Today is the Sunday of Hope and there is LOTS I want to say to you about the central and amazing power of hope in our lives.
I find that much that is written about hope is
written from a very theoretical standpoint, exploring Hope as a construct
within philosophy, sociology or anthropology.
Even the scriptures given for this first Sunday of Hope can tend to keep
us in that speculative realm, viewing Hope as something that resides in a
distant promise that the final resolution of life as we know it, will be a
return of Christ and the unveiling of a new heaven and a new earth.
But for me, Hope is something we need every
day; right now, not just on the horizon of eternity. It’s the key ingredient to a day where
everything is going wrong. It’s the motivator
when our big plans fail. It’s the
comforter when we lose a loved one. It’s the sustaining light when life starts
to be sopped in by hopelessness. And,
most importantly, Hope is always there, even when we can only see
disappointment, and loss, and regret.
Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When bad things happen to good people,
has written a wonderful book entitled Overcoming
Life’s Disappointments. In this
book, Rabbi Kushner uses the life of Moses to examine the way that God brings
us forward when things turn sour.
Perhaps the high point of this book, for me, was Kushner’s re-framing of the encounter in the 3rd
chapter of Exodus between Moses and God at the burning bush. This is the time where Moses asked God, “what
shall we call you? What is your name?” and God replies, “ I AM who I AM”.
I’ve always loved this scripture, because it
reminds us that God is not defined by a particular function - God is more about
“being” than “doing”. But Rabbi Kushner (p.15)
takes this text in a different direction entirely, radically changing my
understanding of the nature of God. He
calls the Hebrew in this scripture “virtually untranslatable” with most
translators going for “I am who I am” or “I will be who I will be” but in
reality the Hebrew is more like “I be” or “I am being.” Kushner notes that elsewhere
in scripture, these words are translated, “I am with you.” Think of that for a moment. When
God grants humanity that one direct, physical manifestation - a burning bush - and
is asked, “what is your name?”, the answer is, “my name is – I am with you.”
Could it be, then, that the core of our
relationship with God is not so much love, or justice, or peace, or guidance,
or deliverance? Could it be that all of
those things are wonderful manifestations of God’s glory, but the very core of
our relationship with God is simply that “God is with us”? The
idea of God’s self-identification being “my name is – I am with you” brings my
theology of hope to a whole new level.
From the fall of 2000 until this summer, I
worked at a school for gifted learners.
The societal view of giftedness typically figures that a gifted program
would simply scoop the kids with the best marks so they could go off and be
smart together. But my understanding of
giftedness, and the principles under which our school was founded, bears little
resemblance to that.
Yes, gifted children have a great capacity for
academic learning, but it’s the intensity of their inner world that defines
them as a group. Their curiosity is
intense, their creativity is intense,
their interests and hobbies are intensely held, their attention span and their ability
to synthesize disparate ideas are unusually strong, their need to understand is
through the roof. But what happens when
that intensity bumps up against the inevitable curves and roadblocks of
life? What happens when there is not
enough time to make things perfect? What
happens when the world around you fails to understand a deep concept that you
mastered in mere moments? What happens when you cannot make sense of something
that matters deeply to you?
Working in a gifted population, the number one
goal is not academic excellence, it’s
the building of resilience. Resilience helps gifted kids to develop a
toolbox to help them figure out what to do next when their passionate intensity
is thwarted. And that’s true for any of
us. When we believe passionately in
something – in a dream we are pursuing, in a relationship we expect to be free
of betrayal, in an investment we’ve sunk everything into – we need to have a
way to move forward when there is a stumble or unexpected development.
There’s any number of educational or
developmental strategies to help us build resilience, but I come back to the
words of Harold Kushner: at the very heart
of God, is this reality – GOD IS WITH US.
For no matter how much we were counting on that dream, no matter how
much we trusted that relationship, no matter how much our future relied on
those dollars, the power of God’s love is greater. And that’s true whether we picture God as a
heavenly being whom we can talk to, or as the life-force of the cosmos. The only building block truly needed for
resilience, the source of all hope, is that in all things, God is with us.
When I ponder the gift of hope, there are two
things I want to do with it. First off
is good old fashioned praise, I want to thank God with my whole being for the
gift of hope. But the second thing is, I
pray that the gift of divine hope could be a strong and recognized force within
everyone’s life.
