The Kingdom of Heaven Is Like …

 

Matthew 13:31-52

More than two decades ago when I was going through the process of ordination to ministry, our denomination was going through a process of its own. At that time, there was a lot of conflict, competing forces wanting to shape the way the church would look, feel, and move in the world going forward. It was mostly about whether or not the church would fully embrace our LGBTQ brothers and sisters.

We were in the thick of this controversy when I went before the presbytery as a candidate for ministry to be examined. In this process, all the ministers of the presbytery were free to ask me any questions they wanted that in any way pertained to my faith. The first person who rose to ask a question wanted to know what I thought about salvation.

He began by saying that he knew the idea of universal salvation was currently popular – the belief that every human being is saved and goes to heaven. It was clear that he disagreed with the idea. And his question to me was this: Do you believe there is a biblical foundation for the notion of universal salvation?

What his question was about was what the kingdom of God is like – which is a concern that the gospels share. According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus had an awful lot to say about what the kingdom of God is like.

Just in this one passage from Matthew, five times we heard Jesus say, “The kingdom of heaven is like…”

This is the way Matthew phrases it – while in Mark and Luke Jesus often speaks of the kingdom of God, in Matthew he refers to the kingdom of heaven. It is the same thing.

As soon as he begins to speak and we hear, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” we know we are about to hear a parable. And so we must listen carefully.

When we listen to a parable we must be ready to hear what is behind the words. We also must be willing to listen to ourselves – notice where we are surprised, where our feelings are provoked, our buttons pushed. Pay attention to how we can make use of what we do know to learn about something that we do not know.

It is necessary to speak about the kingdom of God in parables, because the kingdom is beyond our knowing. The parable, which uses words and images to walk alongside our lives, our experiences, and begins to help us see the shape of something that is beyond our experiences.

The parable is a teaching tool that is also an art form – painting pictures, evoking feeling, inspiring response. And in this handful of verses in Matthew 13, Jesus gives us five of these gems.

Five parables about the kingdom of God, and each one is exquisite in its own right. Each one deserves a full hour to explore its value. But our time is finite, so I would only offer a few brief takeaways from these sayings. A few things we can learn from these parables about the kingdom of God.

First – The kingdom has always been with us. Take the parable of the yeast. If you have experience making bread, you know that the yeast comes first. It is dissolved in water, then the flour is mixed in to create dough. Back in the days Jesus told this parable, they weren’t using the convenient little packets of dry granulated yeast that we buy from the supermarket – their yeast was much messier.

When Jesus spoke about a woman hiding yeast in flour, his listeners would have imagined a small amount of starter, like people now use for sourdough bread. Wet, soggy, stinky. Not the most pleasant substance, but what was needed to make the dough that would become bread. Therefore, just as there never was any dough without the yeast, there never was any world without God's kingdom. The kingdom of God is hidden in everything in the world God made.

This means that the kingdom will be found in the ordinary stuff – not in some pristine and pure location, because the world is not pristine and pure. The kingdom of God co-exists with all the brokenness of the world. We, the church, co-exist in this world with everything and everyone who opposes the kingdom. We work with humility and hope. We may not see progress, but we maintain hope. Too often we will see the evil increase and grow in power - but we do not abandon our work or our hope because we know that the kingdom is always with us.

The kingdom has always been with us.

Second – The kingdom is contrary to what is expected. It is amazingly powerful, yet inscrutably small, like the mustard seed. It is, in the words of the Apostle Paul, power made perfect in weakness – and we see this well in the life of Jesus. He was not a soldier going against soldiers; just so, the church is not an army fighting against an army.

This is crucially important for the church to know. We have been given a mission, and this is to bring the light of the kingdom to this world. But we won’t do it by meeting the world’s brutality with our own brutality.

This is radically different from everything we know of the world. This means that the kingdom changes our perspective – it must. Just as in the parable of the hidden treasure, which a man unwittingly stumbles upon. He never before knew it existed, but once he did, this changes everything for him. He knows now that everything he may have valued before is nothing in comparison to this treasure.

Imagine this: something that has always been present but never before seen - when we see it, we are radically changed by it. It might be a serendipitous discovery, like the man who found the treasure. But it’s not always like that. Our process might be a much slower and more deliberate one - like the merchant who, at last, found the pearl of great value. He will search no more; he has found what he was searching for. Either way, it leads to a fundamental and complete shift. Now we know what really matters.

Finally – the kingdom is for everyone - and all of creation. As the fisherman throws his net into the sea and pulls out anything and everything that gets caught up in it, so does the kingdom of God. All the good Christians get in the same bus with everyone else. Really - everyone. We might not particularly like it; we might resent it; we might feel we have absolutely nothing in common with these folks – but we don't need to worry about it. Because, as the final parable says, God's angels will sort it all out in the end. And they will use God's judgment - not ours – and that is a good thing, because our judgment can be lousy. As the Episcopal priest Robert Capon says, in the final sorting, it is not the inherent goodness or badness of the fish, as we might see it, that matters, it is their acceptability to the fisherman. Their usefulness, their beauty in God's eyes.

This one is, you might have noticed, a parable of judgment. But the judgment is not a threat, it is a promise. It is good news that God will eradicate all evil: every disease that afflicts us, every murderous impulse that takes hold of us, every selfish and craven habit that consumes us. We will all be cleansed of the evil that harms us.

And yes, I suppose if we are unwilling to let go of that evil - well, then we will be cast out right along with it.

But hear me when I say: the kingdom of God is for everyone. And this is what I might have said in response to the questioner at my ordination exam. Do I find a biblical foundation for universal salvation?

I knew then that what he was concerned about was whether the church was going to let a minister into their ranks who might believe that Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists could possibly go to heaven along with us. Whether men who love men and women who love women and people who, somehow, just have a different sense of who they are, different from what the world might see – he wanted to ascertain whether I thought all these people are welcome in God’s kingdom.

