Called to Hope

 

I love reading the call stories of the Biblical ancestors. I especially love reading them now, in a time where the United States is under the threat of losing democracy to authoritarianism and fascism. 

These stories are the reminders that we are not in some unknown, foreign weird landscape that the world has never seen before. It has. The sadness, for those of us here, is that we are used to reading about this sort of stuff happening in the past, or on some other continent. I know that when I studied German as my foreign language (and therefore was exposed to the history of Germany and the Holocaust) I resented my fellow classmates who acted as if there was something weak or intrisically wrong with the German people that we "exceptional" Americans would never be that bad. 

I knew they were wrong. I knew that human nature was such that people would rather look for scapegoats rather than to face their own failures, or in this case, see that they're regarded as cannon-fodder or-- as Elon Musk referred to the rest of us---NPCs or Non-Player Character, those computer generated "others" in a video game. Nobody likes to feel as if they're worthless. But that is how we're viewed by the tech bro billionaires.

I didn't think I would actually live to see our country fall prey to the same evil that led Germans to put their trust in Hitler, scapegoating Jews and labor unions and other minorities like gypsies and queers, and building camps that becamse killing grounds.

We don't have ovens. Yet.

Again...there is nothing new about any of this. And that includes the response of those who are the marginalized. The thing that kept the Underground Railroad running...and saved the lives of countless others who have faced evil extremists: Hope.

And that was my main message this week. See what you think.

Text: Jer. 1:4-10; Luke 13: 10-17

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Anyone who has ever felt called by God to do something always seems to have the same response.

“Really, God? Are you sure?”

Moses told God, “Listen, God: I’m a stutterer.”

God said: “Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m going to send your brother Aaron with you to talk to Pharaoh.”

Mary…looked at the Angel Gabriel in disbelief when he told her she was pregnant…and she said, “But I’m a young woman. How am I supposed to have a baby?”

And Gabriel said, “Nothing will be impossible with God.”

There’s always some apprehension…a level of confusion…and a good dose of humility when God decides to pick on someone to step out of their ordinary life and take up the cause of the holy.

And in the case of Jeremiah…it was a lot of risk.

We’ll be hearing more bits and pieces from that book over the next several weeks.

But the thing to remember is that he has been tasked with warning people of an impending invasion.

Nobody really likes what he has to say.

Nobody really wants to hear what he has to say.

He’s going to be severely beaten and punished and hated for speaking the words God is going to put into his mouth.

There will be plucking up and pulling down.

Destroying and overthrowing.

His people are going to be living in exile.

So…it shouldn’t surprise us that Jeremiah’s initial reaction to this assignment from God is, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.”

A poetic way of saying, “Please God: not me. Go find someone else. Can’t you pick on somebody else for all of this?”

But even in the midst of all the tragedies…and that sense of things falling apart…God also says to Jeremiah that he is going “to build and to plant.”

From the ashes there will be new life.

Because God is not going to give up.

That is one of the most consistent themes in Scripture: in God…there is hope.

We may be ready to throw in the towel… and we may feel overwhelmed.

But thanks be to God—God does not stop the relentless pursuit of us and finding a way forward where there appears not to be one.

We get confirmation of that message in the Gospel reading from this morning.

Here’s a woman…who has clearly been in pain for years.

A “spirit” had crippled her.  

That’s the First Century science that thought any sort of ailment must be because of some kind of “sin” on the part of the sick person.

But looking at this through my eyes as a massage therapist…I think we can read this as her body telling a story of what has been going on inside of her head and her heart.

Depression can do that to a person.

I’ve seen it in my practice.

The weight of the world…troubles at home or at work…can manifest outwardly in a person’s posture.

We hear that this woman has been bent over this way for eighteen years to this woman…eighteen being the numeric value of the Hebrew word “chai” as in “life.”

Life has left her crippled.

Notice that she never asks Jesus for anything.

Yet Jesus sees her…he calls her…and he heals her.

 She stands up straight and tall and bold…and praises God for this gift…instantly becoming a witness to what happens when Love touches the wounded soul.

Of course…then a controversy ensues about healing on the sabbath…and Jesus not only defends his actions.

He shames those who would object by pointing out their hypocrisy….one might even call it their misogyny.

He notes that these naysayers think nothing of doing the work to take care of their donkeys on the sabbath.

But how dare he take care of a woman!

Is she not as important as their donkeys?

And—again—this happened without her saying anything to him or asking him for help.

She may have lost all hope that she would be cured.

But God saw her pain…and in that healing…God restored her hope.

And that’s what we’re asked to do: maintain hope…in the face of trouble and difficulty.

That’s hard work.

Every day seems like another bad news day in America with masked federal agents and civil rights getting trampled on.

In fact…one of my friends…a priest at an Episcopal church in the northwest part of DC…posted on Facebook last Sunday that he had to cancel his service that morning.

The members of his congregation…many of them Latino… were too afraid to leave their homes.

A number of us offered our love and support to him in having to make such a difficult decision.

My hope is that he’s able to hold church this morning…so he can offer love and support to his people who are so scared.

It’s hard to hang on to hope in moments like now.

But hope is that lifeline that’s thrown to us so we can weather through the difficulties and sadness and anxiety and fears.

I heard a wonderful quote this past week during my morning prayer time that I think captures the importance of hope as we live into this moment.

It’s from an essay called “The Small Work in the Great Work” by the Reverend Victoria Safford.

She was reflecting on the resilience of those early pioneers of the gay equal rights movement.

Safford writes:

“Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of hope. Not the prudent gates of optimism which are somewhat narrower.

Nor the stalwart boring gates of common sense.

Nor the strident gates of self-righteousness which creek on shrill and angry hinges.

Nor the cheerful flimsy garden gate of ‘everything’s gonna be alright.’

But a very different, sometimes very lonely place.

The place of truth-telling about our own soul…first of all… and its condition.

The place of resistance and defiance.

The piece of ground from which you see the world both as it is…as it could be…as it might be…as it will be.

The place from which you glimpse not only struggle…but joy in the struggle.

And we stand there beckoning…calling…telling people what we are seeing…asking people what they see.”

Like Jeremiah…we are being called to be witnesses to those around us…to name those things that are not good…and commit to the building and the planting when the time comes.

We’re being called to speak to what we are seeing…listen to what others are seeing…and together work to keep those mighty oak doors of hope open for all.

We can do this…with God’s help.

God’s promise to the prophets of old…to the disciples of then and now…is to give us the words to speak when we must…and to help us stand up tall when we are feeling broken.

Trust in that promise…and may the hope of God give us that joy…peace and quiet confidence that we need to meet the moment we’re living in now.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.