Almighty God, may you guide us to seek your Truth:
come whence it may, cost what it will, lead where it might. Amen.
“Can
these bones live?” “Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die - do
you believe this?” These are questions of hope. Can we trust in something that
seems impossible? Can we believe in something that seems to be contrary to our everyday
experiences of death? Can we live our lives with a foundational story of
abundance and life instead of one ruled by fear and death? This morning, that
is question before us, can we be a people of hope?
There
are five Sundays in Lent before we get to Palm Sunday, and you’ll recall that
throughout this Lenten season, the sermons have all focused on a theme. In our
faith, there are two traps that we can fall into. One is religious extremism,
where we become overly rigid and closed off to the grace of God. In religious
extremism, religion is less about a response to God, and more of a system of
oppression and violence. The other end of the spectrum is religious routinism,
which is just as catastrophic to faith. In a faith that is routine, we talk the
talk but we don’t walk the walk. Faith involves transformation, but routinism
is staleness. In many American churches, the bigger problem is not extremism,
but rather routinism.
In
Lent we’ve been focused on commitments to disrupt our routinism and to call us
back to the vibrancy of faith. And if we are to break out of routinism, we must
remember that these are commitments, not simply thoughts. Commitments require a
change of perspective, a change of action, a change of priorities. We have
considered the commitment to wakefulness – paying attention to the movement of
God in our world and the need for justice. We have considered a commitment to
interconnectedness – connecting our faith to all aspects of our lives and to
all of those around us. We have considered a commitment to mightiness –
recognizing that through the power of God that is always with us, we are
capable of doing mighty things. We have considered a commitment to humbleness –
remembering that God is God, and we are not, meaning that we always have
something new to learn or a new perspective to consider. And today we consider
the commitment to hopefulness – which we might consider to be the queen of all
of these Lenten commitments.
We
might define hope as putting our trust in God’s providence and love, even when
the world doesn’t seem to reflect it as much as we’d like. Hope is acting,
living, and interpreting the world through the lens of God’s mercy and peace.
The great English saint, Julian of Norwich, is often remembered for saying “All
shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
That is hope. Martin Luther King said that “the moral arc of the universe is
long, but it bends towards justice.” That is hope. The ultimate fulfillment of
our Christian hope lies in the fullness of God which will one day be fully
manifest, but until that day comes, we are still surrounded by moments when
this future hope breaks into our present reality. Hope is the Christian
practice of staring death, sin, and evil in the face and saying “You might win
this encounter, but you don’t get the last word.”
Hope
though is not wishful thinking – whether it be for world peace or you winning
the lottery. Often, we are not precise in our language. We say that we hope it
doesn’t rain tomorrow if we have a picnic planned. But that’s not hope. Hope is
always oriented towards the reconciliation, justice, and grace of God. And hope
is not the same thing as optimism. Optimism might be seeing the glass as
half-full, but hope is trusting that God can take a half-empty glass and make
it full.
Nor is hope about wearing
rose-colored glasses and thinking that “everything is okay.” No, hope can say
“this is a bad situation,” but hope is the midwife to God’s presence and
salvation. Hope knows that there is no situation so dark that light cannot
come, no sin so bad that forgiveness cannot come, no despair so deep that joy
cannot come, no death so final that Resurrection cannot come. Hope is bold,
hope is defiant, hope is holy.
Hopefulness
is not always a peaceful experience though. Hope often causes not rest, but
restlessness. Hope does not result in patience, but impatience. Once we commit
to hopefulness, we experience a longing for God’s kingdom to come on earth as
it is in heaven. And the current disconnect between the ways of this world and
God’s love will become excruciatingly apparent. The contradiction between what
we hope for and what we have can be unnerving and frustrating. So if we dare to
hope, we must be rooted in a community to keep us from slipping into extremism
in our vigor or routinism in our frustrations.
And we must be rooted in
God through prayer and Scripture reading to remember that the ultimate triumph
of hope is God’s work, not ours. Certainly, we have a role to play, but we
already have a Messiah and we’re not looking for another. There is an ancient
Jewish wisdom saying that “It is not your job to finish the work of God in the
world, but neither are you free to desist from it.” Because salvation is God’s
work, not ours, hope liberates us from the idolatry of trying to be our own
Messiahs. But this also makes hope a challenge because it means that we are not
the ultimate master of our own destiny.
