(Hebrews 11.1; Matthew 28.20; John 10.10; Matthew 11.28-30; John 14.27; John 15.4)
A sermon preached by Cynthia Figge and Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time: August 9, 2009
The seventh in a summer series on sermon topics members of the church have asked to hear about.
This morning's topic: What is radical hope?
Cynthia
What do we hope for? Is there hope? I started with these questions after hearing Dave's sermon soon after returning from speaking at a technology conference on the state of the future. At that conference I talked about how each day the oceans absorb 30 million tons of CO2, increasing their acidity. The oceans are warming about 50% faster than the leading global scientific body reported in 2007, with the number of dead zones doubling every decade since the 1960s. Human consumption is 30% larger than nature's capacity to regenerate. James Hansen, a leading NASA climatologist, argues we must reduce CO2 below where we are right now to avoid hitting a point of no return for global warming. Hansen is joining student protests of coal plants, believing that we must close all coal plants within two decades. World energy demand will most likely double by 2030, with China and India accounting for over half the increase. The world's population is 6.8 billion, and expected to grow the 9.2 billion by 2050. A billion people are undernourished, lack safe water, have the highest birth rates, and live on just $1.25 a day. This group could grow to 3 billion people by 2025. While we may worry that "our" jobs are being outsourced, the challenge of global joblessness is staggering. And we are facing the extinction of species at the highest rate in sixty million years. Some experts speculate that the world is heading for a time in which technological change is so fast and significant that we today are incapable of conceiving what life might be like beyond the year 2025.
As I was leaving for the airport an attendee said, "I had no idea about all these problems. This is the most hopeless I have been after this conference. What can I do? It's a global systems challenge." It was very hard for me to hear this woman say she felt hopeless because that's not how I see it. Since 1996 I have been working in the field of sustainability, with the gift of "seeing ahead" and coming back to my business clients to help them see how to change and adapt to the social and environmental changes ahead. Although the signs have become clearer over the past 14 years, the pace of change is slow…
We are passing the reins to our young adults including Ross, Ben and Abby in a time of enormous uncertainty. To some extent our youth are undaunted by the peril, which is good, for who would dare to change systems of oppression or economic systems if we really knew what we were up against? I think of people who are hopeful in spite of the evidence that this is a bit crazy (Harvey Milk, young suffragists, and others).
However, this new generation has the ability to keep evolving to connect the right ideas to resources and people to help address these global and local challenges. They are the first generation to act via the Internet with like-minded individuals around the world. This is a unique time in human history. We are interdependent and can create solutions together.
Perhaps there's some combination of belief, knowledge, foolishness, and persistence that leads one to radical hope. I like radical with the word hope because it implies moving beyond a mental state to action.
Hope is not a frivolous word. I watched its power during the Obama campaign, and eagerly read his book, The Audacity of Hope. As I have wrestled with this word over the past two months, the new question that has emerged for me is what is hope?
Hope is not optimism. Optimism is moving toward a positive outcome in ways we can see. Hope is the fulfillment of God present now, hope is realized by making the life giving choices - every day we can do this. Hope is not measured by an endpoint. We are moving into hope every day as we live out our call and passion. So hope is very personal. One of the things I love doing is starting new businesses. This feels really hopeful to me. There's something in the creation - the ambiguity, uncertainty, unknown outcome, giving something you've imagined some real form in the world. There's no promise of success. Start-ups become the fulfillment of imagination, and I'm energized by it. Dancing is also hopeful because I allow myself to be completely in the moment of movement. That's the other side of hope: being willing to NOT looking forward to promises – the fulfillment NOW piece.
In my senior year of high school and summer before college, despite good grades, close friends, and meaningful accomplishments, I felt a certain despair. I think I was seeking the source of real hope. This led me to a much deeper relationship with God, Christ and the Holy Spirit. I now realize that my hope and "save the world" gene flows completely from faith. And I also see that my faith is embedded in this gathered, hopeful community. It brings me to one of my favorite scriptures in Hebrews 11:1 – Faith is substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
So my hope is global, personal and anchored in this beloved community.
Before handing the baton to Dave, I want to say how in awe I am that Dave considers these enormous questions of our minds, hearts and souls each week, and weaves all the strands into a whole cloth. So I turn to Dave with the question of not what is hope, but who?