I began my answer that day saying that I honestly did not know if there is clear biblical support for universal salvation. But I also said that what I did know – was very certain of – is that it is clearly God’s desire that we are to love all of God’s children, in the same way God loves us all. Period.

And that, I believe, is how the kingdom of God works.

The kingdom is a wondrous and mysterious thing. It is radical, subversive, powerful – it is always and everywhere. The kingdom of God opens its arms wide to God’s creation with absolutely unconditional love. It is patient, as St. Paul describes God’s love. It is power made perfect in weakness.

The kingdom of God has been given to us. We have been allowed into the secrets of these hidden things – yeast and seed, pearl and treasure. The question is this: what will we do with all this?

I have heard it said that where the will of the king is calling the shots, there is the kingdom. So, is the will of God calling the shots in your life? Will you be an effective agent, witness, model for the kingdom in this world?

Will you?

Photo by Marin Tulard on Unsplash

Entitlement

 

Genesis 25:19-34

Matthew 13:1-9

When we were little, my older sister and I convinced our younger sister that her duty as the youngest child was to wait on us; run down to the kitchen and get us a snack if we were hungry, even run down to the 7-Eleven if we had a sudden craving for Doritos or Laffy-Taffy. We had our moments when we were bad, I am ashamed to say.

Older siblings often dominate the younger ones because they’re bigger, smarter, stronger – at least for a while.  But sometimes even when things even out; when the younger siblings are as big and strong and smart as the older siblings they still let themselves be dominated, simply because they are used to it.  It’s the way things have always been. 

If you ever see a younger sibling gain any advantage over the older sibling, it’s probably because they carefully watched and listened and schemed, like Jacob.  Even though they were twins, even though they were born minutes or even seconds apart – the story says Jacob was born grasping Esau’s heel – still, everybody knew and respected that Esau was the elder and Jacob the younger.  That’s just the way things are. In family.

The story about Isaac’s family is a story about family unhappiness. Brothers and sisters fail to treat each other with care and respect; mothers and fathers choose favorites and the children can’t help but notice it. It’s our human nature – we are flawed, imperfect beings who fail to love as we should.

The story of Esau and Jacob is a puzzling one because it’s just hard to figure out what to make of these characters.  Would Esau really trade his birthright for a bowl of soup?  Would Jacob really withhold food from his brother unless he gave him his birthright?  And is this really a binding legal transaction?

To the third question, I really don’t know.  It seems to be mostly symbolic; it’s not as though there was any magic involved, like a Freaky Friday sort of thing where the two people switch bodies with each other.  But it does seem to indicate consent on the part of Esau to give over to Jacob the right to his inheritance, presumably the traditional double share that the first son is entitled to.  It is remarkable that he gave it up so casually. And cheaply.

The scripture says he despised his birthright.  In the way we understand what it is to despise something, I don’t believe we really see that in the story.  A newer translation, the Common English Bible, uses the phrase “showing just how little he thought of his birthright.” I think that makes more sense to us.  Clearly, Esau thought little about his birthright. 

He didn’t trouble himself to think about it, to appreciate it, to truly value it.  Maybe Esau took his birthright for granted, never questioning that it was his.  After all, his birthright was his natural right, wasn’t it?  He couldn’t really give it away to his brother any more than he could give his brother his natural red hair.  By the laws of nature it was his and his alone. Right?

Well, the message that the story in Genesis seems to be driving home is:  the way we think things should be is not necessarily the way God ordains that they should be.  And that God enjoys stirring the pot now and then to remind us of that. Don’t get too complacent; don’t be too self-assured about your rights, your entitlements. 

By what right do we have anything at all? It is a question we might ask ourselves, because I think we all – at some time, about some things – have that sense of entitlement.

We get this sense of entitlement from growing accustomed to certain things.  The culture we live in, the people around us; what we have always known and had and learned to expect.  It trains us to see a thing as our due – instead of seeing it as gift.

And if we ever do think of the ones who don’t have all these things that we are somehow entitled to, we tell ourselves that in some way they are different from us, and perhaps less deserving than us.

This sense of entitlement inevitably leads to resentment, because when we are no longer getting that thing we feel entitled to get – well, that feels unfair.

Don’t think this applies to you?  You never have this sense of entitlement?  Maybe. But next time you feel resentful or irritated about something, ask yourself this: Am I resenting this because I feel entitled to something else? 

In the end a sense of entitlement hurts us because at some point we will be grieving the loss of that thing that maybe we never really had, but somehow believe we should have.  And oh how much better our lives would be if we had that thing. But again, by what right do we have anything at all?  Our God-given right, perhaps?

Esau may have felt entitled to what he had.  But Jacob did not. He knew he had to plan and grasp; Jacob knows that none of these things will be given to him.  He will have to use his heart and mind and strength to get anything.

Esau thought it was his God-given right to carry the promise, to receive the inheritance, to be the chosen one – but it wasn’t. That would belong to Jacob, who certainly had the God-given talents to seize it and hold it and succeed with it – this will be apparent in the rest of the story.

The stories of Genesis show us again and again that God’s plan was often not what God’s people expected. That the word of God frequently turned their world upside down.

Thousands of years later, Jesus told a little parable about what it is like to hear the word of God. It is like seed being sown. Some of it fell on a path and was quickly devoured by birds. Some fell on rocky ground where it failed to put down roots. Some of the seed fell among thorns and was choked. But other seeds fell on fertile soil and brought forth an abundance of grain.

After this, Jesus raises the question: what kind of soil are you? Are you complacent, entitled? Or will you recognize that everything is, truly, gift. And your responsibility is to care for and nurture the gift you receive? To be good soil for the gift.

May we lose our sense of entitlement and gain the joy in remembering that it is all gift.

May we practice gratitude for all these gifts, forgoing resentment about the gifts we don’t have.

