Living with Hope

Preached via Zoom 12-13-2020 at Wayside Friends Church

I recently endured a day and a half of significant unhappiness having to do with the COVID plague and its effects on my important relationships. At this time, I thought, I'll have to call my pastors and tell them I'm not qualified to speak about living with hope. Then I went for a walk with my dog up behind a city park where I saw a natural crucifix and looked out over my home town and the surrounding mountains and, when I got home, I felt better.

And I thought, "Going for a walk is an example of living with hope." You see, I know that my chronic tendencies to anxiety, depression, migraine, and fibromyalgia are all lessened by simple exercise. In fact, even "bicycling" on my Wii Fit helps me. I do these things I know to be good for me out of hope, an anticipation of something positive. 

Emily Dickinson, famously reclusive, probably a migraine sufferer, with a distantly polite relationship with God, wrote this about hope:

"Hope" is the thing with feathers - 

That perches in the soul - 

And sings the tune without the words - 

And never stops - at all - 

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - 

And sore must be the storm - 

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm - 

I've heard it in the chillest land - 

And on the strangest Sea - 

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

This poem describes hope as a bird within us, constantly singing its tune through storm, cold, isolation--a bird that lives without being fed. Hope is a grace in this picture, a gift. Hope is associated with the human desires for happiness and comfort and security. Any action we take towards those goals for ourselves or others is an action based in hope, including the action of writing a poem.

The author of Hebrews envisioned hope as an anchor, which has become a common Christian symbol for hope (my paraphrase follows):

Because we human beings are flesh and blood, Jesus also himself became flesh an blood; so that by dying himself, he might destroy the accuser who has the power of death, the devil; And thus deliver his human family who through fear of death were all their lifetime living in chains...It was right for him to be made like us, his family, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. Because he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to help them that are tempted. (Hebrews 2:14-18)

We have a high priest who can be touched with the feeling of our weaknesses, who has been tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, so that we may find mercy and grace to help in time of need. (Heb. 4:15-16)

Though he were a Son, Jesus learned obedience through suffering, and being made complete, became the author of eternal salvation for all who obey him. (Heb. 5:8-9)

Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast. (Heb. 6:19)

The Old Testament Hebrew words translated as hope in the King James Version have metaphors in their souls: cord (signifying attachment); pool (signifying gathering together, like raindrops); hurrying toward refuge, running to safety; waiting; and even digging out or exploring. Hope is both steady and active.

It is meaningful to me that a word search for hope in the Old Testament shows clusters in the Book of Job, in Psalms, and in Lamentations.  Hope's song, as Emily Dickinsons aid, is sweetest in the storm. In the book of Job, we often see Job's comforters assert that we get to hope for good when we have been good, quid pro quo.  Job's suffering gives the lie to this idea (which he may himself have shared when things were good). He lies on his ash heap, scraping his skin with shards of pottery, and says what he thinks is true instead, that God has mysteriously abandoned him despite his being a good man, and that even so, "Though God slay me, yet will I trust him." This is a statement of Job's faith, and his ongoing argument with God is a sign of his stubborn hope.

I had a serious bout of depression in my mid-30s, and during that time was asked to share from the pulpit at my church a passage of scripture I found meaningful.  I read the following: "Cursed be the day I was born, and cursed be the person who brought the news of my birth to my father..why did I ever leave the womb to see misery and woe, to spend my days in shame!" (Jer. 20:14, 15, 18). Suffice it to say I was not invited to share for quite a while after that. But a student of mine who also knew depression expressed to me that it gave her comfort to hear those words. For those who don't know, Jeremiah had many reasons for his dismay: he lived as a prophet among people who insisted on ignoring his words, even throwing him into a dry well to die.  He saw his country and city conquered by the armies of Babylon, and he himself was an unwilling immigrant to Egypt with the refugees, even though he told them that emigrating would end in disaster.  His words were written on a scroll that the king read and burned. No wonder he wished he had not been born. But even so, he acted with hope. He bought land he would never live on, he and his scribe rewrote his scroll, he continued talking with God about his life. And he wrote these famous words, more famous than his words of dismay: "But this do I call to mind, therefore I have hope; the kindness of the Lord has not ended, God's mercies are not spent. They are renewed every morning--ample is your grace! 'The Lord is my portion,' I say with full heart; therefore will I hope in God." (Lamentations 3:21-24)

