Carriers of Hope

We’re talking about “Hope” again. Last week, I urged you to choose hope as an attitude of life. Today I’m urging you to be a carrier of hope to others.

As we continue to fight the spread of a deadly virus, it seems odd for me to be urging you to be a “carrier” of anything. But our vocation as Christians is to be a carrier of the gospel, and to be a carrier of the gospel is to be a carrier of hope. We’ll return to that thought in a moment.

Some restrictions are being eased, but we are entering the seventh week of our anti-virus shutdown. Some people keep talking about it being a “new normal.” Others speak of a “new abnormal.”

Their point is that nothing about this crisis is normal, and neither is our response to it. It will take months, if not years, to neutralize the threat of this virus. In the meantime we will continue to improvise solutions to new problems as they arise. Chances are, we will need to solve some of the same problems repeatedly, as we are forced into new lockdowns and re-openings to match the ebb and flow of the virus.

Nothing about this is normal. There is no new normal. Everything is abnormal, and will be for a long time. That is not cheerful news, I know – especially when so many of us are yearning to “return to normal.”

But what “normal” would that be? As happy as we all will be to see this crisis over, we should remember that what was “normal” for many people was a life of misery and want.

For example, we have learned that you are especially vulnerable to this virus if you are 65 and older, live in a nursing home or long-term care facility, have an underlying medical condition – or are poor or black.

You’re especially vulnerable if you’re poor or black because of where you live and lack of medical care. That’s the “old normal.” How is it remotely moral for us as a society to accept that as our “new normal”?

Remember what else was “normal” only a few weeks ago? Ugly partisan rancor in politics; dysfunctional government at almost all levels; policies designed to fleece the poor and enrich the wealthy, while denying the ballot to those who might vote against such atrocities… None of these things is a sign of a healthy society. Do we really want to return to that “normal”?

I’ve heard it said that this coronavirus is the not a disease but a symptom. The disease is the thoroughly sinful way we humans treat one another and the earth we inhabit together. To survive, we have to treat the underling disease as well as any symptoms that may arise from it. To survive, we have to treat not only the coronavirus but also the disease called human nature.

We in the churches can offer a cure for the disease. So what’s our next step? Yes, we greatly desire to worship together in person. That always means expressing our love and care for each other through physical contact, and the days when we can safely do that cannot come soon enough.

But is it enough to return to where we were before? Rather than simply reopen the doors and do exactly what we did before exactly as we have always done it before, can’t we do something better? Can’t we do a rethink, reset, reboot, or relaunch so that our worship and our outreach and every other aspect of our communal lives are actually better than they were before?

Crisis always forces change. In a crisis, we have an opportunity to change for the better, or we can allow the experience to change us for the worse.

Biblically speaking, there are two kinds of time. First is chronos time, the kind of time you measure with a watch or a calendar. Second is kairos time, which is God’s time, when the time is right for significant change.

When Jesus said, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is here,” he didn’t mean chronos time. He meant kairos time. Jesus came at the right time, which is God’s time.

Here’s the question we face: Is this chronos time for us? Or is it kairos time?

Our answer depends in large part on our sense of hope. If we feel the old clock just ticking away as it always has, chances are we aren’t feeling much real hope for the future. But if we feel the possibility of something good happening in God’s kairos time, we can live with renewed hope.

Knowing Christ offers us hope, the Apostle Paul says. Writing to the church at Ephesus, Paul reminds the folks in that church that they had no hope before they knew Christ. He says: “You were aliens rather than citizens of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of God’s promise. In this world you had no hope and no God” (Ephesians 2:12 CEB).

Coming to know Jesus gave them hope. “Now you are no longer strangers and aliens,” Paul says. Now “you belong to God’s household” (Ephesians 2:19 CEB).

Living under lockdown for more than six weeks, we’ve all begun to feel somewhat like strangers and aliens, haven’t we? We’ve begun to feel like exiles from the places we love. We also need to turn to God for hope.

Long ago, God gave this message to the prophet Jeremiah to convey to God’s people who were living in exile from their homeland. “Surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jeremiah 29:11 NRSV).

