2020-11-30
Brooke Strong
This service was livestreamed due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Sermon Text
Scripture: PSALM 80:1-7, 17-19
Listen to the conversations that so often take place around us. You hear people talking about missing someone important at Thanksgiving. You hear people worrying about what limits Christmas will bring. You hear people wondering about whether to travel, and how far, and by what mode. You hear sometimes low-level discouragement, sometimes anxious fretting, sometimes untamable fear.
And for increasing numbers of people, of course, the suffering is exponentially worse. Some of you have been touched directly by COVID-19, either contracting the disease yourself, or worrying about someone who has, or knowing someone who has died from it. Hardly a surprise to anyone, this is a draining and dispiriting pandemic.
Add to that the severely divided society in which we live, and social and racial inequities, and the palpable unease of disease and death and tenuous business prospects and marital strain and schools in turmoil, and this can be a time of unrest, and perhaps even of despair. We’re tired of feeling discomfort around people, and backing away when they seem too close, and foregoing the animating connection we crave.
One of the wonderful things about the book of Psalms is how often it captures life’s universal experiences. Today’s psalm bracingly conveys the desperation of a people who feel abandoned: “God, . . . how long will you smolder like a sleeping volcano while your people call for fire and brimstone? You put us on a diet of tears, bucket after bucket of salty tears to drink. You make us look ridiculous to our friends; our enemies poke fun [at us] day after day” (Psalm 80:4-6, The Message).
It is really easy to lose hope when joy vanishes and the boundaries of life close in. Boredom and frustration and irritation can take over. Hope can evaporate like drops of water on a scorching cast iron skillet. How do you hope when life’s edges hem you in? How do you hope when anxiety and sadness and death hover at nearly every turn?
Hope is what we celebrate on this first Sunday of Advent. And if hope seems in short supply to you this year, then all the more reason it’s crucial for us to be on the lookout for it. There are two interrelated things we’ll say today about hope. The first is that hope is not the same thing as optimism. While an optimist may believe that material circumstances will turn out well, somebody who hopes knows that things may turn out poorly. An optimist may believe the cancer is going to vanish. A hoper may trust that wholeness will come even if the cancer doesn’t vanish. An optimist may believe they’re going to be financially secure at fifty, so they can retire. A hoper may believe that, whatever happens financially, they’ll find a way to get by. An optimist may believe the Browns are going to win the Super Bowl—this might also be known as insanity!—while a hoper simply loves them whether they do well or not. Optimists anticipate good results. Hopers trust that there will be blessing even in what may appear to be bad results. In this sense, optimists may be disappointed again and again, while hopers will see light in whatever tunnel they find themselves. You can be both an optimist and a hoper—they’re not contradictory. But hope is a bigger and more over-arching and more resilient category.
The second distinctive thing about hoping—and it’s closely related to that difference between optimism and hope—is that there’s a marked difference, says Brother David Steindl-Rast, between hope and hopes. That may sound odd to say—a quirky verbal distinction—this difference between hope and hopes. But bear with me. Hopes are the yearnings we have for particular results. We have hopes that a sick child will get well. We have hopes that the pandemic will end next month, or in six months. We have hopes that a partner will decide they want to marry us.
Hopes are specific. We have hopes for a red bicycle or a pair of skis or a new computer at Christmas. We have hopes for a new and less abrasive colleague at work. We have hopes for a sunny day so we can take a comfortable stroll this afternoon. We have hopes that we’ll get the lead in the school musical. We have hopes that our sports teams will trounce all opposition. We have hopes galore, particular turns of events and results that we’re sure are for the best. They’re sort of our plans for how things should go.
Genuine hope, on the other hand, is noticeably different from that, says Steindl-Rast. With real hope, we simply look expectantly to the future. We’re not pinning our happiness on specific results. We’re simply trusting that the way things work out will be OK, that they will, in truth, be full of blessing. Gone are the specifics. What we have instead is an openness to an unknown future, an openness that trusts that all shall be well, no matter how things turn out. It’s no longer me telling God how I expect things to go. Instead, I leave myself open to a new world I could never have predicted. That’s Advent hope. And it’s what we celebrate today.
Let’s imagine a scenario or two. Let’s say a couple is expecting a child. Their hopes may be for a healthy child who grows and develops in a particular way. They may have hopes for a girl or a boy. They may have hopes for a soccer player or a dancer. Those are all specific desires. The parents have a path in mind, and they’re likely to be disappointed if things don’t unfold as planned. Their hopes may be shattered.
Or maybe you marry someone and bring particular hopes into the marriage. Maybe you think your spouse should be home every evening for a 5:30 dinner. Maybe you have hopes that your partner will make a certain amount of money, or that she’ll return to work soon after the birth of a baby, or that he won’t step into the dreaded conversational minefield when your parents are visiting.
And then what if the new parents have a child who’s not healthy, or is the “wrong” gender, or finds joy in an activity or hobby that bores you to death? Then what happens to your hopes? Or what if the spouse you expected home for an early dinner comes in regularly at 7:30? Or your partner doesn’t want to make the money you hope they will? Or they want to stay home longer with the baby? Or they constantly step in doo-doo when your parents are visiting? Then what happens to your hopes? You may live with constant frustration and irritation because your dreams about how it was all supposed to turn out are thwarted at every turn.
So rather than specific hopes, this is where we’re called to turn, instead, to a more generalized hope. If my happiness, as a new parent, is contingent on the health of my baby, I may be sorely disappointed. If it hinges on the “right” gender, or a passion for dance or soccer, then I may live with a low-level, or maybe high-level, sense of dissatisfaction.