Living with hope includes speaking honestly to God and about our experiences. We do this, even when we are angry or despondent, because we have hope that God will show up. And God does show up, not to answer our existential questions, but to be present, as in the last chapters of Job.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit priest, wrote many celebratory poems about the beauty in nature and his faith in God; he also wrote this poem, found among his Terrible Sonnets, written from a place of severe depression:

"Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;

Not untwist--slack they may be--these last strands of man

In me, or, most weary, cry, I can no more. I can;

Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be."

Hopkins describes himself as a rope he is thinking about destroying, but he chooses not to do so. The repeated word "not" becomes his act of hope--not despair, not untwist, not choose not to be. For some, waking up still alive is living with hope.  And Hopkins points out to himself that he can make choices that derive from hope. A schizophrenic acquaintance of mine learned to talk back to his destructive voices, an act of hope: "Barry don't want to do that," he would say about some act of self-harm.  When I was on my walk (see opening story), I said to myself, "Your feelings are not despair, but self-pity." Thinking that through was an act of hope. And even self-pity is somewhat hopeful, though neither comfortable nor attractive. One hopes that there will be some improvement, that a better moment will arrive. Meanwhile, as Hopkins wrote, "Let me be to my sad self hereafter kind."

St. Paul writes that faith, hope and love abide, endure. Love hopes all things--hoping for the best for our world; hoping for the best for our enemies.  Hope is not just a feeling, but it also inspires and requires actions. Planting a seed is hopeful--watering and weeding and fertilizing and bracing and protecting--all necessary acts of hope. Reconciling is an act of hope--forgiving and compromising and empathizing--all necessary components for reconciliation. These are hopeful action we can move towards.

Despair is corrosive, like pouring acid on the soul. Contempt is also corrosive, like pouring acid on someone else's soul. Both attitudes reject hope; hope for oneself and hope for others. I recently wrote a protest letter to the members of the Supreme Court, and as an act of hopefulness, sent it to all of them, not just the ones I think are sympathetic. Who am I to limit the possibility of change for even those I see as foreclosed to necessary mercies for human beings? I don't see everything.

T.S. Eliot write in "East Coker," one of The Four Quartets: The only wisdom we can hope to acquire / Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless."

Humility makes it possible to live with hope.

And I would be wrong to ignore the teaching of the resurrection of the dead as our basis for hope. When St. Paul writes of hope, it is most often in the context of the hope of the resurrection. He grounds his whole experience of Jesus on his encounter with the resurrected Christ.

"We do not mourn," he writes, "as do those who have no hope." Our notions of what the resurrection of the dead entails are often sentimental and perhaps inaccurate, but the fact remains that when Jesus was about to die, he told his followers, "I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come again to receive you unto myself" (John 14:2-3).  Believing this makes it possible to work towards loving our neighbors in the here and now. The resurrected Christ was happy to fix breakfast for his frightened followers. 

Whatever scarcities surround us presently, whatever weaknesses or sorrows inhabit our souls, we have a future hope that all tears will be dried and all wounds healed. Let us live with this hope.

Shalom and Division

Preached at Tigard Community Friends Church
January 5, 2020

Picture it: England 1650. King Charles 1 has recently been beheaded by the Parliamentary army under Oliver Cromwell, bringing the divine right of kings to govern to an abrupt end. A war is raging between Protestants and  Catholics over who will rule England. Bear-baiting is a sport, and hangings are a family outing. The Church seemed to be splintering a hundred ways as Ranters say God permits them to do whatever they want in their wild parties, Adamites say God wants them to return to Eden and walk around naked, and Quakers…Quakers stand up and argue with Anglican priests during church, keep their hats on in the presence of the upper class, and refuse to swear loyalty oaths—to pledge allegiance—to the government. The mid-1600s, when young George Fox began preaching and the Quaker movement began, were a wild, violent, chaotic time. And out of that context came the  Quaker “peace testimony.” Several who had served the Parliamentary Army under Oliver Cromwell, fighting for English Protestantism against Roman Catholicism, followed their experience of personal revelation of God out of the army and into preaching. Their testimony was not so much against the military as for their experience of being restored to the innocence of the garden of Eden by the indwelling Spirit of Jesus Christ, and that innocence took away all cause for war.