It’s not that God has a blueprint for each of our lives that we have to live out to the letter. God does not micromanage our lives. God gives us freedom. That’s both exciting and scary. It’s exciting because so much is up to us. It’s scary because so much is up to us.

In exile, it’s natural to lose hope. We’ve lived in exile longer than the standard quarantine. That word – quarantine – is Italian for 40 days. It refers to a 40-day period of waiting that was imposed on arriving ships that were suspected of carrying disease.

In the Bible, 40 is represents a symbolic period of testing for such figures as Moses and Elijah and Jonah and Jesus himself. It’s a period of testing for us as well. As we wait for the quarantine to be lifted, where do we draw the strength to go on?

I have a favorite passage from the Prophet Isaiah that I share at every funeral or memorial service I do. Let me share it with you now, because we all need to hear its message of hope to lift us from the pit of grief and despair. Isaiah writes:

“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted. But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint (Isaiah 40:28-31 NRSV).

Remember what we said last week? In Hebrew, the words for “wait” and “hope” are similar. So we can hear Isaiah saying that “those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.” And also saying, “those who hope in the Lord shall renew their strength.”

That’s a promise we all need to take to heart so we can get through this thing together and come out stronger on the other side. It’s good that each of us individually is encouraged by this promise. It’s better when we encourage one another with this promise.

I cannot say who it is, but I am sure that someone you know and love is hurting today.

Someone you know and love needs to hear a message of hope today.

Someone you know and love needs to hear a word of encouragement from you.

Someone you know and love needs you to call or text or email and write or stop by their house today, if only to honk and wave and shout, “Love you! We’ll get together soon!”

I’m inviting you to be a carrier of hope to someone, a deliverer of God’s message of love.

The Psalmist says: “Hope in the Lord! Be strong! Let your heart take courage! Hope in the Lord!” (Psalm 27:14 CEB). Can you convey that message to someone today, or tomorrow or sometime this week?

And can you also think – somewhere in the back of your head, where you do your best thinking – what can we do as a church to be a more effective carrier of hope to the world when this crisis is over? We’ll share more thoughts on that later.

Amen.

This message was delivered via Facebook and YouTube for Edgerton United Methodist Church in Edgerton, Kansas, on May 3, 2020, the fourth Sunday of the Easter season.

Choose Hope

Our scripture reading is 1 Peter 1:3-7.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!

By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

You have a pure and enduring inheritance that cannot perish that is presently kept safe for you in heaven.

Through his faithfulness, you are guarded by God’s power so that you can receive the salvation he is ready to reveal in the last time.

You rejoice in this hope now, even though you are distressed for a short time by various trials.

Just as the purity of gold is tested by fire, these trials are necessary to prove the value of your faith and will bring praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

* * * *

The story of Easter and the story of Jesus and the whole story of Christianity is a story of hope. It’s a story of hope born from despair and from the death of hope.

Jesus’ disciples “had hoped that he was the one who would redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21, CEB). Their hope died when he was nailed to a Roman cross.

Two days later, the women went to his tomb expecting to anoint a corpse. They had seen Jesus die, and with his last breath their hope died, too.

The last thing they expected was to be told: “He is not here. He is risen.” The last thing anyone expected was to see him alive again. His Resurrection gave birth to a new hope, born of a renewed faith. It is hope reborn.

It’s that hope and that faith that I want to talk about this morning and over the next few weeks in a new series of messages titled “Hope.”

It’s inspired by a series now unfolding at Church of the Resurrection. I appreciate them sharing the series outline and supporting material. And I appreciate the wisdom of focusing on hope at this time in our lives.

Because we sure do need some hope right now, don’t we?

Last week we marked the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day. I wanted to say that we “celebrated” the 50th anniversary, but there is little to celebrate right now. The current administration in Washington is systematically rolling back every environmental safeguard erected since 1970. Soon we’ll be back to the good old days when a haze of smog covered the sun in cities like Denver and Los Angeles, and rivers were so polluted that they caught on fire.