Real hope is noticeably different from all the specific hopes we carry around inside us. It’s worth saying here that God wants to know what’s on our hearts and minds. So it’s part of a healthy relationship to tell God what matters to us—to let God know our hopes, in other words. But when we really hope, we finally let go of the results. We might say true hope is non-directional. Hope isn’t about our carefully laid plans. It isn’t about our blueprint for what we think of as a “successful” life.
To really hope is to be open to surprise. That willingness to be surprised is a fundamental dimension of hope. It’s essentially to say to God, “I don’t know what’s coming. I don’t know what my children will be like. I don’t know how my marriage will unfold. I don’t know what my job will bring me. I don’t know what friends will come across my path, what challenges will hinder me, what illnesses will slay me, what disease will finally take my life. But God, here’s what I do know: you will be with me every step of the way. Blessings of which I hadn’t the foggiest idea will wash over me. Again and again, you will surprise me. And no matter what happens, it will be good, because I trust you, God. Not the results, not my blueprint, not my plans. I trust you.”
Years ago, I ran across a piece somewhere in which a parent wrote about what it was like to have a baby born with severe health challenges. It was, she said, something like planning for a trip to Italy, and ending up instead in the Netherlands. You’ve packed for a particular climate, and you’re looking forward to seeing special sights. And when you land in Amsterdam rather than Rome, you have to give up the notion of seeing Caravaggios and drinking wine in Tuscany and seeing rolling vineyards. Instead, you now have the gift of delighting in Rembrandts and tulips and gouda. So it is with having a child different from the one you had anticipated. It’s not what you expected. It may not be what you wanted. But the path you take and the destination you arrive at have their own unique wonders, and your job and my job is to be open to the richness and surprise of wherever life takes us. That’s what it is to hope.
When we really hope, then, we give up any notion that God’s job is to put our plans into place. Our hope lies not in our getting everything we think we want. Instead, hope is our capacity to be surprised, and our trust in the goodness of that surprise. When we hope, we say to God, “No matter what happens, we trust you will be there. We have faith that you will make something of it. We have an underlying confidence that you will give us a kind of wholeness. In whatever happens.”
In our psalm of the day, there’s a refrain that occurs three times. Even though the people are weary and resentful about God’s seeming lack of care and attention, in each instance of the refrain, a plea is uttered: “let your face shine, that we may be saved” (80:3, 7, 19). Or as The Message puts it: “God, . . . Smile your blessing smile: That will be our salvation.”
No matter how things turn out, that’s what we most deeply want. We want God to smile a blessing smile. That’s what will save us from our torment, our worry, our despair. True hope says, ‘Let whatever is, be. For in every worry there is a deep peace. In every challenge there is a way through. In every shadow there is a radiant light. Hope flies on the wings of God’s promised presence, making a way where there seems to be no way, providing joy where there seems only discouragement, offering a deep wholeness where only pain seemed possible.’
I’ve been taking note of signs of hope this week. Many of you saw the story of the man who bought a beer at the restaurant Nighttown. This was on the last night the restaurant would be open for the foreseeable future, as they are shutting down for the time being. The man, who came in on that last night before this indefinite closure, bought a $7 beer. And when he left, he left a $3000 tip, with instructions that it be split among the servers. Nighttown’s owner, Brendan Ring, says four servers received $750 each, a farewell before filing for unemployment. “Everyone,” said Ring, “is looking to grasp onto something that gives us hope these days, and this is a bright shining-star moment” (Plain Dealer, Nov. 24, p. A3). Indeed it was.
Leila Atassi, a columnist for the Plain Dealer, noted on Thanksgiving Day how relieved we all were in the spring for the return to store shelves of a much-needed item. “Be grateful—and relieved!—that toilet paper eventually returned to store shelves. The run on that most essential paper product certainly made the pandemic real for most of us . . .. The replenished stock was the first indicator that everything will eventually be OK. Take heed of that old adage, ‘Where there’s toilet paper, there’s hope!’
Atassi lists numerous things for which she is grateful. And she finishes by saying, “And if nothing else, let’s be thankful for the dutifully rising sun. With a baby born during the pandemic, I have seen my share of sunrises this year. No matter how exhausted I am, the symbolism of light vanquishing darkness is never lost on me. It’s a cliché, to be sure, but as signs of hope go, it’s a pretty good one.
“Each breaking day is an invitation to try again. To be a better parent, a better spouse, a better neighbor and friend. It’s a reminder . . . that someone’s got your back, and better days are promised” (Plain Dealer, Nov. 26, p. A4).
Someone does indeed have your back and mine. And if we’re alert to it, we’ll see those signs. Some time ago, a father who had lost his early-20s son told me that, after his son died, he and his family headed to a beach spot that was a favorite of the now-deceased young man—the son just loved the water. And while the grieving family were at the ocean, a rainbow appeared. And it stayed in the sky for an hour and a half. And when this father was back home, he saw a bluebird one day, a bird he never sees—a bluebird that evoked images of that beloved ocean. And even in the midst of waves of grief, this father was able to see there a sign of hope, a reminder that his son lives on, a tangible evocation of the presence of God.
Things often don’t go the way we planned them. Our hopes are not uncommonly dashed. But even there, even when the pain is searing, the anticipation of God’s presence in each new surprise can lift us in hope. For no matter what happens, as the apostle Paul says, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). So thanks be to God for the surprise and the promise of hope which is stronger than death, hope that carries us aloft, hope that points us to the skies. All shall be well!