The Way of Hope

Isaiah 40:1-11


Horrible things are happening.

 They’re happening all the time, really, in every place. But sometimes, a people sits up and takes notice of the horrible things and says, no more. And that is happening here right now.  Sometimes the horrible things that are happening get the attention of many people at once, and get under our collective skin – past the worries and the habits and the routines of our day, they get all of our attention at once and we take notice and we say, no more.

And that can be a powerful moment – an important and clarifying moment, when a people takes notice of the horrible things and says together, no more.

And for a moment, when that happens, the veil is lifted and the way of fear is exposed. The way of fear tells me that there are good guys and bad guys and life is a struggle between the two.  The way of fear teaches me that suspicion, distrust, cynicism and tribalism are the best way to deal with those different than myself. 

These years the way of fear tells me that life should be lived in a state of emergency, urgency and threat.  And in this state, it’s ok to react instead of think, it’s ok to dismiss instead of engage, and everyone else is most likely a risk to your own security in some way or another and it’s ok to do whatever it takes to protect yourself. Security, by the way, is what matters most. Security – of my future, my home, our nation, status, property, bank accounts, identity, and reputation.  Achieve and maintain security, no matter the cost. And it costs some way more than others.  The way of fear is usually an airtight status quo that keeps enough of us just content enough, and just scared enough, to stay put and leave everything as is.

But suddenly, in our nation, the false security is punctured, the light is blasting in, and a people is saying, no more, to some of the horrible things.

Nowadays when something important happens, we plug ourselves into the screens and put the sound bites in our ears and feed ourselves on a steady diet of passion and politics and a never-ending stream of input, because we feel like if we are not paying constant, vigilant attention, if we turn our focus away, even for a moment, we are letting down those who are grieving, or missing out on something vital, or somehow not doing our part.  And the urgency is like a drug we can’t get off of, and before we know it we have absorbed the moment of clarity and self-awareness right into way of fear.

Because when we’re giving constant vigilant attention like this, things just seem to get louder and faster and some people get sharper and smarter but more of us eventually get meaner and judgier and more divided and desperate, and confused and hopeless until we weary ourselves of the whole mess and stumble off the merry go round and try to steady ourselves in normal life and feel a little ashamed and also a little relieved because, who can sustain that intensity?

And still, horrible things are happening.

And we’re not seeing a lot of them. We can only look one place at a time, for crying outloud.  So the refugees streaming from war-torn countries or the still-missing kidnapped girls, or the multiplying ebola victims or the heartbreaking poverty in our own city have their turn as the blip front and center and then fade away again or never even get noticed because it is not possible to hold it all at once. We are simply not capable. How can we be responsible for it all?

And right now, so many people are noticing something that has gone unacknowledged or avoided for a long time, and they’re saying, no more.  And it is so important to take notice.  And praise God for a people saying, no more!

But the truth is, there will be more.  

If not this, something else.  There is always more.

And that is heartbreaking to me.

I wish I could turn on a different channel and soak it in for a few days.  One that tells me the truth.  About the horrible things, yes, but also past the pontificating and solutions– I want to turn on the station that tells me in no uncertain terms, Here is your God!"

That God is here. In the middle of it all. That we are not alone.

That God holds onto the pain and the suffering that I cannot bear, is with those we are not watching, and no one is lost.  I want the channel that reminds me that the people are like grass, you and me, fickle and forgetful, and all that we’ve built up as though it is vital will crumble and blow away.

But that love, connection, shared humanity, and a strong and sure God who, like a nurturing shepherd, carries us in her bosom, remains forever.  Tell me about the Kingdom of God, the Big Picture, the real reality under our fake reality, the truth that every single human life matters, each person is deeply valued and loved and delighted in, where the gifts of each person contribute to the whole and there is nobody overlooked or underfoot – all belong and all are meant to be part of the big picture.

Tell me about how we need each other and how we’re meant to trust each other and how we will help each other and receive help whenever we need it. I want to watch the channel where the stories are about strangers reaching out to others until no one is stranger, about building life together, looking out for the weak and parentless, where nobody is hungry because we all share with each other, and nobody hordes or stockpiles money, or weapons or power or food or the high opinions of others because we all share so freely that it’s is not necessary to vigilantly protect ourselves from others, or at others’ expense.

