Have Hope! Happy New Year!

Hope is a probably the most powerful and probably the most important factor when it comes to overcoming our biggest challenges. Without it, all is lost.

They say that in certain tragic situations you must be crazy to keep hope alive. But it’s that little spark deep within the human heart that eventually pulls us from the  brink of despair. Hope has the power to do impossible things. It is always hard to be optimistic during difficult times. Yet, hope is our only weapon. We can use it to fight and eventually find a way forward. We can sit around waiting for the worst to happen. But there is the reality that there is always at least one more thing that one can do. We just may not have yet realized what that is.

But even people who are more optimistic and hopeful by nature (I count myself one of those) need a little reassurance, every now and then, that things will get better. This is the role of the prophets is Scripture: to remind us that in the end God prevails. This alone may be enough to bring back one’s inner optimist.

What other passage do we need on this New Year’s Eve than this.... 

Isaiah 9

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light:

they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death,

upon them hath the light shined.

Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy:

they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest,

and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.

For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden,

and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian.

For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise,

and garments rolled in blood;

but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire.

For unto us a child is born,

unto us a son is given:

and the government shall be upon his shoulder:

and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor,

The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end,

upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom,

to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice

from henceforth even for ever.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. That is the key! It is the Lord of hosts - of many forces and unreserved strength - that gives us hope. Once we understand this, we might again find the inner strength that turns the tide of battle - that gives us hope - that gives us the strength to do what needs to be done to overcome what confronts us. We need not walk in darkness anymore. On us a great light has shone!

So Have hope! Happy New Year!

Lament and Hope

We are all holding so much in these unnerving days. Heavy stuff…the stuff of lamentation and heartache. But alongside our laments, there exists the stuff of rejoicing and thanksgiving. So recognizing this tension, in the month of November, I invite you into this “moment” . . . to breathe . . . to settle into quiet thoughts or silent prayers for the people, places, and circumstances that you hold close in your heart . . . your lamentations as well as your thanksgivings.

When we feel blessed in life, when we experience goodness and wholeness, we turn to God in praise and thanksgiving. But what happens when we experience just the opposite? What happens when we are overcome by the presence of chaos, brokenness, suffering, and death, or by a sudden sense of our human vulnerability, as in the COVID-19 pandemic?

When we hurt physically, we cry out in pain; when we hurt religiously, we cry out in lament. Lamentation can be described as a loud, religious “Ouch!”

Laments in Scripture address themselves to God: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice!” (Psalm 130:1) and “My soul, too, is utterly terrified; but you, O Lord, how long…?” (Psalm 6:4). In more modern terms we might put it this way: “I call to you, O Lord, and all I get is your answering machine!” We take our cries directly to the top, to God. God, however, may seem far away, “O my God, I cry out by day, and you answer not; by night, and there is no relief for me” (Psalm 22:3).

We can ask heartfelt questions: “How long, O Lord? Will you utterly forget me?” (Psalm 13:2), which implies: I am at the end of my rope, and I cannot hold on much longer. “Why, O Lord, do you stand aloof? Why hide in times of distress?” (Psalm 10:1), which implies: “I do not understand what is going on; this makes no sense. How long? Why?” These are not requests for information, but rather cries of pain.

The afflictions of the speaker in these passages are described in broad, stereotypical ways that enables others to identify with: sickness—” . . . heal me, O Lord, for my body is in terror” (Psalm 6:3); loneliness and alienation—”My friends and my companions stand back because of my affliction” (Psalm 38:12); danger and mistreatment by others—”O Lord,… save me from all my pursuers” (Psalm 7:2) and even aging—”Cast me not off in my old age…” (Psalm 71:9). Finally, the ultimate affliction is physical death – “For my soul is glutted with troubles and my life draws near to the nether world” (Psalm 88:4). All this manifests chaos and brokenness invading and pulling our lives apart.

We might feel, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and then think, “I should not feel this way! Am I losing my faith!” Laments offer a correction to false, naïve, and overly rationalistic views of faith. In Scripture, faith is not viewed as an intellectual assent to some statement about God. Rather, it is the process of entrusting ourselves to God. While we may experience God’s absence; we may feel alone and confused, and we may even doubt. Doubt in this case is not the opposite of faith; despair is, because in despair we give up on our relationship with God. Doubt, on the contrary, is a sign that our faith is alive and well; it is part of the rhythm of faith itself and urges us to greater faith as we resolve our doubts. These difficult feelings are real and will not go away if we do not recognize them and deal with them constructively.

