Sermons

Extreme Hope

Deborah Hughes                               Third Presbyterian Church
December 5, 2004                             Isaiah 11:1-10

A dear friend of mine, on recently learning of her brother’s struggle with an addiction to alcohol, said to me, “Why is it so hard? Why isn’t life like the brochure?”

You know the brochures. Here’s the happy, adorable couple stretched out on the white designer sofa. The backdrop is floor to ceiling windows (no streaks) with the azure sea behind them. You can feel the warm sun, and the sheer curtains are waving in the refreshing breeze. No one is overweight. No one is over-tired or even slightly distracted by the concerns of the world. We can hear the soothing rhythm of the breakers. Here’s the family Christmas brochure: the coordinated ornaments and hearth decorations, the presents flowing out from under the tree--each wrapped with Martha Stewart flare--containing the heart’s desire of each recipient. Everyone’s in Norman Rockwell sweaters, with no evidence of the cheerful pet’s fur on any of those luscious, dark colors. Everyone is home. Everyone is happy. No one is sick, or sad, or missing from the picture this year. Here’s the national image brochure: strong, proud eagle, flying through clear blue skies over majestic mountains, then exciting, clean, bustling cities; here are young, attractive twenty-somethings in uniforms or business suits, looking well-educated, well-groomed, and well-employed, all working together for a common purpose. No war, no poverty, no pollution, no indebtedness here. Here’s the retirement brochure. . . the parenting brochure. . . the corporate dream brochure. . .the sexy brochure: sexy dating, sexy drinking, sexy gambling, sexy car brochures. . .oh, and the sexy drugs for better brochures. . .

(But wait, what happened to that “God loves you and wants everyone here” brochure? Oh, dear. That one, produced by the United Church of Christ , that one was censored this week. “Way too controversial,” we’ve been told. How insane to suggest that EVERYONE is welcome in church. Who would want a life like that!)

Why isn’t life like the brochure?

Psychologists have learned that the physical stress level that people experience is greatly affected not just by the traumatic events that we experience, but by how much those events differ from our expectations. Well, life--on the personal level, on the corporate level, on the national level, and on the international level—may not be the way you expected or hoped it would be right now.

In the passage that we read this morning, Isaiah is speaking to a people who were feeling despair. Scholars argue over whether this passage was written in the 8th century B.C., when Isaiah was preaching in Jerusalem and the Assyrian army was threatening invasion, or whether it came two centuries later after the kingdom had fallen to Babylon and the people had been carried off to exile.

The image of the stump speaks to either context. The Hebrew people had believed their salvation would come through a king, one anointed by God, through the line of David. Now that line had been cut off, and this passage acknowledged that reality.

Everyone faces reality eventually. Some deal with more tragedy than others in their lives.

This week we commemorated World Aids day. We remember those we’ve known and lost, and those who are still with us. We assess the terrifying power of a wasting disease that continues to ravage millions of lives around the globe, now particularly those in poverty who have neither access to the means of prevention nor medical care and treatment. We watched scenes from Fallujah, a city that is being destroyed one house and block at a time as its residents are told we are “saving” it. And we heard about one United Methodist pastor who lost her ordination when a slim majority of a jury of her peers determined that her decision to be honest about a life shared with her partner disqualifies her from administering the sacraments of the church.

Perhaps you are one of those experiencing a dissonance between life and the brochure, wondering, how are we to be a people of hope in these times?

Sometimes when I am concerned about the present and our future, I enjoy looking into the past to gain perspective. Some of you have already heard that I have a family connection with Third Church. My father served here as student minister 62 years ago. This past week, Beth Williams showed me into the archives, and I couldn’t help reaching for the Third Church Messengers from the fall of 1942. Dad and my mother were married while here and attending seminary at Colgate Rochester Divinity School. I did find mention of their marriage.

But I was struck by the feature article in one of those 1942 Messengers. It was Pastor Johnston’s response to the question: Is it morally acceptable to drive to church?

In 1942, the world was at war. There was concern about the availability of oil for cars and planes, and the machines of war, and gasoline was rationed. Apparently several members had approached their pastor on this important question. Enlisting the opinion of a government representative, Johnston reported that everyone who was able was certainly expected to travel to church on foot. Butt there were circumstances when driving was permissible. For example, if one had a physical limitation, or when there was a pressing need to be somewhere else immediately before or after the service (provided that need was related to the work of the church or the service of others). Also, it would be acceptable to drive if a vehicle was needed to transport materials, such as delivering bandages or supplies of bandages to the Red Cross. However, driving to gatherings (such as the women’s societies) where the agenda was mostly for social pleasure was not to be considered necessary.