Tell me about that kind of world. 

Is it coming, God? Is it here?

I catch glimpses of it in the longing of protesters and the rage of rioters  - the need for solidarity, the yearning for your justice and your rightness in the world- we have a deep sense within ourselves of how things are meant to be, how they should be!

But we’re full up with pain and anger and weariness, and opinions of whose fault it is that we’re so far off from that, or who should be the one to get us to it and what kind of steps that would take, and frustration that others don’t share our aim or our agenda or our strategy, or are always telling us what to think or believe or crave or do. 

So we’re either drowning ourselves in consumerism and the false cheer of another chipper Christmas season or we’re drowning ourselves in sorrow and anger and despair over our brokenness.  And right now the passion to change is at a fever pitch, but what happens when it wanes? Oh God! Let’s not let it wane! so we stoke the fires of anger and sadness in order to keep on caring intensely so that change might actually happen.

And either way we’re drowning. 

Either way we are still immersed in the way of fear.  It can feel so hopeless.

And there will be more.

Our text today is the word of God to a people in exile. Their homeland has been destroyed by the Babylonians and they are displaced and disoriented.  Fifty years now, give or take, they’ve either made do scattered who knows where, suffering and struggling, or settled into lives in Babylon. Some are in despair and suffering.  Others are getting comfortable in the empire- while Babylon isn’t their choice, and it isn’t their home, it is where they are living.  And if we’re comfortably living in exile, buying into the security the empire provides, perhaps we’ve lost the pining for the homeland – which is to say, if the kingdom of security and power and self-protection, keeps us just comfortable enough, and just scared enough, that we may stop longing for the upheaval of the Kingdom of God.

So as terrible as it is, when horrible things happening come to our collective attention and we sit up and take notice and say no more, we are at least recognizing things as they truly are, and telling the truth about them, and refusing, momentarily, to be lulled into placated acceptance that this is as good as it gets.

I feel hopeful when I see people saying no more – when I see outcries for justice. Not because I have any faith in people’s good intentions, or collective voice, or any other human-centered strategy to fix what is so broken within and around us.

I feel hopeful because it is points to real reality, where we all belong to each other and we will stand side by side and not let others be dehumanized. 

I feel hopeful because it is people briefly wanting to be who we were created to be, living out of our true image-of-God-ness.

And while I know we’re definitely going to blow it a few minutes later and make an enemy out of someone else or ourselves, in this moment, I am reminded that justice will prevail, that death doesn’t win, that love is stronger than evil, and that God is at work, in and through you and me and ordinary people everywhere. God, who comes with might and draws us in gently, is the real sovereign, the real authority, the maker of the Big Picture, and the rest of it will fade and wither like grass. 

I once asked a Benedictine Monk about evil. Real, terrible evil that afflicts people and causes genuine suffering and terror.  What is the best way to fight it? I wondered. 

He looked at me and said simply, there are two ways to fight evil. One is go directly after evil. Study it, pursue it, go after it, become adept at recognizing it and dedicate yourself to eradicating it. That is one way to fight evil.  The other way is to go directly after God. Immerse yourself in love and kindness, prayer and gratitude, search for points of connection and glimpses of redemption and opportunities to forgive and spend time with our maker. 

Seek first the Kingdom of God.  The Big Picture.  Be drawn into God’s way of life.  The way of hope, and draw others along with you.

Comfort my defeated people, God says. Tell them I see them.  And they’ve paid way more in suffering than they ever deserved for whatever they’ve done. Speak tenderly, though, they’ve been through a lot.  And they’re pretty hard on themselves. Gently, let them know they are free. Lead them into the way of hope.

With all the glaring non-stop light of our televisions and smart phones and breaking news and speeding traffic and artificial trees and neon sales and florescent malls, Advent speaks tenderly and offers Comfort. Truth. Honesty. Hope. 

Advent is the time of sitting in the darkness.  Sitting in the darkness but not in the fear.  Sitting in the honesty of what’s really within us and between us and around us, and trusting that God is with us here in this darkness. And when Advent begins like it did for us this year, when a floodlight is shone onto our streets and into our souls and reveals ugliness and pain, suffering and struggle, the darkness of Advent is a gift.