May we follow the light and listen to the word that guides us on the path God lights before us.

The Kingdom is Near

Luke 10:1-11

This week, I remembered a sermon I listened to a few years back. The preacher talked about hiking in the redwoods of California with his wife. It was a peaceful experience; it felt like nothing else mattered but just being there in that moment. 

When it was time to leave, they got in their car to drive home. They turned on the radio and heard the news of the day: a mass shooting. War in Ukraine. Leaks about Supreme Court decisions. Toxic politics in primaries of one state after another. And just like that, their peace was gone.

As soon as they reentered the world, their peace evaporated, and they wondered if what they had been feeling was really peace at all. Or maybe just an illusion.

Do you ever feel that way? That the only way to find a moment of peace is to escape from the world we live in?

In the gospel of Luke, we are in a section in which, as Luke tells us, Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem. We know what this meant for him – in Jerusalem was his death, so this means he was beginning to look beyond this world. This seemed to be a bit off-putting for some people, but for Jesus it was essential. He needed to set his face toward Jerusalem.

To prepare his disciples, he began sending them out on their own, to try their hand at ministry. First, he sent out the 12 who were closest to him, his inner circle. Their mission was to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. Later, in this passage, he sends out a much larger group to go in pairs to all the places he, himself, intends to visit. He sends them with instructions to bring peace with them and virtually nothing else – no purse, no bag, no sandals. Just peace. And healing. And the message that the kingdom of God has come near.

The kingdom of God is near. And just as it was a bit off-putting for some of the people Jesus approached, it probably had the same effect on some towns and villages the disciples entered. 

Jesus gave them instructions about what to do when their message was rejected. I suppose that some people didn’t understand what the kingdom of God had to do with the world in which they lived.

I don’t blame them. Sometimes, it can seem like the peace of Christ is just a temporary escape from the world in which we live. 

I suppose the fact that we find the world’s problems challenging is nothing new. I know that there have always been hard times, but it does seem hard these days to find our equilibrium. 

I have been reading the work of a German sociologist, Hartmut Rosa, who offers some intriguing thoughts about all this. His book is called The Uncontrollability of the World – a good title, I think. Modern people have a tendency to believe that we can control the world, but, alas, the world stubbornly remains beyond our control.

Rosa has put a name to something we experience now in our lives: the contraction of the present. The length of time in which our past experience can reliably predict our future is shrinking. Change comes faster than ever before, meaning that our ability to feel comfortable in our knowledge of how things work, how things will go, is shrinking. We feel more unsure about everything. We grow more distrustful of institutions. The ground beneath our feet is shifting.

And we react by getting angry. I spoke to you last week about anger as something that can be useful, but only if we also have the courage to do something about it. Anger by itself is just letting off steam, and if you turn on the TV, it seems like everyone is doing a lot of that. It almost doesn’t even matter what you choose to listen to, what news source you decide is reliable. They are all angry. And we get angry too.

There is not much that happens these days where you don’t feel like you have to pick a side. Take a position for or against, and if you’re against it then you’re angry about it. We feed our anger every day. 

And, instead of supporting one another as we go through a hardship together, we attack one another. We distrust one another. We distrust our institutions. Conspiracy theories, accusations, and attacks are constantly in the air. It feels like our whole system is broken. And there is no peace.

But, that preacher I was listening to, who talked about the peace he found in the woods, then quickly lost? He said that he thinks true peace is a whole lot more than just the nice feeling you get when you’re not fighting with anyone; true peace is the presence of real justice. And it seems like justice is in short supply in our world. 

There are so many kinds of injustice, which are all interconnected. Martin Luther King said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere; that we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. That is to say, we are all in this together. If we try to separate ourselves from the needs of the world, we do harm to ourselves as much as to the needy. Justice is complicated. The need is overwhelming.

And so, this preacher said, when we feel overwhelmed we sometimes just decide to pull back. We feel inadequate to the task. Let someone else, someone better equipped, try. And when we pull back, we leave a vacuum that will be filled by more injustice, more hate, more violence. The answer, this preacher said, is for each of us to take back our moral autonomy and be a force for what is right, for justice. And this is where we may find that ever-elusive peace.

It was an inspiring sermon. This was not a Presbyterian preacher, though. This was not a preacher from any church, actually, or even any other religion. This was a sermon delivered at a gathering called Civic Saturday, where you find people who maybe have no desire to be a part of religion, but they still have a very human hunger for meaning. For meaning that is found in community. They come together for the mutual support of one another, for healing, for inspiration, and then they go out into the world and try to make a difference. 

They are a lot like church – without Jesus. But there may be another important difference: They might have a greater sense of urgency about bringing peace to this world – what we as Christians would call the kingdom of God. They may or may not believe there is something to look forward to after this; regardless, though, they are looking for that kind of peace and love right here in this world.

I don’t know if Civic Saturday gatherings are still going on – I hope they thrive and continue to serve this nation well. 

But I also need the church to say loud and clear, “The kingdom of God is near.” And to do our very best to bridge the gap between this world and God’s kingdom, to make the kingdom more visible in this world.

I cannot think of a time when our nation has been more needful of Christians who will do this: bring healing, bring justice, bring peace.

I once asked a group of church people how they felt about the notion of being sent out into the world as Jesus sent out the 70 disciples. They all said they felt inadequate. And it’s true, we are inadequate. We are easily overwhelmed with the needs as we see them – the fighting, the toxic politics, the gross inequality, the ways we see our civic norms breaking down and raw power taking their place. It’s enough to make you withdraw into your prayer closet. 

But let us remember that Jesus sent his disciples out. He sent them with instructions to heal. He sent them with peace to share. He sent them with a little bit of the kingdom of heaven, which was more than adequate.

This weekend we celebrate the 250th birthday of our nation. It was 250 years ago that the Declaration of Independence was signed. I don’t know if you have read it lately, but it is worth taking a look at. 

