even though they are undeserving;

            They hope in  God who is present and available especially in times of crises.

This is the same God in whom we can place our hope today also.

We too can involve God prayerfully in our aspirations and hopes, confident that he is reaching out to us and will hear our cry, that he will act on our behalf and that he will save us even though we are undeserving.

‘‘What we hope for and the manner in which we hope, makes us what we are’.

Christianity offers us the opportunity to hope in a very special way.

For the Christian, hope is one of the three virtues of discipleship. The other two are faith and love.

The Bible uses the word to describe a confident waiting for God’s goodness and salvation even in the most dire circumstances. 

Christian hope begins and ends in God.

It is the desire for God and the expectation of an eternal relationship with God.

1.Advent is a time when we are called to reflect on this Christian understanding of hope.

During the season of  Advent we set time aside to once again reflect on the amazing gift of hope that God gave his people by coming into this world in human form to bring healing and salvation to the world. During the four weeks leading to Christmas we prepare ourselves spiritually to once again receive this gift of hope in remembering Jesus Christ’s birth .

2.Advent is also the season when we highlight the hope we have that Christ will come again as Mark writes in today’s Gospel ‘in clouds with great power and glory at the end of time’. No one knows when that will be but Jesus encourages us to be watchful and alert for it could happen at any time.

3.Thirdly Advent is a time when we are encouraged to reflect on the fact that in some sense our whole life here on earth is a kind of advent, a hopeful waiting and preparation for the time when Christ will come and gather us to himself. While we are here on earth, we experience his living in us, his incarnation if you like, but all the while we live in the hope that there is more to life than this earthly experience. We have the hope that when we die, Christ will come to us in a deeper way and we will be united fully and completely with him for all eternity.

Christian hope is not based on the things of this world. It is not rooted in what this world has to offer us by way of happy circumstances, or material goods or even human ideas.  Christian hope is based on the Biblical understanding that God offers us eternal life through Jesus Christ our saviour. Our future is secure not because of anything this world has to offer but because of the gift of God incarnate in Jesus Christ who lived and died and rose again that we might have eternal life. It is sourced in an historical event which occurred two thousand years ago: the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This past event nourishes our hope for the future. Jesus Christ is our hope for eternity. The Christian is sure of the future because of the gift of the past.

In today’s Gospel reading we see Jesus predicting that the things of this world will pass away.  The temple will fall and we know that it does in AD 70, 40 years after Jesus’ death. This is the generation he is referring to in verse 30. He also declares that the world will come to an end, but he assures us that his words, his truth and the hope he gives us  will never pass away.

‘What we hope for and the manner in which we hope, makes us what we are’.

So how then shall our lives express the things we hope for in God ?

How shall our hope in Christ shape us and transform the way we live our lives each day?

Let us return to the picture of that fisherman standing on the beach.

·His eyes ever watchful, fixed on the rod and line, waiting for the tug on his line that would alert him to a catch. We too must be watchful and alert. We must live our lives with our eyes focused on Jesus lest we miss the tugs and pulls he makes on our lives. ‘What I say to you I say to everyone: Watch’.

·Like the fisherman we must persevere even when our hopes are disappointed. Life is not always easy.  Sometimes things happen that tempt us to despair. Christ does not offer us the hope of an easy life. Rather he offers us the hope of eternity with him and it is that hope that must anchor our lives through all our disappointments and difficulties.

·Those who fish know that it is important to prepare well so that when a fish strikes one is ready for the catch. The reel needs to be well oiled, the bait must be right, the tension in the line must be correct etc. Let us be well prepared for the time when Jesus will come for us. Let us live each day faithful to the call of discipleship. The Scripture for today tells us that we do not know when Christ “the owner of the house” will return, but we must be well prepared when he does.

·Hours of waiting on the beach are finally rewarded and so it is with us. We must be patient.  God is in control. He knows the way for us and he knows the time. We must wait expectantly for him but we must wait patiently also.

So let me say in conclusion, that Advent is a time when we reflect on the hope that we have in Christ.

This hope is not based on our immediate experience of life which can sometimes be more cause for despair than for hope,

but on our hope in God,

in his salvation and

his gift of eternal life offered to us through Jesus Christ our Saviour.

‘What we hope for and the manner in which we hope, make us what we are’.

Let us determine then to live our lives in Christian hope, that is with an expectation and a desire for God at the core of our existence and let us allow this hope to prepare us for Christ’s coming.