Advent is the night shift nurse after the painful surgery, the quiet, turned-down sheets of healing sleep.  There is nothing here in the darkness that isn’t out there in the light – the wounds remain and the recovery continues.  But here, in the shelter of Advent, waiting for God, we can talk about the hard things and the sad things and the confusing and frustrating things, and we don’t have to be afraid.  And where fear is put to rest, hope is born.

In this text, the comforted ones, those who needs tenderness and care and a gentle word of hope, are also the ones told to get to the highest mountain and declare that God is here.  The broken ones are called the herald of good news. 

Our only security is in the promise of God.  Everything else will crumble and disappear.  

The future that is coming, even now breaking in, it’s God’s future. It is not our own.

It is not our job to make it come; it is our privilege to welcome it each day.

It is not our responsibility to bring it about; it is our invitation to join in as it unfolds.

There will be more.

Horrible things will happen.  There will be more evil and pain and suffering than we can bear. And God sees and holds it all. More than we ever could.

But there will also be more love and peace and joy than we can begin to fathom.  And we are called to live fully and joyfully, to weep with those who weep, and dance with those who dance, and to live in the real reality, trusting in and pining for the Kingdom of God, and inviting each other, even now, to live into the day when the way of fear will be no more, and God’s way of hope will be all in all.  

Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
 and all people shall see it together. 

So get you up to a high mountain, 

O herald of good tidings; 

lift up your voice with strength, 

O herald of good tidings, 

lift it up, do not fear; 

say to a weary and wary world, 

"Here is your God!"

Amen.

in need of a course correction

Matthew 15:21-28

Stubborn Blessing – by Jan Richardson

Don’t tell me no.


I have seen you


feed the thousands,


seen miracles spill


from your hands


like water,

like wine,


seen you with circles


and circles of crowds


pressed around you


and not one soul


turned away.

Don’t start with me.

I am saying


you can close the door


but I will keep knocking.


You can go silent


but I will keep shouting.


You can tighten the circle


but I will trace a bigger one


around you,


around the life of my child


who will tell you


no one surpasses a mother


for stubbornness.

I am saying


I know what you


can do with crumbs


and I am claiming mine,


every morsel and scrap


you have up your sleeve.


Unclench 
your hand,

your heart.


Let the scraps fall


like manna,
 
like mercy


for the life
 
of my child,
 
the life of


the world.

Don’t you tell me no.

Since we last saw Jesus, with the crowds at their kingdom of God feast in the deserted place, where they dined on absurd abundance in the face of the empire’s evil, Jesus has been a few more places, had a few more arguments, walked on some water, and healed a whole lot more people. From there, it says, he went to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 

From there he left the places where he was all the rage and went to a place where most self-respecting Jews wouldn’t wander, and probably few locals had the faintest clue who he was and even fewer cared.  Jesus went off grid a little ways, to the land of the Gentiles, the home of the others. A respite, maybe?  A break from the crowds? A chance to take a breather in place where, hopefully, he’d be a little ignored?

Just then a Cananite woman from that region came out and started shouting, Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon!

Now I don’t know about you, but I can barely stomach imagining the anguish of watching your child suffer relentless torment day in and day out, with no relief in sight. The fear and persistence of it, the struggle and the desire for something different, a hope for her, for wholeness, for a future, for something to end this agony. 

There are lots of mothers, and wives, and brothers, and fathers, and friends who watch a loved one living in torment day in and day out. So many stand alongside while depression carves a gaping hole in who she once was, or schizophrenia or bipolar disorder keep him locked in a cycle of despair, or addiction sinks in the talons and tightens its grip, so many stand by and wish they could help but feel utterly helpless, wish they could change things for her but feel completely at a loss.  What wouldn’t you do to see this one you love set free?

Love and desperation drive this mother, and she has done her research.  This one from Galilee may not be of her people, may not come from her storehouse of resources, or her list of approved vendors, but she has heard things, and there is no way on God’s green earth he is passing through her territory without her giving it a shot.