Soon we’ll be wearing masks to protect us not from a virus but from air pollution. If the pollution doesn’t kill us, the cascading effects of global warming might. Rising ocean levels will drive us away from the coasts, but many places inland won’t be habitable. Those amber waves of grain will be a distant memory. The fruited plain will be a baked desert. O for spacious skies clear enough that we can see those purple mountain majesties!

That’s the distant future – maybe not even 20 years distant, if we don’t do something fast. But it’s far enough away that the current crisis absorbs all our attention today. If you’re not tired of cocooning at home, you are probably worried sick about your immediate future because you’ve lost your job or enough income that you’re anxious about tomorrow – even though, as Jesus said, today has enough troubles of its own (Matthew 6:34).

We sure do need a little hope right now, don’t we?

The feckless leadership we’ve gotten from Washington won’t get us very far in fighting the coronavirus, or much of anything else. Don’t put your hope in states or municipalities, either. Some will relax their shelter-in-place orders too soon, and the epidemic will likely come roaring in to fill the vacuum, killing thousands more. Other states will wait longer and suffer from the civil unrest that’s being orchestrated by rich right-wingers.

Some religious leaders still claim it’s all a hoax. Some seem to think that the Holy Spirit makes them immune from germs. The rest of us – I hope most of us – cling to the genuine promises of God conveyed to us in Scripture and confirmed by the voices of tradition, experience, and reason.

Those promises anchor the hope we proclaim today. The Psalmist tells us, “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God” (Psalm 20:7 NIV).

There’s nothing magic here. Hope based on trust in the Lord is more than Pollyanish optimism. Hope is not born from wishful thinking. Rather, hope is born from the depths of the pit of despair. Hope is born from the death of hope. Hope comes to us from above.

We don’t often read from the book of Lamentations. It’s a small book you’ll find nestled between Jeremiah and Ezekiel in the heart of the prophetic books of the Old Testament. Some think Jeremiah is the author. Whoever wrote it vividly expresses the desolation the people of Israel felt after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Babylonians in 587 B.C.

“I remember my affliction and my wandering,” the writer says, “and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:19-23 NIV).

If we were together physically today, we would sing that old hymn inspired by this passage. “Great is thy faithfulness! Morning by morning, new mercies I see. All I have needed thy hand hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.”

We might sing a couple of other songs as well, such as “Only Trust Him” and “Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus.” That one ends with those haunting words, “O for grace to trust him more.”

The music and some of the lyrics to these hymns are just a little too syrupy for my taste, and yet I can’t keep them out of my head. They are part of that storehouse of remembered grace that keeps me counting on still more grace.

Just as the author of Lamentations could remember God’s great love in the face of previously unthinkable destruction, so we today can call to mind all the good things we have received from God throughout our lives, and we can find hope for tomorrow.

The speed with which the coronavirus has utterly changed our lives is simply amazing. How quickly it showed us just how fragile our lives are, just how tenuous our social connections are, and just how childish our partisan bickering really is – especially when it endangers lives.

When we’re isolated at home by shelter-in-place orders, it’s easy to become disoriented – that is, to lose focus on what we should be about, and to lose our sense of purpose. Who am I? Why am I here? We need constant reinforcement of our identity from others and from God as well, because when we forget who we are in Christ, we lose all sense of location in the world.

Ironically, it appears that we do not develop a sense of identity and hope in good times but rather in bad times.

We “boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God,” the Apostle Paul tells the churches in Rome. “Not only that, he says, “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. (Romans 5:2-5 NRSV).”

Bad times can lead us to hope, Paul says, and hope does not disappoint because it comes from God. It’s a sign that God’s love is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Yes, hope is a sign from God.

We may be distressed by the trials of life, the Apostle Peter says in the letter we read earlier. But we can rejoice now in the hope we have through the Resurrection of Jesus. Whatever trials we face now, the Resurrection gives us a new birth into a living hope.

It’s truly a living and active hope that is anchored in trust in God. In Psalm 40, David testifies: “I put all my hope in the Lord. He leaned down to me. He listened to my cry for help. He lifted me out of the pit of death, out of the mud and filth, and set my feet on solid rock. He steadied my legs. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise for our God” (Psalm 40.1-3a CEB).