When you read the document, you notice the sense of unity in it. The people of the original colonies are spoken of as “one people.” The idea of forming a new nation carried the clear sense of being united in purpose, even though they were quite different in other ways. The closing words of the document are: “for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

Two hundred fifty years later, we feel a bit of sadness that there is so much hostility between us. We are disappointed at the fact that we cannot really be united in our celebrations, because of how polarized our politics have grown. 

Some might believe the solution is to become a Christian nation – to make our laws explicitly Christian. Inevitably, that would be one particular flavor of Christian – something that not even all Christians could agree on. 

The best path for our nation is not to impose a set of religious laws for everyone, because our nation was created to ensure freedom of religion for all people. But the best path for us, as followers of Christ, is to do what he asked his disciples to do: send peace, everywhere we go. Be a little bit of the kingdom of heaven. Let them know that the kingdom has come near to them, carrying peace.

In the midst of a world that is struggling, a nation sometimes overwhelmed by fear and distrust and polarization, may we know that the kingdom of heaven is not for some time later. It is not for our escape. The kingdom of heaven is for here and now, and it is given to us. 

When you are overwhelmed, remember this: the kingdom of heaven is here.

May we share it.

All thanks and glory be to our God. Amen.

Photo: Joshua Earle on Unsplash

The Anatomy of Hope, Week 4: Hands

Hebrews 10:23-25

Genesis 22:1-14

There are some stories that you don’t really want to know. Like William Styron’s story, Sophie’s Choice. 

Sophie was a Polish woman during the Second World War. She was sent to Auschwitz with her young son and daughter. The defining moment in this story is one of Sophie and her children, standing in line with all the other prisoners, waiting to be processed when a German officer approaches her. He offers Sophie a choice: which one of your children should die? Choose or they will both be taken. She chose her daughter.

Then there is Toni Morrison’s story, Beloved. The character Sethe is a runaway slave living in Cincinnati with her four children. When the master hunts her down, Sethe grabs her children and runs to the toolshed. She knows she would rather they not live than to see them returned to slavery and so she aims to take things into her own hands. The youngest, a two-year-old girl, is killed before Sethe’s hand is stopped.

The story of Sophie, the story of Sethe – both these stories are based on accounts of true events, by the way. Showing again that, in the words of Lord Byron:

“Tis strange,-but true; for truth is always strange;

Stranger than fiction: if it could be told,

How much would novels gain by the exchange!

How differently the world would men behold!”

Then, of course, there is this story from Genesis, the binding of Isaac.

I heard someone say, “If they had asked my opinion when they were putting together the Bible, I would have told them: ‘Look; this story right here? That is exactly the kind of story that gives the Old Testament a bad name. Take it out. No one wants to hear this.’”

It is a story that changes everything. Abraham will no longer be the same. Isaac will not be the same. Even we are not the same after hearing it. And Sarah? It might be that Sarah never learned just what exactly happened on Mount Moriah, which would be a blessing, but she definitely knew that her husband and son were not the same when they returned. 

In fact, this is a different Abraham that we see in this story. This man who is sometimes a lively conversation partner with God, is now silent. In this silence we, the readers, are compelled to fill in the gaps with our own feelings.

How does this story make you feel?

The essential human response, I think, is to be appalled. Most people I have spoken to are certain they would not – could not – do what was asked. They would not be as obedient as Abraham was in this situation. 

What does this story tell us about our God?

The book of Genesis is a story of beginnings, and as we read it we are just getting to know God, right along with these characters we meet – Abraham and Sarah and their descendants. One of the things we observe about God, one thing that makes this God unique in the entire panoply of gods who were worshiped in their world back then, is that our God cares about us. Our God loves us and wants us to thrive. A truly remarkable thing, when you consider the alternatives. 

In all other cases, it was not like that. Human relationships with their gods were strictly transactional. People offered sacrifices to appease the gods, so they might bring rain, so the crops would grow, so the people would not starve to death. Never would they have imagined that the gods cared about their lives. Never would it occur to them that they might appeal to the gods’ mercy. Only that they must figure out how to satisfy the gods’ appetites.

For the people of Israel, living in this thoroughly multicultural environment, it took a long time for them to get to know their God. Many generations of evolving, slowly, by trial and error, to figure out just who this God is. Just what this God wants from them. For a long time, many generations, they were casting around, sampling other gods, other religious practices. Which included human sacrifice. 

Perhaps they thought: Other people are doing it. Perhaps they wondered: Is this what we should do, too? Would this be an acceptable offering, an effective form of worship? 

Would it? Really? The Bible holds Abraham up as a mountain of a man, a model figure of faith. But in those three days I am certain Abraham was floundering. Struggling.

Isaac said to him, Dad, where is the lamb for the sacrifice? And Abraham said to Isaac, God will provide.

God will provide, said Abraham, with no earthly idea of what, of how this story would end.

When they reached the place, Abraham built the altar. He laid the wood for the fire. He laid his son atop the altar and he took his knife in his hand. Is this possible? The stuff of nightmares – is this really what Abraham’s God would demand of him?

Finally, emphatically, the answer was no.

And then – at last – he knew it. God will provide a better way. 

It took some time for the people of Israel to understand this – a lot of time. It was a hard lesson to learn for them. Trust is not easily come by. Faith is hard earned. But eventually, centuries later, they put it down in these stories, stories that would be handed down through the generations. Stories that would say:

There once was a time when the people lived in fear – fear of the evil that surrounded them, fear of evil that might take hold of them, control them. And the greatest fear of all: that their God would be a heartless, cruel master over them; one who would take from them what was most precious to them. And they wondered: Is it possible?

And the answer was no. God will provide a better way.

What we are given in this story of Abraham and Isaac is the knowledge that God will not demand such sacrifice. 