Have mercy on me!

But Jesus didn’t say a thing.  He did not answer her at all, it says.

It’s as though she’s not even there. Her cries go unheeded.  He keeps on walking.

Then this story gets way uglier.

After a few minutes, his road-weary disciples whine to him, Jesus, she’s bugging us with all that yelling. Tell her to go away.

So Jesus stops, and, I imagine him not even turning his head, staring straight ahead and saying into the air, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

In other words, Lady, Your problems are not my problem.

But God bless her, she will not be put off.

Instead she comes and kneels down right in front of him, and looks up into his face, and says, “Lord, help me.”

And here comes the really cringe-worthy part, Jesus looks down at her and answers, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and give it to the dogs.”

Jesus calls her a dog. And in the process, Jesus also implies that there is only a certain amount of what he has to go around, and he isn’t going to go wasting it, when there are more mouths than he seems able to feed already clamoring at the table.

Now, this is a very strange response, considering the feast he’d just presided over a few days earlier- where the abundant grace of God spilled out all over everyone with more leftover to spare. That meal of strangers made family where sharing actually seemed to increase the gift, and every person shared and every person was filled, and not a soul was excluded.

Now Jesus is standing in a foreign place away from the hometown crowds, with one single person at his feet, begging him for help, and all compassion, not to mention basic decency, seems to have left him.

I will just pause here to say this makes most of us really uncomfortable. We don’t like seeing Jesus like this and we don’t know what to do with it.  Some people try to explain away his behavior, to soften his words, to justify what’s happening here.  But the woman herself doesn’t bother with any of that.  The one standing in the place of suffering on behalf of her beloved daughter doesn’t hesitate to counter back to him,

Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.

And with this she grabs hold of her dignity and talks back to God. She does something bold and prophetic and incredibly challenging to Jesus. It’s as though she says, Fine, I’ll take the role of the dog in your scenario. But if a dog, then I am no feral stray, I am the beloved family pet, who sleeps with the children and sits at the master’s side. I am the master’s responsibility to care for, valued and belonging; this “dog” at your feet, sir, has a place in the household.

And with that brave and wickedly witty retort, she stops Jesus in his tracks. 

In that moment, he is forced to see her – in that moment her humanity is restored.  

She is no longer a hypothetical problem, a distant idea, a burden or a barrier in his path.  And she is not a dog at all, but a sister, a child of God who confronts him with her person, and now he cannot turn away.

So Jesus answers- Woman! How great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish! 

And that instant her daughter is healed.

This Gentile Canaanite woman, the absolute other to the Jewish Messiah, is the only person in the gospels to win an argument with Jesus.  And in this moment, she is the prophetic voice of God, the cosmic course correction in Jesus’ unfolding ministry, that who you thought you came for, and what you’re here to do, may not be as simple and clearcut as all that, and a few chapters later, by the end of Matthew, Jesus is sending his disciples out with the mandate to make disciples of all nations.

By answering Jesus as she does, the desperate mother shifts Jesus out of ideological commitments to personal encounter.  He is taken from the hypothetical religious ideas – I came for the house of Israel – to the personal and human and personal reality – she is my sister and her daughter is suffering and she is asking for my help and I can help her.

And when the shift happens, from ideological commitments to personal encounter, instead of exclusion, suddenly there is inclusion.  Instead of defining people as other, they are brothers and sisters, instead of seeing what we don’t have to give, we do whatever we can to share.  When ideological commitments give way to personal encounter, we are forced to see the person in front of us and be a person ourselves, and in this meeting, God meets us.

The danger of this time for the church is the turn away from the person to the ideological.  And in this week we feel that pull especially forcefully.  The death of Robin Williams thrust depression and mental illness front and center, and the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the fourth unarmed young black man to be killed by police in this nation inside of a month, and the ongoing protests and intermittent violence still happening there brings our utter brokenness and our nation’s deep, underlying racism right to the surface.

This week, when the massacres of whole villages of Christian and Yazidi men, women and children by ISIS militants in the mountains of Iraq and the terrifying spread of Ebola sweeping West Africa are the horrifying if not faint backdrop to these stories of national grief and anger, and the 24 hour news cycle bombards us with nonstop commentary and images, and exposes us to far more than we could ever take in, it is important for us to hear this.

