In the Budding of Hope
Reflection by Rev. Dr. Kathryn J. Cameron
Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7
, Psalm 100; Romans 5:1-8
and Matthew 9:35-10:8
‘Hope is the thing with feathers,’
Emily Dickinson wrote from her quarantined room in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Her words expressing the frail strength of hope would reach people as far away as Ruwanda in June of 1994.
Her words reach folks as near as Brooklyn, and upper state New York in June 2020.
Here in Lincolnton, this weekend, hope is the thing for our church, and our community. We hope the new birth God prepares for 114 West Main Street will bring laughter and joy to the whole county.
When I think of laughter, I’m reminded of a movie about “The Princess Bride.” It is a child’s fairy tale about a beautiful princess who falls in love with a handsome young fellow,but before they can get married the beautiful princess is kidnapped by a scheming, bald little man and his two friends: a slow but good-hearted giant and an Italian sword fighter.
And while these kidnappers are trying to get away,the bald little man keeps saying his favorite word,“Inconceivable!”
And every time he says “inconceivable!” we laugh, why?
Because every time he thinks something “absolutely, totally, and in every other way is completely inconceivable” it actually happens.
But when God makes a promise to Sarah and Abraham to have a child,
and Sarah says (if you’ll pardon a terrible pun), “Inconceivable” we don’t laugh. Why not?
Sarah laughed, even though she denied it, and Abraham laughed as well.
They laughed because the thing God promised was hopelessly impossible. Sarah laughed, because at the age of 90 she had long ago finished crying.
How many years was it? Probably not long after they were married she began to fear that something was wrong. Month after month, year after year she and Abraham loved and were loved and every month she would wonder, “Could it be that God is answering our prayers? Maybe this year (just maybe) God’s promise will come true. Perhaps now is the time when I will bear the promised child.” But it never was. And then came midlife and Sarah didn’t wonder any more.
Now listen, Abraham was a
true
believer in God. Long ago he had committed himself to walking with God in obedience for the rest of his life.That commitment still stood.
Sarah also had faith. After she laughed, the stranger/angel/visitor challenged her, by asking: “Why did Sarah laugh? Followed by the rhetorical question: is anything too hard for the Lord?
The way the question is asked makes the answer obvious, and Sarah would agree, NO, OF COURSE NOT. Nothing is too hard. God can do anything. Abraham and Sarah
believed that.
But after a lifetime of disappointment, a lifetime without children; they laughed and denied laughing.
Let’s leave Sarah and Abraham for a moment, for now, we are not sure what kind of thing hope might be for them.
Fast forward to Psalm 100 which begins by inviting all the earth to make a joyful noise to God. One may ask, however, how this may be possible,
when so many suffer, even the earth itself.
Hope is the thing with joyful noise we learn from the Rwandan prescription for depression. A Rwandan reflected on the mental health care offered their community after the civil war in 1994.
Folks from outside their community wanted to come in and talk, one on one, in small rooms, for an hour at a time –classic western therapy.
But people needed, according to this Rwandan, to go outside in the sun where you begin to feel better, and to dance to music and drumming,
which would get your blood flowing again, and to know that there were others in your community who would take the day off in order to gather and to lift you up and bring you back to joy.
Sun and drumming and dancing and community –that was their prescription for healing depression.
Hope is the thing with dancing that draws us out of our alienation
into the sun of community.
Fast forward to Matthew’s Gospel, with Jesus traveling to all the cities, towns and rural farms in between. In Matthew, Jesus gets busy fulfilling God’s mission—preaching, teaching, healing—then he calls his disciples into the same vocation.
Hope is in the budding followers of Jesus.
While Jesus' compassion for his sheep reminds us where Jesus begins God’s work, his commission of the disciples introduces a different image:
"The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore, ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers". Jesus pairs his compassion with a sense of urgency.
Hope is in the budding followers, who will cultivate more followers, so Jesus summons them and gives them "authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness".
As Luke A. Powery says of this passage:
“This is good news, because the movement of this passage reveals that when there is a need, Jesus shows compassion, and his compassion causes him to send out others on a mission to serve those in need. God provides avenues to meeting human needs, and this compassionate ministry is free for the “lost”. All that Jesus desires is that the lost be found.”