And in the context of the whole story of God and Israel, we know that this was one of many tests. We know that Israel would wander, would allow their fear and sin to lead them in other directions, away from their God. But that they would – again and again – return to this God of mercy, God of life. All through their history, they would choose this God, over the other choices.

During these four weeks we have been exploring the anatomy of hope, we have gone into some dark places. I think it was necessary, because to find a hope that is strong enough to endure, we must be willing to see what it is up against.

As I said to you at the beginning of this series, it is essential to find a foundation for your hope that is strong, that can endure through all the challenges of this world. And only God is strong enough. When we build our hope on the promises of God, we have a sure foundation. And we must do so. As John Calvin said to the church, “What would become of is if we did not obstinately cling to hope?”

As we continued our examination of the anatomy, we looked at the heart, where we had to acknowledge that the heart will suffer. As the Apostle Paul said, “Affliction produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” And there is no shortcut. Hope is like a fine wine – it takes time to develop.

We then moved on to the eyes of hope, which are able to give us a different perspective. As we saw in the story of Hagar, God can show us possibility where we might have seen nothing, and possibility may give us reason to hope.

Finally, today, we have the hands, as we recognize that real hope is an active thing. It drives us to love and serve others, in the way God has always loved and provided for us. Our hope comes from the recognition that the God we serve is different from all the alternatives. And choosing this God means turning away from the ugly, evil alternatives that are offered in this world; it means putting our hands to working for a better way. 

It turns out that, just as the people of Israel were confronted with evil alternatives in the form of other gods, other religious practices, in our world we are facing the same sort of thing. There is a lot of bad religion around us – including forms of Christianity. There are plenty of alternatives that teach hate over real love. Alternatives that elevate judgment and exclusiveness over compassion and lovingkindness. Alternatives that relish war and get excited about what they call “maximum lethality.” But we cannot ask Jesus to bless maximum lethality.

In all ages, humans have faced choices and have had to figure out where to plant their hope. You can plant it in a system of transactions, where there is no grace – only judgment. You can plant it in a system of sacrifices, where some lives are expendable while others are valued. But those will fail. There is a better way.

Donna Clark shared a quote with me that came at just the right time. “Hope has two beautiful daughters: Anger and Courage. Anger at the ways things are and Courage to change things.” 

Of these two, Anger is the easier one. Anger gives us pleasure and requires nothing.

C.S. Lewis once said that the pleasure of anger lies in the fact that we feel entirely righteous when we are angry. But this is a tragic error; only God is entirely righteous. 

I invite you today to place your hope in God, who is faithful. Abide in this hope, and let the power of the Spirit flow through you, giving you courage to walk that better way.

Let us “provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together,” as the letter to the Hebrews says. 

Hold fast to our hope in God, who shows us a better way.

The Anatomy of Hope, Week 3: Eyes

Genesis 21:8-21

1 Peter 1:3-9

You might not know much about Hagar, because the story of Genesis doesn’t make her a main character. Although I would argue she ought to be.

Hagar is first introduced in Chapter 16 of Genesis. Years have already passed since God first called Abraham on this journey, making promises about descendants that would surpass the number of stars in the sky. Yet even now Sarah remains childless. God occasionally returns to reiterate the promise to Abraham, but nothing happens.

And so, not terribly surprising to anyone, Sarah decides to take action. Hagar is a woman who is enslaved to her. She is Egyptian, presumably young and healthy, so Sarah decides she will take a chance on her.

In those times, men often took more than one wife – for the sake of being fruitful and multiplying. And a woman who held another woman enslaved, could force that other woman to become her husband’s concubine. Any child that was born of such a union could be claimed as the primary wife’s own. 

And so Sarah makes the proposal to Abraham, who does not refuse. Then Sarah, Abraham’s wife, takes Hagar the Egyptian, and gives her to her husband Abraham as a wife.

Hagar conceived, according to plan. 

All this happened before Abraham and Sarah were visited by divine beings, who told them that Sarah would have a son, in due season. Which made Sarah laugh.

At her age, she had every right to be doubtful, but it may be that her laughter betrayed something else, too. After what she had done, giving Hagar to Abraham, watching her enslaved woman bear her husband’s child, the pain of all this! Why now should she be promised a son of her own? The timing seems off and, with bitterness, Sarah laughed.

Hagar gives birth to a son, Ishmael, who will thrive. And Abraham loves his first-born son. How painful this must be for Sarah. But she lives with it, the child of her own scheming, the sole heir to Abraham. And Sarah and Hagar and Ishmael co-exist for a dozen or so years.

Things change, though, when the long-promised child finally arrives. Isaac, the child of laughter, is born to Sarah.

When Isaac is weaned, which would have been around the age of two or three years, Abraham throws a great feast. This marks a milestone in the child’s life – he has survived the vulnerable period of infancy. Many cultures have a tradition of holding a celebration, not at the birth of a child, but at the survival of a child. And so at this time, when Isaac can, presumable, walk and talk as well as eat solid food, there is a celebration. And Sarah is, no doubt, joyful.

Then she looks out and sees Isaac playing with Ishmael, that son of Hagar, and her joy dissipates. Ishmael is a teenager by now, not a small child. Perhaps Sarah is afraid that he will hurt Isaac. But, perhaps, it is simply that she resents his existence.

Of course, Ishmael only exists because Sarah willed it. At a time in her life when her hope was dwindling, in her desperation she concocted that plan, involving her enslaved woman Hagar, which led to the birth of Ishmael. During what may have been one of her lowest periods, Sarah swallowed her pride and created this situation where she would no longer be Abraham’s sole wife. And, even as the first wife, Sarah made herself a lesser wife – as long as she remained childless.

The fact that Hagar was Egyptian might also have something to do with Sarah’s bitter feelings now. Years earlier, Sarah had what was probably a traumatic experience in Egypt. As she and Abraham approached the land of Egypt in their travels, Abraham paused. He said to Sarah, you are a beautiful woman and I am afraid the Egyptian men will kill me, so they can take you. Say you are my sister, Sarah, then all will go well.