I guess in 1942, they didn’t have to worry about the size or location of the parking lot. But, like today, there must have been many people who wanted more than anything to be at worship with their church community on Sunday morning, but could not do so because health or circumstance prevented them from getting there. No wonder radio ministries were so popular.

About forty years ago, Harry Emerson Fosdick made an observation that I feel holds true in the present. He commented that Americans seem to grasp the first two persons of the Trinity. We understand God, the parent-creator of the universe, and most Christians would include Christ in the picture, even understanding that Jesus was God’s self-revelation, God’s nature revealed, in the historic character. But, Fosdick asserts, our “religious experience lacks the present tense—the Holy Spirit in them, cleansing, sustaining, empowering.”

In the story of Beth Stroud, the United Methodist pastor whose ordination was revoked this week, I find hope and the Holy Spirit. I believe it must be a very deep sense of hope that moved Beth to come out to her congregation and face a trial of her peers.

Let’s make some observations about hope. First, hope is not foolish acceptance nor blind denial of reality. Neither is it stoicism or adoption of a stance of sheer grit to get through. Genuine hope includes non-acceptance of the present situation. Genuine hope also requires a perspective of patience. Hope and patience, as Marva Dawn has observed, are like an athletic endurance “a habitual skill acquired gradually and maintained through exercise.”

Rachel McGuire shared with me her experience last year with Mexican workers struggling on the border for economic justice. “Our greatest hope,” they said, “is that our children will continue the struggle.” Here are a people who understand that hope and patience must be partners. They are able to sustain hope, even though they may not live to see the change they are working toward.

Beth Stroud must understand that, too. She probably didn’t go into this trial expecting to win, especially since the United Methodists had just clarified their stance on the issue of gays and lesbians and ordination at the General Conference earlier this year. She and her church had even discussed what would happen to her position if her ordination status was revoked. She did not go into this situation expecting a rosy outcome. However, I suspect she did go into it trusting that there was something of God and the Spirit in all of this.

It was interesting that the jury agreed that she clearly had a call to ministry. They were also in agreement that she had gifts for ministry. The amazing thing is that her peers were in agreement on this! The United Methodist Church has only been ordaining women as pastors for the last thirty or so years. So, interestingly enough, the jury seemed to agree that God had done God’s part. Here was a woman called by God into ministry, and here was woman who possessed the necessary gifts. God has fulfilled God’s part of the promise. Now it’s up to the people of God to respond.

In the Isaiah passage, we have an image of a dead stump. But out of that dead wood emerges a tender shoot.

Then enter God’s spirit, in Hebrew taking the form of a ruah, a wind, blowing over and resting on this tender shoot.

Look at the influence of this wind on this tender shoot: wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, power and authority, a curiosity and breadth of knowledge, and a humility before our creator God. The stump bespeaks despair, but the wind of God raises up a new possibility.

Isaiah goes on to explain what the impact of this Spirit will be on the created order.

This tender shoot will not judge be affected by the media propaganda, by what his eyes see or by what his ears hear, but with a perspective of righteousness for the poor and equity for those who cannot advocate for themselves. And with a powerful voice, the wicked ones will be struck down.

This is a future of hope, ushered in by the Holy Spirit.

But there’s more! Even the way that all the cosmos relates will be changed. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid. The predatory nature of existence will be reversed in this peaceable kingdom.

Then enter the little child. In ancient Israel, as now, there was no one more vulnerable than a little child. The child is mentioned three times in verses 6-8 (a little child, a child still nursing, and a child just weaned), and this child shall lead creation and play with snakes. This image “bespeaks the birth of a new innocence in which trust, gentleness and friendship are possible and appropriate. The world will be ordered, so that the fragile and vulnerable can have their say and live their lives.”

What is the relationship between justice, peace, and harmony in the natural order? It was Reinhold Neibuhr who commented, “If you want peace, work for justice.” This passage makes it clear that God wills peace and justice.

This Christmas season, we will be sending out and receiving many brochures. We call them Christmas cards. Among the images will be a lion lying down with a lamb. How can we convince the world that our God is the God of peace and justice? We proclaim the wolf will play with the kid, but we are having trouble getting Christians to sit down together at the table of Christ. It was Nietzche who observed, “I’d believe in resurrection if I saw more resurrected Christians walking around.”

But this is exactly the right season to proclaim we worship a God of justice and peace! John the Baptist has called us to look within ourselves. Are we, individually and corporately, among the brood of vipers always eager to strike out at the vulnerable? If so, it’s always time to hold ourselves and one another to account: to repent in our hearts and our lives.

But it’s also time to live into our baptism—to live into the hope that is in us. It’s always time to live as though we expect and feel the winds of God. As Walter Brueggeman has challenged us, “Advent is our decision to trust the new wind against the hopeless stump of what has failed.”

People of God, live into this radical, this extreme hope. Amen.