[1]
Fast forward to Paul, sitting at his desk writing a letter to a group of churches in Rome. This part of Paul’s letter is not unlike an Emily Dickinson poem, a compact expression that broadens into horizons:
Therefore, since we are justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have obtained access to this grace
in which we stand;
and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.
And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings,
knowing that suffering produces endurance,
and endurance produces character,
and character produces hope,
and hope does not disappoint us, because
God's love has been poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit
that has been given to us.
Hope is the thing produced by character, endurance, suffering with Christ.
Paul shows that God has always acted towards us with grace,
even as God acted with grace toward Abraham and Sarah and their descendants.
If we are in the house, that is, if we are present
when Paul’s co-worker, Phoebe reads the letter aloud
and she leads us to understand Paul’s meaning;
we are ready to hear about the hope
experienced by Christians as a result
of God’s love.
This God's steadfast love is the promise we hope for;
a promise of hope that will not disappoint,
will not put us to shame for having hope, will not mortify us.
If we can only move out of the inevitable
suffering of being human,if we can only step through endurance— putting one foot in front of the other as God’s spirit becomes our character of hope.
Which brings us back to Abraham and Sarah.
Hope is the thing with what?
How
would
they complete that thought?
Three years ago, I became Facebook friends with Abraham and Sarah.
Only their names are Patrick and Jenna.
They live in upper state, New York.
In 2018, Jenna posted about their hopes to become parents and their endurance through fertility treatments and miscarriages to a pregnancy with twins—a double rainbow, Jenna poetically wrote—until they reached the end of the rainbow and their boys, Ezra and Leo were stillborn at 21 weeks.
Jenna wrote in her blog:
When Patrick and I were preparing ourselves for our return to the realm of people after our bereavement leave, we came up with a script for whenever anyone would ask us the dreaded question,
“How are you doing?”
It is a seemingly simple question with an almost impossible answer. How could we possibly capture something so broad and indescribable as the grief we feel for our sons in a way that would not force us to relive our pain every day with every curious person?
Our script went something like this –
“
We have good days and bad days, as you can imagine. But overall, we are doing okay. How are you?
”
Our script was short, sweet, yet honest. It acknowledged our pain, and vulnerably, it did not inflate our progress. Truthfully, we are not doing
“well”
and we are not
“fine,”
for obvious reasons. Yet, we are
“okay,”
and by sharing that simple truth, it seemed to be reassuring and satisfying enough for others.
Yet, in these past few days, I have noticed that our script now has some holes. The first problem has a relatively simple fix. Yesterday, through tears, I admitted to Patrick,
“
Today is a bad day
.”
Patrick stopped me there and profoundly reminded me,
“It is not wrong or weak to cry, or to feel sad, or to grieve. It is not bad. Do not place judgment on your grief and your pain. Today is a hard day. Not a bad day.”
I was so moved by the grace that Patrick extended to my grief.
Our grief is not bad; it is hard. Re-framing the words
has dramatically transformed my own feelings towards those days when I cannot make it out of bed because the pain is just too unbearable, or to times when I have to give in and simply let the waves of grief wash over me as I burst into tears. These are not bad days, implying a sense of judgment on these moments as if they were weak or wrong.
No, instead, our script has changed to reflect the grace that we have given ourselves –
We have good days and we have
hard
days
.
Jenna wrote of the grace that we give ourselves, and the grace that Patrick extended to her.
Is that the hope thing?
Jenna answers:
Life is complicated. And life can sometimes be too complicated for easy answers to seemingly simple questions. I know that I will feel this way when strangers will one day ask us the most complicated and impossible question –
“How many children do you have?”
I honestly do not know how I will respond. There is no script that I have deemed adequate enough, no words true enough.
It pains me to deny Ezra and Leo’s existence, as if they did not change me forever, as if they did not shape and touch this world with their presence, as if they are not in my heart or in my thoughts through every moment of every day. They transformed me into a mother and Patrick into a father the moment they were born. They filled us with that indescribable love that parents describe, from the moment we held them. I would have given my life for them if I could. Of course, they are our children.
Yet, a stranger is not asking about any of this. They want to know if we have children at home. They are passing the time, making small talk. They are not looking to enter into the depths of our love and our pain.
The truth is just too complicated for a simple answer…
Hope is the thing that endures.
Jenna and Patrick were public about their suffering as a witness to their love; and to God’s steadfast love for and through them.