All did go well for Abraham, but not for Sarah. She was taken into Pharaoh’s household as a concubine. And Abraham was treated like a prince, given livestock and slaves – I guess as a bride price for his sister.

The story goes that God intervened, protecting Sarah from being violated, and she was returned to Abraham. But would it be any wonder if Sarah still carried the psychological wounds of her time in Egypt? Would we blame her if her resentment of Hagar was intensified by the fact that she was Egyptian?

Whatever feelings are roiling in Sarah as she looks on Isaac and Ishmael, it is enough to make her turn to Abraham and say, get rid of her and that child. 

Abraham, we hear, is not so happy about this. After all, Ishmael was his first-born son and he loves him. But, the story goes, God affirmed for Abraham that this was, indeed, the right action. Send them away, Abraham. I have other plans for them. So early the next morning, Abraham gives Hagar a skin of water and sends her off into the desert with her son.

By this time, remember, Ishmael is a teenager. Even though the story as it is written makes it sound like he is a small child – even an infant. To some degree, this would reflect two or more versions of the story being patched together, somewhat awkwardly. Remember we are dealing with an oral tradition, stories that had been told and retold for hundreds of years before they were written down. 

But aside from the clunky editing, the words emphasize how vulnerable they are out there in the desert, alone. Ishmael survived infancy, something they probably celebrated, but will he survive this ordeal? 

Hagar is afraid. She wanders for a while and gets lost. Where should she go? Which way? Eventually, she runs out of water, she loses hope.

It is, in fact, quite alarming to see how Hagar reacts. Her son is frail from dehydration, and she walks away from him. Her son is dying, of this she seems sure, and she turns her back on him. I have always been very troubled by this detail of the story. It seems to reveal a complete lack of motherly instinct. But what it really shows is a complete lack of hope.

Hagar was a resourceful woman, a hopeful woman – until now. And now we see that hope is gone. Not even a glimmer remains. She is ready to lose her son, and ready to die, herself.

What makes this even more tragic is knowing that this isn’t Hagar’s first time alone in the desert. She has been here before. It was after she conceived Ishmael, when Sarah went into a rage to see this enslaved woman looking all rosy and content. She treated Hagar very roughly then, and Hagar ran away. 

Back then, Hagar was fierce. She was angry. Even though she had no idea where she was going, she was not afraid. She found some water – by luck or because God led her there. Then, as she sat beside this spring in the desert, God spoke to her. “Hagar, where have you come from and where are you going?”

God told Hagar to return to Sarah, but also had a promise for Hagar. “You will bear a son, and he shall be called Ishmael. He will be fierce; he will be a fighter. And for you, Hagar, I will greatly multiply your offspring.” Much the same as God’s promise to Abraham.

Beside that spring in the desert, Hagar listened to the word God spoke to her. Then she spoke. Hagar named this God, saying, “You are El-roi.” It means God who sees.

And the truth is, all three religions that claim Abraham as their father – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, are shaped by Hagar’s observation that God is El-roi, the one who sees me. And, Hagar added triumphantly, “I have seen God and yet live!”

That was the first time Hagar was out alone in the desert. Now she is there again, but this time is different. Having been cast out of her home; being a considerably older woman now – maybe 15 or 20 years older – Hagar is afraid, confused. She no longer seems to have an inner compass, and she gets lost. Hagar who once was so fierce, now is lost.

I have not ever been in such a place as this – a place of utter hopelessness. Hagar has become a woman who no longer believes she has anything to give to her child – not even a comforting touch. Hagar walks away from her son; she, the woman who saw God, no longer wanted to see.

It is in that darkest moment, though, that God opens her eyes, so that she might see a well – once again, water in the desert. And to see the water is to see a different future for Ishmael and herself. To see the water is to see life. To see the water is renewed hope.

She gets up and goes to the well, she draws water for Ishmael. This boy will live. With new hope, Hagar is once again a woman of action. 

She is a minor character in the book of Genesis, but the Islamic tradition cherishes the stories of Hagar. Muslims maintain that Hagar and Ishmael settled in that very spot. Sometime later, a band of nomads came through and asked Hagar if they could stay there. According to the legend, Hagar consented but told them the water rights belonged to her and Ishmael alone.  For some reason, the nomads honored this arrangement she demanded of them.

In due time, Hagar found a wife for Ishmael. He married and had children, and Hagar’s descendants were many, so this story has a happy ending. Something that was by no means guaranteed in the middle of the story.

All because God opened her eyes to the possibility that was there.

Possibility.

In the epistle of Peter, we read about this thing he calls genuine faith, a faith ready for salvation to be revealed – even when it is not seen yet. A faith founded on Jesus Christ, whom we do not see, but love. Even though we do not see him we believe in him. This is faith, and faith is accompanied by hope.

Hagar only needed to see a reason to hope. The water was that reason. Now new possibilities were opened for her, and Hagar’s hope was restored to her.

If we have lost hope, God is able to open our eyes. The God who sees us in our time of need, can open our eyes so that we can see possibility; so we can see a reason to hope again.

Blessed be the God who sees us in our need. The God whose mercies give us new birth into a living hope – in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

The Anatomy of Hope, Week 2: The Heart

Genesis 18:1-15

Romans 5:1-8

Lately I have become aware of one of my personal flaws. I like efficiency, probably a little too much.

I like things that are scheduled. Starting things on time. And ending them on time. Although I have to admit that session meetings often run too long. But I try to be on time. As if my life depended on it. As if the schedule were the most critical thing.

But this story of Abraham has got me thinking about this, questioning this. Because what is time, really? To our God, what is time?

Last week I heard someone say: “We serve a wildly inefficient God.” This is true.