Commenting on this passage, Adam Hamilton notes an interesting difference in the ways this verse is translated. Most translations say, “I waited patiently for the Lord,” but the Common English Bible words it, “I put all my hope in the Lord.”

Waiting and hoping are related in the Hebrew language and in our theology and our experience as well. Trust in the Lord is commonly born of waiting.

Sometimes we wait patiently, as we try to do now while sheltering in place, not knowing what else we can do. Sometimes, following the example of the prophets and many of the psalm writers, we cry out to the Lord in our pain. We impatiently demand that God come to our aid in concrete ways that we can see and feel and touch, and that God does it now.

And sometimes we spring into action to help make our hope a reality. Hope is not only trusting that God is working to fashion a better day for us. Hope also is working to make that better day a reality.

Hope also is being the hands and feet of Christ for others and in our loving actions proclaiming the good news that Christ is alive in the world. Christ is alive in us because God’s love is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, giving us a living hope that we just have to share with others.

Be the change you want to see, Gandhi said. Be the hope you want to live and share. Whatever hopes have been dashed in your life, the Resurrection of Jesus and the promises of God offer newness of life and hope for your future. Remember, our hope is a hope born from despair. It’s a hope reborn through the grace of God and the Resurrection of Jesus.

In the next week and for the rest of your life, embrace that hope! Count on it! In all you do, choose hope!

Amen!

This message was delivered via Facebook and YouTube on April 26, 2020, for Edgerton United Methodist Church.

A Critical Moment

People are starting to go stir crazy, and it’s more serious than really wanting to run out for a chocolate malt. Enough is enough, some say. We’ve had enough of social distancing. It’s time to open up the country again. Freedom demands it.

There are dangers here. If we try to “get back to normal” too soon, we’ll only inflame the situation. We may have “flattened the curve” of the coronavirus outbreak, but it’s not trending downward yet. Act too soon, and we could incite an even worse epidemic.

Still, some say we must “return to normal” as soon as possible. “The cure can’t be worse than the disease,” says one White House official. “The economic cost to individuals is just too great.”

If you’ve lost income or your livelihood because of anti-viral sanctions, you must yearn for better days. They can’t come soon enough. You fear that the damage to your finances is so great that you may not recover. We need to hear and act on those concerns.

But the way some politicians are phrasing it is simply ghastly. Sure, we take a chance in opening up too soon, they say, but that’s “the lesser of two evils.” Is it really?

In effect, some are saying: “Somebody has to take a bullet here. I nominate you.” Which of your family or friends are you willing to sacrifice? Are you ready to die to save the economy?

As for those already pushing back against the sanctions, I ask: Who among us has the right to endanger others by our behavior? Is it acceptable to go around without a face mask? Is it OK to sneeze on produce in the supermarket? What are the limits of personal freedom? And to the churches playing the martyr game: By staying open, how many people will you kill in the name of Jesus?

For some people, the attitude seems to be, “The parachute has slowed our descent. We can take it off now.” Is it really expedient to kill some so we can spare others hardship? Or have we failed to think this through?

New federal guidelines announced Thursday change nothing. It will be weeks before there is significant thawing of social distancing rules. Yes, our “new normal” stinks. But carefully consider the alternatives.

Whatever the secular debate, there is always a deeper religious dimension. Let’s change the terms of the discussion. What are the loving things to do now? WWJD?

This message also will appear on the Facebook and YouTube pages of Edgerton United Methodist Church in Edgerton, Kansas.

This is not God’s Will

The usual bunch of clowns are saying that the coronavirus is God’s will. They say this kind of thing anytime something bad happens. It’s always God punishing somebody for something, and it’s always something that they’re against – homosexuality, abortion, vaccinations, you name it.

It’s truly amazing how God shares the same prejudices they do. (What, me bigoted? No, I just hate the things God hates.) You might think that this kind of theological malpractice was passé, but a lot of people lap it up because, sadly, it confirms their prejudices, too.

When I encounter these folks, I often say: “I don’t think God is half the jerk you think he is.” (Normally, I use inclusive language for God, but the sort of deity we’re dealing with here is always male. And, for shock value, I use a more colorful word than “jerk.”)