Jenna works as a Family Services Coordinator at Finger Lakes Donor Recovery Network. God called her to this compassionate ministry
where Jesus empowers her to shepherd families through the journey of donating and receiving organs. Like many of you shepherd with your prayers our own Bryan Ross and his family through this journey.
Patrick is a pastor and a preacher. One day he preached on the Abraham and Sarah part of the story where Abraham seems called to sacrifice his son, Isaac.
Here’s what Patrick asked in preparing his sermon:
"Is Abraham a grieving father helpless to save his son? We will ask Abraham what he thinks. We will peer through the eyes of a father who must face the prospect of losing his son. In Abraham's world, and in our own, God makes promises that often appear to disappoint. What do we do with these broken promises? How do we go forward and face a life that requires dreadful, trembling risk?"
Paul would appreciate Patrick’s questions.
We face a life ahead that requires dreadful, trembling risk.
The stranger/angels who visited Abraham and Sarah
would appreciate Jenna’s sense of hospitality when she asks, “and how are
you
today?”
We would like to be able to say with assurance: ‘We have hope’.
Hope is the thing. Hope is the thing, period. No need to explain, to get all poetic about birds and feathers.
And this is no laughing matter.
Or is it? What if hope is God’s laughing with us?
Fast forward to 2020. Abraham and Sarah have a new descendant in Jenna and Patrick’s son by adoption, Emerson.
This week, the family celebrated Emerson’s birthday with a pandemic parade of cars. Patrick shared Emerson’s birth picture and a picture of him now, laughing! Here’s the post:
Happy birthday to our beautiful boy! Two years ago, we received a call from Emerson’s birth mother to come to Brooklyn because she was in labor. From that day on, we were in love. He is our joy, our passion, our reminder of God, and yes, sometimes our frustration lol (he is turning 2 after all!), but always our love. He is held by the love, not just of one but two families - his dear birth mother and her family. Remember this is what we are fighting for. When we say Black Lives Matter, we mean my son, we mean someone’s child into whom they have poured their dreams and love, we mean every child.
And in another post with pictures (new parents are always posting and taking pictures):
Amid the demonstrations, the writings, the ministry, the conversations, the learning, the advocacy, the friendships, the lament, all of which are so vital, I suspect that my greatest work for Black Lives Matter will be being a dad - raising and loving an empowered, happy, beautiful boy, who is surrounded with books, images, dolls, discussions, and people which reflect the breadth of experiences of people of color. His joy is my protest. Not my only protest. But perhaps my best. Yesterday we took a day of Sabbath, went to the park and lake (while distancing and avoiding the playground), played in our yard, napped, watched the sunset, and got milkshakes. Yesterday my son laughed, and in that laugh was the power to change the world.
Hope is the power of Holy Spirit laughter to change the world.
Fast forward to February, 2021. Nine months from now.
When we will know what our newly birthed church looks like
in its infancy.
What? FPC Lincolnton could be pregnant! Don’t make me laugh. We are 220 years old. And even if we could get pregnant, even if God could bring new life, new hope from our tired old selves,who can commit to the years it will take to raise an infant church?
Hope is the thing with a bank account and deep pockets, we might say,
counting the costs with the traditional idea of church in mind.
But what we learn from the Sarah and Abraham of the first generation down to the present generation, what we learn is to laugh with God,
at our notions of what it means to be parents, what it means to labor for God’s harvest, what it means to be God’s people, what it means to be church.
Many of you have reflected, in light of our consideration to conclude our ministry and dissolve the congregation, that what we are talking about is church as a building and church as God’s people. We have told each other, they are not one in the same.
We may choose to dissolve the congregation and let the building go to the new birth God will give the bricks and mortar. We may choose to conclude
this
ministry to be open to the joy of the ministry Christ calls us to in new labors of love and compassion.
Here in Lincolnton, this weekend, hope
is
the thing with feathers,
the dove of peace God sends for our church, and our community.
We hope the new birth God prepares for 114 West Main Street and for those seeking the Good shepherding God promises will bring laughter and joy. May we lift every voice, and sing. Amen.
[1]
Daily Feast, Year A, p. 340. The Rev. Dr. Luke A. Powery is the dean of Duke University Chapel and associate professor of homiletics at Duke Divinity School.