Efficiency was not God’s concern in the story of Abraham and Sarah, was it? As we heard last week, God waited until Abraham was 75 years old before calling him out to a new life. And in the story we hear today, Abraham is pushing 100. For 25 years God has been telling Abraham and Sarah, who are well past the normal age of parenting, that God will bless them with many descendants. Is it any wonder Sarah laughed?

Who could blame her? Certainly not Abraham, for he also laughed at God just a bit earlier, when he was informed by the Lord that 90-year-old Sarah would be blessed with a son, that “kings of people shall come from her.” Hilarious. Abraham fell on his face laughing at that one.

Clearly, they did not believe any such thing could happen. The idea was absurd, of course. But also, the idea was painful for them. For two people approaching the end of their lives, who have suffered the pain of childlessness this long, maybe it felt as though God was taunting them with false hope. 

And so they laughed. Abraham and Sarah laughed at the promise of God. Which is something that might seem blasphemous to us – until we realize that we do it too. When it feels as though God’s promises are so far off from the reality we live with, we might laugh.

Some years ago, I offered a prayer in the congregation for peace in the Middle East. And after worship a member walked up to me and asked, “Are you dreaming? How can you say that with a straight face?” And he laughed.

Just last week, in a discussion about Genesis, one person laughed and said, “How is any of this relevant to parents who are struggling to feed their children?”

It is a particular struggle of a faithful life to sustain hope when there is no sign on the horizon that God will be true to God’s promise. In painful times, especially, hope is hard. But such times are also when hope is most needed. 

In the verses we read today from the letter to the Romans, Paul patiently explains it all to us. “Affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame.” Or as other translations have it, “hope does not disappoint.”

If we can only hold on to it, for as long as we need it.

You and I would like to move as quickly as possible from affliction to hope, skipping over endurance altogether. Yet, we are faced with the fact that faith and hope are not about efficiency. 

And so, the question we wonder about today is, how do we sustain hope in times of affliction and suffering. How does the heart hang on in the long walk of faith – faith in things yet unseen?

In our exploration of the anatomy of hope, today we examine the heart, because when it comes to matters of hope, the heart is inevitably involved.

Think of Abraham and Sarah. God’s word had to have seemed inscrutable to them. Their years have been filled with uncertainty, threat, danger, disappointment. Although we have no idea what their lives were like before God called them on this journey, we know what the story tells us about the journey. During these years of wandering they have traveled through treacherous territory, where they felt threatened. They have suffered disputes over their herds and land with Lot, Abraham’s nephew – which became bad enough that they had to part ways. 

There were battles Abraham got involved in, negotiations he was tasked with. Life has been relentlessly hard for Abraham and Sarah. And through it all, God kept returning to Abraham to tell him all the good things that were in store for him and Sarah. Every time they heard the promise reiterated, they had to have wondered. 

There were plenty of moments of doubt. The times they laughed at the promise. There were even moments when both Abraham and Sarah tried to take things into their own hands – to become their own source of hope. Most notably, this happened when Sarah hatched the plan to give Abraham a child by her servant Hagar. This child, Ishmael, would be the promised descendant, they thought. It might have seemed like a good plan, but it wasn’t God’s plan.

And so, once again, they reoriented. Once again, they turned toward the promise they had been hearing for so many years, reopening the wounds of their hearts. They let themselves hope – a little bit. Not that much, maybe. But enough to keep them on the journey. 

This is important: They weren’t perfect, but there was enough hope to keep going, even through their suffering.

One thing we learn – from the great story of the Bible, as well as from our own lives – is that a life of faith does not eliminate pain. Every Christian has experiences of grief, heartache, disappointments of all kinds. And the truth is, the Christian path opens our hearts to even more pain. Compassion for others is a hallmark of discipleship, a quality that Jesus modeled for us, a gift of grace. 

We stand in God’s grace, Paul says in the letter to the Romans, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is where we find the gift of faith, and hope. This is the vantage point from which we have a different view of things. We see suffering and endurance in a different light. Standing in the place of grace, we see God at work in all things.

Standing in this grace, we see ourselves connected to suffering everywhere. The world wants to tell us that all is well if we are not personally suffering. But standing in God’s grace we find that the suffering of others is also painful to us. The heart of faith has compassion for all of God’s creation, just as God does. And the way to navigate this is with hope.

And although peace in the Middle East feels so far away, there is hope. Hope gives us ability to envision it, even while it is lacking. Hope gives us the desire to work for it.

And although Old Testament story feels so distant from the concerns of suffering families in our midst today, it may give us hope. The biblical story is all about suffering families, too, but through the story we learn that God never abandoned them; hope perseveres. In hope we await God’s time.

And this is why hope demands humility of us. We cannot pretend to have the answers. We cannot know why, or for how long, someone will suffer. Hope enables us to walk alongside them, loving them, offering what support and aid that we can. 

In God’s time, a child was born to Abraham and Sarah. And once again, Sarah laughed, but this time it was the laughter of joy. All in God’s time. The right time. 

Not according to their schedule, but at the right time – our wildly inefficient God’s time. 

Good things take time, but hope will get us there, through the waiting.

Compassion for others whose lives don’t even intersect with ours, is inefficient, but faith will not let us look away and hope will see us through.

The heart will suffer – there is no way around this for a hopeful people. But hope will also keep our hearts open, and by this we will receive the love of God.

The Anatomy of Hope, Week 1: Foundation

Genesis 12:1-9

Hebrews 6:13-20

Forty years ago, when I was young and starting a family, people were worried about overpopulation. That was a big thing. China had its one child policy, which they were enforcing pretty rigidly. Only one child per family permitted, with very few exceptions. 

Among my friends, I would sometimes hear concern about whether or not it was responsible, even ethical, to bring a child into this world. What would life be like for them? What unknown challenges would they face in their lifetime? 