In particular, from my experience working at a
school, and from observing my own extended family, I see a huge population of youth
and young adults who have grown up without any sense of a divine presence in
their lives. Now, this is certainly not
a new problem – even when I was growing up, ours was one of the VERY few
households in our neighbourhood that went to Church on Sundays, and God-talk
was reserved for those with very narrow religious views - but these days, I do see
a diminished sense that life has a divine context as well as a human
context. On the upside, social media
like Facebook have increased the amount of support that youth and young adults can
find through various circles of friends, but the downside is that those same
circles of friends can turn on you in a huge, fickle wave. That cannot be the
source of one’s hope.
What I want to offer the age group of my own
son and daughters is a sense (a) that God is NOT all about judgment and (b) God
is the ever-present power that lives within you and beyond you, and keeps you
moving in positive, life-giving directions.
I want to offer them the gift of God’s gracious gift of resilience, so
that life’s extreme pressures and extreme disappointments are seen as being
held in the palm of God’s hand, and don’t point toward violence or self-numbing
behaviours or suicide. I want to remove
any obstacles that I or we have put between our children and their God, so that
the force of the divine may be more easily seen and embraced and loved.
I don’t need them to demonstrate their walk
with God in familiar or approved ways – in fact, my kids’ generation is already
way more adept at working for social change than my buddies and I ever were,
and there is a segment deeply involved in all manner of spiritual questing. What I do desperately want for them is to
know that at a cosmic level and at the most personal level, they are always
companioned by a caring God who knows their greatest need and their greatest
capacity for love.
If there is one message I want all of us to
bring forward from today, is an understanding that the very essence of God, is
God’s presence with us at all times. No
matter what the disappointment, we do have an innate resilience to find a new
way forward, because the holy one is always in our midst and in our
hearts. And while I’ve been speaking
mainly about the disappointments and curve-balls of daily living, there is a
bigger aspect as well to this notion of hope.
I realize that in much of this sermon, I’ve
been speaking from the comfortable position of someone living in the northern
hemisphere, for whom emotional or financial challenges may be the greatest
challenges faced in a day. With that
being the case, I cannot leave today’s message about hope without at least
touching on the 32nd and 33rd
chapters of Jeremiah, where we hear some remarkably hopeful declarations in the
midst of turmoil. In those days, the
nation of Judah was on the verge of being defeated by King Nebuchadnezzar, and
the Jewish people would soon be exiled to Babylon. Again and again in these two chapters, in
the face of external pressure and weak internal leadership, Jeremiah proclaims
God’s promise, that the punishment being endured at the hands of the
Babylonians would not be permanent. So
when we hear today’s reading, promising a descendant from the line of David who
will bring peace and righteousness to the people, it’s not an isolated
proclamation. Through his actions, and
through the words given to him by God, Jeremiah consistently delivered a
promise of hope to a people under siege.
The message of hope, given by God through
Jeremiah, was extremely important to the nation of Judah in those difficult
days; it has shaped our understanding
of Jesus as Messiah, the holy one who delivers us from all hopelessness; and it
is still being heard in all its fullness today by people facing every bit as
much pressure as the Babylonians were exerting way back when. When the stakes are high – when Christian
minorities in nations all around the globe are facing challenges to their very
existence – God’s ongoing, loving,
powerful presence is THE hope that gives shape to each day.
Whether
it’s the life-and-death hopes of Jeremiah 33, or the “bounce-back” hopes of coping
with daily challenges or disappointments, God is always the one named “I am with you.” Friends in Christ, in the moments ahead, as
we share the meal of hope that Christ shared with his frightened followers, and
in the days ahead, as we engage the challenges of daily living, know that we
are not alone – God is with us. Thanks
be to God.
Works Cited:
Kushner, Harold S. Overcoming Life’s Disappointments. NYC: Knopf, 2006.
For some fun and practical tips on Resilience,
see
Salmansohn, Karen. The
Bounce Back Book: how to thrive in the face of adversity, setbacks, and losses. NYC: Workman, 2007.
© 2012 Rev. Greg Wooley, Ralph Connor Memorial United Church, Canmore AB
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