“Lord of All Hopefulness”

October 21, 2007

Scripture Reading:   Luke 18:1-8

Rev. Dr. Carol  L. Kerr

 Blue Point Congregational Church

 Christianity is a religion of hope.  The apostle Paul magnificently expresses our Christian hope when he exclaims: 

…For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, 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)

Hope is what being Christina is all about.

Life is ambiguous.  It doesn’t give us clear cut evidence on anything , one way or another. 

Take ourselves, for instance.  Our goodness is thoroughly mixed in with evil.  We are an unnerving concoction of evil goodness, or if you will innocent evil.  This can be most pronounced in our relationships with each other.  Here are some funny one-liners which capture the ambiguity of life in relationship.  Despair or hope?  Do these feelings sound familiar to you? 

                *It might help us to stay together if we spent more time apart.

                *The best thing about failing is that it makes nobody jealous of you.

                *If I can’t do anything else for you, at least I can worry about you.

                *Let’s defy common sense and try to be happy together.

Should we despair or should we hope?  If we despair the best we can expect is to live in the past.  If we despair we disengage ourselves from life.  If we despair the sun never dawns, morning remains forever twilight.  However, if we hope, we bless our past by giving it a future. 

That is what is so great about the persistent widow in Jesus’ parable.   Or, in our modern rendition Mrs. Goldstein.  She   wouldn’t take ‘No’ for an answer.  She wouldn’t quit.  She didn’t care how annoyed the judge was getting at her.  She shows up everyday arguing to get her property back.  She tries every angle – habeas corpus, environmental grounds, turning her property into a city park, county park, state park, national park, national monument to her husband, taking criminal charges against Mr. Greenbaum, recusing the judge.  She never lets the system get to her.  She insists she was not a second class citizen.  She badgers the judge with her hope that someday she would win.  Her hope was so persistent that  even this crooked, jaded judge caved in and gave her her land back.  Jesus says, if a crooked judge can be worn down, how much more will God listen to our petitions and grant us justice, his chosen ones who cry to him day and night.  Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

There is an oriental saying that a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.  That first step is hope.  Hope calls out to the 1,000 miles laying before it and declares, “All things are possible with God.” 

Hope is what Paul Tillich calls the inbreaking of the New Being.  He writes:

…It is here, amongst us, in the midst of our personal tragedy, and the tragedy of history.  Suddenly, within the hardest struggle, it appears as a victory, not attained by ourselves, but present beyond expectation and struggle….We know that now, in this moment, we are in the truth, in spite of all our ignorance about ourselves and our world….The truth of life is in us, with an illuminating certainty, uniting us with ourselves, giving us great and restful happiness.  (Page 101, Shaking the Foundation)

Isn’t it true that before the despair sets in there can be vivid moments of joy?  There are these moments crackling with life?  Moments when we embrace the goodness as worth something despite all the evil? 

Terrible things do happen to many people.  Terrible things have happened to many of us.  I just returned from a week long continuing education workshop on working with people who are grieving.  There are children who have lost both their parents in car accidents.  Four year olds killed on roller coasters.   Women whose husbands of 60 years have died of cancer.  We do not have control over everything.  Some time in most of our lives something bad even  terrible may happen.  Even though we cannot control what happens we can control our attitude towards it.   Take Senator McCain, who as you all know is now running as a Republican candidate for president.  I was reading in this Thursday’s Christian Science Monitor, a newspaper, about how he kept faith while he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam.  Every Sunday after lunch was finished and the guards had departed the senior officer in the area would signal that it was time to pray together by coughing in a way that signaled the letter “c” for church – one cough and then three coughs.  They could not speak aloud for they would be tortured so they would have church together silently.  The “Call to Worship” was the cough, and then silently they would say the 23^rd psalm or the Lord’s prayer or anything else you’d want to say to get us some help – but not out loud. Even in the POW camps of Vietnam they prayed.  They kept connected with God every day just like the persistent widow.  Just like Jesus told us to.   Just think about how effective it was for the POWS when we have times of silent prayer! 

For McCain there were moments of grace in prison.  While in solitary confinement, he would be left for the night with his arms tied back in a painful position.  One night, a guard walked in and loosened the ropes, then came back five hours later and tightened up the ropes again, without saying a word.  Two months later, on Christmas Day, McCain was allowed to stand outside for 10 minutes in the courtyard, and that same guard came up to him.  The guard stood beside him for a minute, then drew a cross in the dirt with this sandal and stood there for a minute, looking at Mc Cain silently.  A few minutes alter he rubbed it out and walked away.  In a recent town hall meeting, speaking of that man, McCain’s voice gets chokes up as he says, “I will never forget that moment.   And I will never forget the fact aht no matter where you are, no matter how difficult things are, there’s always going to be someone of your faith and your belief and your devotion to your fellow man who will pick you up and help you out and bring you through.” 

When no one is here, I will sometimes come into this sanctuary and look at the light coming through these colored windows.  As the sun travels its arch over the church throughout the day, these windows respond and shift with the light filling different corners and pews of the sanctuary (red, blue, green, etc…)  So too, as Christians we believe our God is filling this sanctuary, spotting the dark corners with beams of hope. 

God fills our souls too.  Sometimes people will argue against the existence of God because of the pain and suffering in the world.  But, I argue for the existence of God because of this unaccountable hope and joy that keeps coming up again and again against all odds.  We need to grab on t that hope as the truth – the truth of Christ.   Paul got it right, 

…For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, 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)