This testimony also derived from the Quaker commitment to equality of all persons and the determination to swear not at all. This refusal to take the oath of loyalty was frequently used by hostile persons to put Quakers in jail because they refused to swear allegiance to the government and its head. They committed their bodies and souls to be loyal to no political regime, but only to Jesus Christ, despite their natural preference for the Protestant side of the English Civil War. Thus, when the nation returned to King Charles II, they attempted to use their refusal to swear allegiance to Oliver Cromwell to prove to King Charles II that they were called to a different kind of kingdom and were no more or less loyal to King Charles than they had been to Oliver Cromwell. They still went to jail, because political systems demand body and soul loyalty.

The actual lives of Quakers in the beginnings were fraught with persecution from the established Church of England, hostilities from other sects like the early Baptists, and conflicts among the faithful themselves. And those latter conflicts, while they may make us skeptical of their entire restoration to innocence, often came directly from what made their contribution to the whole of Christianity important and worthwhile, namely, their insistence on personal experience of the Spirit of God and personal accountability to obey what the Spirit of God told them to do. This practical mysticism derived from their belief that within every person is a seed of Truth that God’s Spirit speaks to and causes to grow. And though they went on to be separatist and self-preserving, the truth that inspired the first generation ran like an undercurrent into the mainstreams of Christianity and changed how we understand God and our relationship to God through Christ. A soul at peace, in shalom, with God is a soul nothing can ultimately trouble.

At the time just before Jesus was born, the nation of Israel was occupied by a foreign power, Rome, and ruled locally by hereditary enemies represented in the various Herods. The Jews were split internally among collaborators with Rome and religious purists and purifiers, and zealots dedicated to overthrowing Rome. The temple system exploited worshipers for money, particularly the poor or foreign-born. But there were still faithful Jews hoping for the coming of Messiah who would bring Shalom.

Luke 1 tells about the birth of John who became known as the Baptizer. His birth was foretold to his father Zechariah, who just mentioned to God’s messenger that he and his wife were old and she was past child-bearing age and could he please have a sign so that his wife would believe him, and the sign was that he could not talk for the duration of the pregnancy. When John was born, Zechariah’s speech came back, and he prophesied:

“Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, because God has looked on God’s people and ransomed them, and raised a mighty helper for us in the house of David…God will deliver us safely out of the hands of our enemies and of all who hate us, will perform the mercy shown to our fathers and will remember God’s holy covenant, the oath God swore to Abraham our father, to grant that we, having been rescued from our enemies, might worship and serve God without fear, in holiness and right living before God’s presence for all our days. And now you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you go forth before the face of the Master to prepare his ways, to give to his people a knowledge of salvation in release from the bondage of their sins, through our God’s inmost mercy, whereby a dawn from above will visit us, to shine upon those sitting in darkness and death’s shadow, in order to guide our feet into the path of peace.” (Luke 1:67-79)

So let’s see what Zechariah thought would lead to peace, to shalom.

Liberation from oppression

Salvation from enemies

Restoration of the covenant with God through God’s mercy

Freedom to worship without fear, in holiness and justice before his presence, which was understood to be in the Temple

John was to be the prophetic voice that taught Israel to understand their sinfulness, their need for forgiveness, so that their lives would not be characterized by darkness and the fear of death but by light and peace.

And that is what John set out to do. He lived a life of abstinence and purity, spent time in the desert with only God, and then returned to preach. His message was about being washed in living water in the Jordan River to show repentance, the commitment to changing mind and behavior, and to confer release and forgiveness from sins. He told the crowds to share their clothing and food with the impoverished; he told tax-collectors to collect no more than was due; he told men in the army not to extort or falsely accuse anyone and to be content with their wages. His message was right in line with all the prophets before him: be generous, have integrity, tell the truth, be content.