In reality, of course, God is not a jerk at all. God is not the cause of this pandemic. It is not God’s will. Those who say it is God’s will are liars, and I’m tired of them giving God a bad name by blaming God for all the bad stuff that happens in our world.

Inevitably, they’ll defend themselves by pointing to some verse in the Old Testament. Especially when quoted out of context, the Old Testament is a gold mine for violent and hateful ideas about God. But Jesus is the full revelation of God, and the testimony of Jesus is that God does not hurt people because they’ve broken some rule.

God does not toss thunderbolts at miscreants. (That’s Zeus, don’t you know.) If God did try to fry people with thunderbolts (or tornadoes or hurricanes or whatever), you’d think God would have better aim and there would be much less collateral damage.

Want to know more? Read chapter 9 of the gospel of John. In Jesus’ day, as in ours, it was commonly believed that if something bad happened to you, God must be punishing you for some sin. Not so, Jesus says.

Here’s an example. What about all those people who died in tornadoes in the South on Easter? Were they more sinful than folks in Oklahoma or Delaware or Oregon, or is God just sloppy in handing out justice? The whole notion is garbage.

A lot of things happen in this world that are not God’s will. That’s why we pray, “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” If God got God’s way, ours would be a much different world! And someday it will be! Meantime, take comfort in knowing that God does not want this virus to kill you, and that God is with you in all things good and bad.

This message also appeared in a “Midweek Update” from Edgerton United Methodist Church in Edgerton, Kansas, and will appear on Facebook and YouTube as a “Midweek Message.”

War Over Easter

On the one hand are those nurses who are willing to travel from Kansas to New York, separating from their families and exposing themselves to great risk as they lend aid in one of the areas hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak.

On the other hand, we have the weekend fiasco that the Kansas City Star described as a “War over Easter.”

Clearly, pandemics bring out the best and the worst in people. The nurses represent the best. The Easter war represents the worst.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly largely exempted churches from the statewide ban on large gatherings. Then, on Tuesday of Holy Week, she announced that the ban would apply to churches, too.

A handful of grandstanding Republican legislators blocked her order, triggering an outcry across the state. She appealed to the Kansas Supreme Court, which upheld her order on a technicality.

Still, several churches held services on Easter, deliberately defying the order. They claimed religious freedom, but the language they used sounded purely political to me.

Republicans who tried to block the order said they agreed that people should stay home on Easter; they merely wanted to assure that no one was arrested for disobeying it. As if anybody thought that was a real possibility!

Some call Kelly’s order unconstitutional. That’s baloney. The Constitution grants no absolute rights. The First Amendment safeguard freedom of speech and religion. But the protection of free speech does not cover shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Nor does it cover human sacrifice in a religious rite.

An order for the public good that does not target religion does not violate First Amendment protection of religion. If all are prohibited from gathering, churches are not automatically exempt.

We see this pattern of defiance in other churches, especially fundamentalist bastions in the South. With false bravado and spiritual arrogance, these churches vow to remain open, come what may.

At best, these prideful proclamations of faith are disgusting tests of God’s faithfulness. “Don’t test the Lord your God,” Jesus said, quoting scripture (Luke 4.12, Deuteronomy 6:16). At worse, such defiance is based on simple idolatry. Some people value their tradition so highly that they mistake it for God.

United Methodists value the health of all people. We are mindful of that first rule of Methodism: “Do no harm.” We will not endanger the lives of others by parading our piety in public.

These pastors who insist on keeping their churches open are endangering not only members of their own congregations but all those who might have contact with them. They may not be deliberately trying to kill people, but they may do it nonetheless. Their form of Christian “witness” is toxic and dangerous. No wonder people are fleeing churches today!

It is a pity that these churches chose to celebrate their apostasy on the day that most Christians celebrated the Resurrection of Jesus. God raised Jesus from his tomb. These churches remain in theirs. Pray for the resurrection of all – and pray for those brave nurses who are doing far more for Christ than those loudmouth preachers who are so proud of their obstinacy.