But while I heard people expressing these concerns, I don’t know if it actually impacted their decisions. It seemed like most of my friends were, like me, having families – two, three, even four children. And China did a total reversal of its one-child policy, when they discovered there might not be enough people to care for them when they get old. 

So I think most of us stopped worrying about overpopulation. Life went on. But now there has been another shift, a new thing to worry about.

I recently read an article by the journalist Neal Gabler in which he shared his concerns about what he sees as a sort of national depression. He says surveys show 78 percent of Americans believe the future looks dim. And maybe not only Americans.

He points to research on the worldwide decline in birthrates. It seems that the decline is not related to financial stability or how much of a support network you have, or maybe not even related to how much you want to have children. It seems that people are sharing a sense that the future is too uncertain for the lifelong commitment of parenthood. 

Which does not seem like a good thing.

But the falling birthrate is really just a symptom of a very complex problem in our world. We could talk about it all at great length and get very depressed in the process, so I’ll spare us that. But there is one thing I want to lift up, the one thing that really took my breath away: In Gabler’s words, people no longer trust hope.

That what the future holds is only more of the same disunity, disfunction, and dissatisfaction. That our values have been trampled. That truth has been so devalued that we no longer even know what is real; we no longer know what to trust.

I cannot deny these realities. Yet, when I read Gabler’s conclusion that hope has died in our world, I felt a strong resistance well up inside me, saying, “No.” It is all too possible for the hope of a people to die. But if it does, then perhaps that hope has been anchored in something that cannot sustain it.

The foundation of our hope matters more than anything. Which brings us to the story of Abram and Sarai.

The history of the people Israel begins with two persons: Abram and Sarai. In the 12th chapter of Genesis, we meet this couple who are just beginning an extraordinary journey together. Even more extraordinary is their age. Abram is 75 years old; Sarai is younger, but not by that much. I think we would agree that most septuagenarians do not embark on brand new epic journeys into the unknown, but that is what Abram and Sarai did. And the reason they did this is because God made a promise to them.

Go out to the land I will show you, God says, a land you know absolutely nothing about; do this, and I will make a great nation of you. And even though this elderly couple had no children at all – for Sarai, the story says, was barren – they followed the promise. They went.

And as they traveled, God led them through the land of Canaan and said to Abram, this is it, right here; I will give this land to your children. Children, of course, that they did not have because Sarai was barren. They looked at this land, and then they moved on. Because the promise was not yet.

This is the beginning of it all – the story of our faith and the faith of our ancestors. This story begins with a promise to two old folks, a promise that will set the foundation for everything that follows. And in everything that follows, we see a pattern where the people seek to follow their God. Then they stumble. They fall into a deep pit where there is darkness, where they might easily lose hope – but then they discover that God is still with them. God has not abandoned them.

It is a pattern that repeats itself so many times it becomes an expectation. Human beings will just mess everything up, such that it feels impossible to sort it all aright, to get back on track. But then, God, who does not let go of us, sets us back on track. It is a story of hope, and the foundation of our hope is our God whose promises are sure, whose love is steadfast.

The pattern repeats through the scriptures: the human tendency to fall, but as we remind ourselves in the great communion prayer, God called a people back to God’s self through the law handed down to Moses, through the prophets who spoke truth to kings to show them how they had fallen away from righteousness, and finally, through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

It is in Christ, we believe, that the promise to Abraham is fulfilled – the promise that through Abraham all the families of the earth will be blessed. It is in Christ that we get a glimpse of the glory of God, a taste of the kingdom of heaven. It is in Christ that we anchor our hope, a hope that will not fail us.

For as the writer to the Hebrews says, it is through two things – God’s character, which we know as love, and God’s promise, as old as Abraham – that we may seize the hope that is set before us. 

But we must also know that the hope is for now – not just for the next world – a kind of pie in the sky in the sweet by and by. The Letter to the Hebrews and the other New Testament epistles offer some words of comfort, but much more, they give words of guidance, encouragement, instructions for the church: how to be a community of human beings made in the image of God. How to move this world toward hope. And that is our calling.

In the early 16th century, John Calvin, the father of our Reformed faith, arrived at the city of Geneva and it was a sight. It was a sort of a wild west town, corrupt politically and religiously. It was a turbulent age, not so different from our own time in that way. But Calvin somehow managed to bring order to this place. They created a culture in which the poor were cared for, where people had a sense of their role in creating a better society. They created a place where there was hope. Even though the world was not less turbulent, their lives were shaped by hope.

In his commentary on the book of Hebrews, Calvin writes to his community about the corruption, the sin, the misery that they all knew so well, and then he asks, “what would become of us if we did not obstinately cling to hope?”

Hope gives us a clear vision of a better way. Hope stirs us to act, to become better than we were, to work for a world that is better than it was.

Yes, there are many signs in our world that despair is winning the battle. People giving up on community as we hibernate in our homes. People giving up on politics as we see our leaders unwilling to work together anymore. People giving up on the earth, because caring for it is too big a job for individuals to do. We even see people giving up on life when they decide against the possibility of bringing children into the world. 

I see despair. Even in our congregation I know there is that risk. Some of you completed the little survey I gave you this week about hope. When asked how it feels when you contemplate the unknown, some of you said that you do feel some dread, or worry, that drags you down. Despair is a real thing that looms out over us. But hope still has the power to hold us. Hope in the sure and steady love of God, the God who has a plan for us, for this world created with love. With hope, we will not give up. 

The choice for hope is a kind of resistance in this world. Although we will still feel pain, we will not be devastated by it. Although we will see the world around us choosing other ways, we will stay on the path that God has set for us, lifting one another back up when we stumble. And although we see people around us surrendering to apathy, we will choose active, hopeful engagement with our world. 

During these next few weeks, we will walk together, praying together, studying together, seeking a better understanding of the way of hope. 

Let us go this way together because, as the Apostle Paul wrote, “Hope does not disappoint.”