But most importantly, he told them that his baptism was water, but that one was coming who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire, who carried a threshing flail to beat the chaff away from the grain, saving the grain into a storehouse and burning away the chaff “with inextinguishable fire.”

So there’s that to look forward to in an encounter with the Chosen and Sent One of God, the Messiah, Jesus the Christ.

I was asked to talk about Shalom. Because Shalom is a Hebrew word, it is found only in the Old Testament in that form. However, it is very likely that when the New Testament portrays Jesus speaking the Greek word for peace that what he actually said was some version of Shalom. For example, when Jesus said, “Peace be unto you,” he was using a familiar greeting that included the word Shalom. When Jesus talks about peace, the Old Testament Shalom inhabits and fills up the meaning of the word in the New Testament.

The history of how the word is used in the Old Testament is more complex than a notion of peace as tranquility or even the absence of conflict. The root of the word is a verb and these are some of the ways to translate it:

restore, recompense, reward, repay, requite, make restitution, make amends, complete, finish

be at peace, make peace with, make safe, make whole, make good

You can see that inherent in these words is an idea of justice. It is unsurprising that the word Shalom in various forms permeates the books of the Law—Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy. Shalom is about making things right, about fairness, about justice, about adjudicating who owes whom what and defining how to pay it. The word is used to describe the offering of an animal to God to acknowledge sin and make peace with God. The prophets weigh in against deceptive weights and measures because Shalom relates to providing full value, and they assert that God hates it when people cheat each other in business transactions, noting that they most often cheat the poor.

In other words, the concept of Shalom presupposes that things have gone wrong, and acknowledges our deep desire that things go right, that our lives be characterized by completeness, soundness, safety, health, prosperity, quiet, contentment, friendship.

Even the Greek word for peace, eirene, has a probable root that means “to join”, suggesting the prerequisite of something divided prior to the coming of peace.

So Zechariah’s prophecy is a prayer for Shalom.

I want to suggest to you two things. Zechariah’s prophecy as he understood it was too small. When he referred to God’s people, he understood it entirely as referring to the nation of Israel. But we know from the rest of the story of Jesus that the circle widened to include those outside almost immediately, both while Jesus ministered and after the Holy Spirit took over the disciples’ lives and moved them outside Jerusalem, Judea, and to the farthest reaches of the world they knew.

And the process of understanding that all peoples are God’s people has been fraught with division and pain, from the actual Messiah, Jesus, on down to today. In other words, Shalom is not simple, and the enemies of peace are within ourselves and the systems like families, religions, and politics that shape our fears, our shames, and our areas of ignorance. Further, being moved by God’s Spirit from a life of fear and shame and unknowing to a life of faith and acceptance and increasing understanding is painful and requires quite often a kind of divine surgery.

That is why John warns his hearers that the Messiah will come as a reaper, not grim, but determined. The one God sends to save God’s people will not necessarily be experienced as a gentle restorer of balance. In point of fact, Jesus himself makes this point by word and deed.

In Luke 12 and Matthew 10 Jesus describes his mission:

 “I came to set a fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled….Do you think I came to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on there will be five in one house divided three against two…; father against son, son against father, mother and daughter divided against each other…Why do you not judge what is right even for yourselves? For as you are going out with your adversary to a judge, make an effort to settle your debt with your adversary on the spot, so that he does not drag you to the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. I tell you, you most surely will not come out from there until you pay the very last cent.” (Luke 12:49 ff)

I have to say that I was startled to find my thoughts directed (I hope by the Spirit of Truth) toward these passages when I signed on to speak about Shalom. Yet I think we can see our understanding of Shalom informs this passage. If Shalom is about making things right, about making things whole that have been broken, the first great brokenness of humanity is the willingness to be parted from God. This willingness shows up in every action that goes against what God’s Spirit has told us is right and good to do, in every evasion in our own spirits against absolutely trusting in the goodness and love and faithfulness of God and the claims that God has on us because of them. We owe God everything, starting with the breath of life itself, and we will be imprisoned within ourselves by law and justice until we admit what we owe to God, and admit our own inability to pay, and throw ourselves on the mercy of the court where Jesus is our advocate as well as our judge. And then we have to stand naked and unashamed in God’s presence, hiding nothing, allowing God to bring what has been hidden out of the corners where we buried it, running toward God rather than away when we realize we’re not ready to meet God’s eyes. The Old Testament writers called this open stance toward God “a perfect heart”—“perfect” being derived from Shalom, meaning at peace with God, in friendship with God, rather than a heart without flaws. See the relationship between David and God if you want to understand the term.