Dave
Until Cynthia and I started talking about hope, I thought I'd thought about hope a lot. As a pastor and a therapist, I often walk beside people who feel like hope is very far away. As someone who at times lives with clinical depression, I know how about being in that dark and lifeless space that seems to repel any light and hope that seeks to enter it. As a preacher, I spend a lot of time in the Gospels. The word gospel means good news. And spending so much time with the Gospels means I should know something about hope.
But hope moved into our house this week, and made itself at home. Hope and I have shared meals, prayed, watched a really mediocre DVD, read a great novel, and gone to a Spanish class together. We spent time at the Recovery Café. We listened to a woman talk about her hope that maybe now she's ready to be the mother she's always wanted to be. We listened to a woman whose boyfriend had again hit her share the hope that, maybe this time, she won't go back to him. After spending so much time with hope this past week, there's at least one way that I have a totally different view of hope than I did when Cynthia and I talked about hope for an hour on the phone last Sunday night.
What's different is that now I can't talk about hope in terms of a what. I can only talk about hope in terms of a who.
How do we talk about hope?
We hope for love, for less anxiety, for a better job – or any job. We hope for friends, for a place we feel like we belong, for meaning, for a championship. We hope our kids are happy and safe. We hope they have a good life as they move into the world. And as they move into their worlds, we hope they still find ways and room to love us. We hope for justice, for wiser hearts, for God to show up, for more chances to play.
These are the 'what' of hope. They're what we hope for.
What happens when something we hope for comes true? We usually feel more alive. Happier. Grateful. More confident life can be good. But even when that happens, there's usually a tiny part of us that is still looking for something. A tiny part of us that's still hungry, still longing for something. And after a while, something changes. The hope that came true doesn't offer what it used to. We're different, so what we hope for is different. So we try to make another hope come true. When that comes true, we're glad . . . and there's that tiny part of us still that is looking for something more. And the cycle starts over again. Everything we hope for and get eventually disappoints us . . . because we change, and life changes.
Sharing home with hope this week has shown me I can only talk about hope in relation to a who. And that who is Jesus Christ.
These are some of the words of hope Jesus offers. [All passages below are taken from The Message © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by per ission of NavPress Publishing Group.]
"I'll be with you, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age."
(Matthew 28.20)
"I have come so you can have real and eternal life, more and better life than you ever dreamed of." (John 10.10)
"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. . .Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." (Matthew 11.28-30).
"I'm leaving you well and whole. That's my parting gift to you. Peace. I don't leave you the way you're used to being left – feeling abandoned, bereft. So don't be upset. Don't be distraught." (John 14.27)
"Make yourselves at home in my love." (John 15.4)
My hope lies in the one who spoke these words because he still lives. Christ still lives these words and calls all who want to follow him to radical hope. In Jesus is radical hope. Radical hope for a better-than-we-can-possibly-dream-of life that moves to unforced rhythms of grace. In Jesus is the radical hope for the peace that frees us from our fear, and frees us for a home in his love that never dies.
How he loved, what he did, how he died, how he rose to new life, how his Spirit gathers the Church and calls us all to radical joy and justice: these are why I can only talk about hope by talking about Jesus. He is my hope. He is hope because he spoke hope as God-in-the-flesh. And he speaks hope as the Risen Spirit who walks by our side. He is hope because he lights a fire in his church so we don't settle for tired slogans and delayed justice.
St. John of the Cross lived in Spain in the 1600s. One night he had a vision. In that vision, he saw a man standing at the doorway of a long gate. Beyond the gate was utter, total darkness. John walked up to the man at the gate and said, "Give me a light, that I may tread safely through the unknown." The man replied, "Step into the darkness. Put your hand in the hand of God. That will be a better light, and safer than a known way."
If my hope were in a what, I could hope for the courage to step into that darkness. I could hope that there'll be a flash of lightning right over that darkness, so I'll be able to catch a glimpse of what I'm stepping into. I could hope someone shows up so I can step into the darkness with someone I can see. I could hope that there's nothing in there to be afraid of. But I don't believe radical hope can rest in a what.
What's radical hope? Hope that frees me from the fears that keep me from the life God wants for me.
For me, the only hope that frees me from such fears is a who. My hope is the living God, the living Jesus Christ, the living Spirit . . . who calls out to me from the dark. Who asks me to hope when hoping seems insane. And who always holds out a hand in the darkest of darkness . . . and hopes I have enough hope to hold out mine as well.
Amen.
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