What we are called as a Church to pay attention to and notice, as followers of this Jewish Messiah, what should raise our heads and stop us in our tracks, isn’t terrible disease or lack proper medical help, it isn’t political struggle and corruption, or genocide, and it isn’t depression, or racism, or inequality.

The course correction we are prophetically called by the events of our day to drop whatever is in front of us and turn our whole selves toward is real persons, real persons who suffer and yearn for life so deeply that they will take the crumbs. 

We are called to see and embrace real persons, like you and like me, who have value and worth and are loved, and who stand before us as children of God, with their suffering right there in their hands, demanding that we see them as human beings and hold onto them. 

Real persons who are relentlessly tormented by depression. 

Real persons who are forced to bury their 18 year old boy.  

Real persons who fail alarmingly in their duty to serve and protect. 

Real persons whose live are sacrificed to senseless war or lost to violent sickness or smothered beneath layers of cold bureaucracy. 

Ideologies make us into others from each other, sorting people into friend and enemy and indifferent distraction, and they divide our needs out neatly into categories of “important” and “not my problem.”  They give us the power to judge and dismiss, to stand righteous in our cause and let the chips fall where they may.  Ideologies let the Savior of the world stroll through enemy territory ignoring the cries of a desperate mother. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with believing in a cause.  But when the cause becomes the thing, so much so that it allows us to place it above the very human being confronting us, sinner and saint, a holy mess of contradictions and need, hopes and horrors – when a cause allows us to ignore or dismiss or destroy a person, any person, we are in need of a prophetic course correction.

Following Jesus, it turns out, is not about an ideological commitment, and it is not a call to hold to certain principles and beliefs.  It is a call to join your life to the One who came for us all, the one who comes for real persons, who comes into our suffering and our brokenness, and especially we who long for life so deeply we will gladly take crumbs.

It is a call to see the real persons before us, in their full personhood, dignity, worth and need, and stand on their behalf, to share what we have, and to welcome them in so deeply it might even change us and the direction of our lives.

I have no theological answers for this week, and there is no ideology that can reason our way out of the heartbreaking events surrounding us this day. 

But I do know of one thing.

There is a great and mighty Biblical tradition of lament. 

Of crying out to God in distress and anguish and insisting that we be heard.  And this is a deeply faithful way to stand alongside real persons. 

This is not slapping solutions onto them like they are problems to fix, not rallying a cry around them like they are mascots for a cause, and not psychoanalyzing them like they are issues to be blamed.

It begins with listening deeply to the anguish of real people and refusing to turn away to the ideologies that remove us from the suffering, or the beliefs that keep us safely in our heads.  It begins with the persons in front of us and beside us, and around us, bearing great anguish and great joy, and worthy of great love, claiming their place in the household of God, and demanding by their presence that we take them into our hearts and our prayers, messing with our lives in the process.

There is a great Biblical tradition of yelling back at God, the patriarchs argued for God’s character to be honored and faithfulness to be revealed, the prophets told it like it is, human’s hopeless destructive violence, and God’s promise to restore and redeem instead of raining down the judgment we clearly deserve. 

Come, Lord Jesus, Maranatha!

Christ, Have mercy! Christe Eleison!

Lord, help me!  Don’t you tell me no!

So today, let’s step into that great and faithful Biblical tradition, and stand with the Canaanite woman, and demand crumbs for our tormented daughters and sisters and selves and brothers and fathers, nearby and far away.

Let’s take into ourselves their cries of suffering. Bearing in our very souls the anguish they carry, and holding it up for God to see.  Giving voice to the pain of those whose weeping has grown hoarse, wrapping our arms around those who are stumbling, and laying our hands upon those who march fearfully into the fray of another day and telling them with our bodies and our breath that they are not alone. 

Let’s not be afraid to talk back to Jesus, to remind God that we are all God’s children and the world needs a hearty helping of God’s abundant grace, that every person might share, and every person might be filled, and not a soul might be excluded from the feast. 

Let us pray for each other, sisters and brothers.  Let us pray for the life of the world.