And this version: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace upon the earth; I came to bring not peace but a sword. For I came to divide a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother…and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. Whoever cherishes father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever cherishes son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take up their cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever gains their soul will lose it, and whoever loses their soul for my sake will gain it. Whoever accepts you accepts me, and whoever accepts me, accepts the One who sent me.” (Matthew 10:34 ff)

This speech occurs in a context of sending disciples out to preach in Judea to Jews. In commissioning them, Jesus warns them of resistance, rejection, and violence in response to the message to repent because God’s kingdom is here. This message of God’s kingdom exposes inmost allegiances, which remain to family, race, religion, not to God.  As long as this is true, God is their adversary, who is contending with them for what they, what we, owe to God—our undivided loyalty, our faith, our faithfulness.

We are so often prone to put loyalty to God in storage while we sign on to our family heritage, our religious tradition, our political party, our national identity. We need, like early Quakers saw, to be restored to the innocence of personal relationship with God Almighty, to walk daily with God, to hide nothing from God. We need to make all other loyalties secondary to this primary one. If we are participating in any system that splits the world into us vs. them, we have been drawn away from our loyalty to God, who has no favorites in the world, who even told the nation of Israel prior to the coming of Jesus, “are you not as children of the Ethiopians to me, O children of Israel? Saith the LORD. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? And the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?” (Amos 9:7). In other words, all the peoples are God’s. God’s care is for all the peoples of the world. And don’t forget the story of Jonah, whom God sent to preach to the political and national enemies of Israel, the Assyrians, and Jonah’s complaint to God when God forgives and does not rain judgment on the Assyrians: “Isn’t this just what I predicted?   I knew that You are a gracious God, merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and that You will choose not to inflict misery.” To which God (eventually) responds: “Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, wherein there are more than 120,000 persons that cannot tell their right hand from their left hand; and also many animals?” (Jonah 4:2,11). Jesus tweaks the religious leaders of his day by referencing this specific story and saying it will be easier for Nineveh in the day of judgment than for Israel because the Assyrians repented when the prophet preached (Matthew 12:41).

Both of these challenging passages are preceded by the following encouragement given by Jesus himself, and I can think of no better way for us to prepare within ourselves the way of the Lord as best we can:

“Guard yourselves from the yeast of the Pharisees, which is pretending to be good. There is nothing thoroughly veiled that will not be unveiled, or hidden that will not be known. Thus the things you said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and what you whisper in private rooms will be proclaimed on the rooftops. And I say to you, my friends, do not be afraid of those killing the body and thereafter having nothing more that they can do…Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight. Rather, even the hairs of your head have all been numbered. Do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” (Luke 12:1-7). “What I say to you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul…Are not two sparrows sold for the smallest pittance? And not one of them will fall to earth without your Father. But even the hairs of your head have all been numbered. So do not be afraid; you are of greater worth than a great many sparrows.” (Matthew 10:27-31)

Jesus says that when we say by word and deed, “I’m with God. I have pledged my loyalty to God” that he, Jesus, will say in front of God’s angels, “I’m with that person; I have pledged loyalty to her, to him, to them.” And nothing can separate us from God’s faithful love. God’s love is committed to our Shalom, to our well-being, to our wholeness, which we cannot have without relationship, friendship—Shalom—with God.  And God will work to burn away the chaff or the nonsense in how we understand ourselves and our relationships in order to leave behind the true grain of our personhood which God will never let go to waste.

 The following helped me write this sermon:

https://www.blueletterbible.org/

The Jewish Study Bible, eds. Adele Berlin and Mark Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004)

The New Testament, trans. David Bentley Hart (New Haven: Yale UP, 2017)

George MacDonald's writings in general