Laments, then, are not failures of faith, but acts of faith. When we cry out to God, deep down we know that our relationship with God counts; it counts to us and it counts to God. Lament is a constructive way to deal with the difficult feelings of life.

Almost all the lament psalms end with a sudden turn to praise (e.g., Psalm 6:9-11; 22:23-32). So, it is only after we lament, after we face and express the pain and negativity and get it all out, that the healing can begin. In more theological terms, we can say that it is only by facing and going through the experience of death that we can come to a new life, to resurrection.

Perhaps we are just beginning to realize, as a society and as a nation, that we have been more traumatized by recent events than we initially thought. So, there may still be lamentation work to do. How helpful it would be if we had some models to allow us to express and acknowledge our grief, our pain, our confusion and our anger; to offer each other strength and support in difficult times; to help us, individually and communally, move forward with the tasks and challenges of life to help us discern what is a good and proper response to any situation. Gratefully, we, as Anglicans, do have such models – in the Scriptures and in the Book of Common Prayer.

The loss of lament has been costly; we have much to gain by recovering it. Maybe if we do, we may find ourselves spontaneously turning to praise as we realize that God, far from being absent from us, has been carrying us all along. Just maybe, we have something to teach our world about how we can emerge from the darkness and gloom into a place of peace and genuine thanksgiving.

        

 They shall bear you up in their hands, lest you strike your foot against a stone.  (Psalm 91:12)

We recently heard these words from Jesus, “and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” The gospel lesson, of course, was Matthew 16:13-20. Peter had just blurted out, “You are the Messiah, son of the living God.” Jesus responds by acknowledging Peter’s affirmation of faith and promises the disciples the keys of the kingdom. In the time of COVID-19, it may feel like we are sometimes being assailed by the forces of Hades. But still, we need to hear Jesus’ promise and to believe it.

There are many in Christian churches that are still in denial about the impact of the pandemic. I have even heard some pastors preach that God would protect the flock from this often-lethal germ. When I hear that, I am put in mind of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness – and Jesus’ answer: “Thus it is written, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord, your God.’” To me, such thinking seeks to manipulate God into a position of showing his power – to prove us right. This is the heart of the temptation to what is classically called hubris or “pride.” I hope that no one in our community thinks that way.

On the other hand, there are those who still believe that the threat is overblown, and that this will all go away soon. History teaches that this is the kind of thinking that led to the Great Depression. It was the same mental process that led to the appeasement before the start of WW II that led to its outbreak. Quite frankly, I would rather be accused of overreacting rather than not doing enough to keep danger at bay.

Why do I bring all this up now? We’ve been living with this “COVID thing” for over five months. Surely, we have weathered the worst of it. Well, yes and no. Just like the world in the aftermath of the Depression and WWII, our world is being changed as each day passes. I am trying to brace myself for the reality that nothing will ever be the same as it was pre-pandemic. I am not sure what the world, even our little piece of it, will be like once a global vaccine and effective therapeutic medicines are in place. One thing I can be sure of, it will not look much like what we knew at the end of March 2020.

I hope that by then we will have learned many lessons. I hope that we will continue to reflect on what is genuinely important and valuable. I hope we will have acknowledged how essential it is to look beyond ourselves and our own well-being to the “other” in our midst. Hashtags like #inthistogether are only words, unless they represent a real shift in our thinking – a shift away from the self-centeredness that has become part and parcel of our culture – toward the other-centeredness that is at the core of Jesus’ teaching, where the well-being of our neighbor becomes one of our highest priorities.

As we prepare to return from summer activities to the more settled routines of work and school, we take yet another step away from “normal”. Even now, we are being reminded that it is not and will not be the same, ever again.

This is no cause for despair. Far from it. Scripture testifies that when God’s people trek through the worst, they are better able to recognize the hand of God at work among them, whether it was in the vast desert wilderness of the Exodus from Egypt, the exile to Babylon, or the seemingly unending hours between Jesus’ death and resurrection. What we need to remember is that God’s ways are not our ways and that for God’s faithful people, there is always a way forward.