As Archbishop Desmond
Tutu has said, hope is hard work. When optimism dies, hope arises. Going
through the death of optimism though is difficult. Hopefulness happens when we
remain committed to justice though injustice surrounds us. Hopefulness happens
when we still trust in God even when things don’t all work out. Hopefulness
happens when we relinquish our vision of how things ought to be and trust in
God’s providence. Hopefulness happens when we believe, as St. Paul writes in
Ephesians, that God can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. And if
we can have this hope, then we avoid the rut of routinism.
One
of the prototypical Biblical stories of hope comes from Ezekiel. In a vision,
the prophet Ezekiel is taken to valley of dead, dry bones. These bones
represent Israel – a defeated nation. There had been promises that Israel would
prosper, that a king of the lineage of David would remain on the throne, that
God would always be with the people of Israel. But those promises seemed to be
broken and forgotten. Invading armies had conquered the people and took them
into exile. The Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed. Hope was lost and
despair was common.
God,
though, remained hopeful. The Spirit of God rushed into that valley and the
dead, dry bones were again full of life. It is a vision of Resurrection, and
what is the Resurrection but the possibilities of God breaking into the
impossibilities of our world. The question put to us by this reading is where
are you in a valley of dead, dry bones? Where are you devoid of hope? Where can
you not see the way out? In what ways do you feel cut off from God?
God
asks each of us – God asks you – can these bones lives? Notice that Ezekiel
wasn’t optimistic or certain, but he remained hopeful, as he said “O God, you
know.” Can you muster up that much hope, to simply trust that God can bring new
life to dead situations, even if we can’t fathom it. This week, spend some time
reflecting on this, and then have a conversation with God about it. Tell God
where you feel dry, tell God where you experience deadness. Then, invite God to
breathe life back into those places of your life.
We
see hopefulness in John as well. In John’s telling of the Gospel, the raising
of Lazarus is the pivotal story. Before this event, Jesus was a rebel-rousing
annoyance, but after this incident the chief priests and Pharisees got together
and as John tells us “So from that day on they planned to put Jesus to death.”
Again, hope is subversive and defiant. Hope means that things beyond our
ability to understand or control are possible. People that are committed to
hopefulness won’t be dissuaded by defeat or death. And so the powers that be
will do their best to drive this sort of Godly hope out of us.
The
question put to us by this Gospel event is “Do you believe this?” Do you have
this hope? What is the animating narrative of your life? Is it “hard work pays
off”? Is it “you reap what you sow”? Is it “he who dies with the most toys
wins”? Is it “death is final”? Is it “I have to look out for me and my family
before others?” Is it “love wins”? Is it “all shall be well”? Is it “Jesus is
the Resurrection and the Life?” Think about it, in 10 words or less, how would
you describe the world? What is it that you long for? What does our schedule,
our budget, our associations, our self-image say about our hopefulness?
It
is so easy to operate with fear, scarcity, or pride as our animating story. It
is can be satisfying to pursue success in the way that the world defines it: a
house, a family, a nice savings account, a powerful job title. But the question
that always haunts us will remain – is this all there is? Does my life matter?
What happens after I die?
Jesus
invites us into hopefulness as a response to these deep questions. There is a
life-giving hope that we find in Jesus. It is a hope that life can come out of
death, that justice can come out of brokenness, that mercy can come out of sin.
This hope can be our story, it can be the narrative that gives meaning,
purpose, and direction to our lives. Our hope is in God’s ability to save us
from all that stands in the way of God’s love.
This
is why hope is the summation of our Lenten commitments. The disconnect between
reality and hope is what wakefulness is about. Interconnectedness is about
connecting God’s hope for the world and our lives. Mightiness is what happens
when this hope becomes manifest. Humbleness is rooted in our trust and hope for
God’s salvation. Hopefulness is what Lent is all about. Lent is a season of
self-examination and repentance as we prepare for the hope of Easter
Resurrection.
So
as we prepare to transition into Holy Week next Sunday, spend some time this
week thinking and praying about hope. What do you hope for? What is God’s hope
for you? Where do you struggle to find hope? Where is there is a disconnect
between our Christian hope and the reality of this world? How might you commit
more to hopefulness – to seeing, trusting, and living with God’s narrative of
peace and love as your foundation? Once you’ve thought about this a bit, ask
God to help you to live in hope.
