October 1, 2023 World Communion Sunday
“Nitty Gritty Unity”
World Communion Sunday 2023
Rev. Rich JM Gelson, Pilgrim Presbyterian Church
Take a moment to recall a favorite meal. Is it part of precious family recipe? A great eatery you love to escape to? Maybe it’s a one-time dinner that marked a major life event? Perhaps it was an opportunity to try food you never had a chance to or ever dreamed of?
On the plus side, my wife Stefanie and I very often share a Monday day-off brunch at nearby small diner. Whatever we eat there it’s our favorite because it’s both about the good quality of the food as well as always needed time together. On the other hand, what might have been a favorite, special meal for Stefanie was the time she tried caviar. We had escaped to a lovely lake resort in NY state just before COVID spawned everywhere. The main dining room had been far too fancy and pricey for us to eat at except for one special night. The option of caviar was met with a swift, hard no from me. I don’t even eat fish long after it’s left an ovary. But Stefanie was willing to try it. And did not enjoy it one tiny bit! Still kind of special moment, but seriously, we are absolutlely happy with our Monday brunches!
Speaking of expensive meals, I recently came across a list of some of the most famous ones. Consider if any of the following could become a favorite meal for you – a $110 bowl of Raman soup in Tokyo; a $145.99 hot dog served in Sacramento, California; a $2,000 highly select slice of meat pie in Britain; and though it’s not quite a meal, how about a Belgian ale from Scotland that costs over a thousand dollars and comes encased in a squirrel carcass? For that last one especially, I’d have no problem immediately running away and being a very rude guest!
The thought of some or all of these, despite their prestigious status, may have ruined your desire for lunch. But I mention them, as well as asking you to remember favorite meals, hoping to properly whet your spiritual appetite for the sacred meal we are about to share together.
The Lord’s Supper is a sacrament. Jesus commanded we partake of it remembering his life, death and resurrection until he comes again in full glory. Through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, our Lord remains the host of this meal every time and in every place it is offered. It is an outward sign of transforming grace within us. Even when, out of an ongoing abundance of caution about COVID, we have to continue serving it in tiny cups with tasteless wafers.
For Presbyterians, this is more than just juice and bread. Yet we don’t believe it gets converted in substance into the actual flesh and blood of our Savior (as our Roman Catholic friends believe). For us, it’s symbolic but because this ritual is eternally infused with the Spirit, we believe it spiritually connects us to every fellow believer. We are lifted up from this local table to our seats in the great heavenly banquet. We believe it feeds and strengthens us all as the one living body of the Lord. So it’s not snack time, but nor is it something supernaturally freakish. It’s truly just our favorite, most sacred meal as faithful brothers and sisters.
While it’s essentially a free meal, we know that it cost Jesus everything. This Gospel fact alone should be enough reason to unify the entire global church. It should be enough to inoculate the Body of Christ from all manner of divisive behaviors. Should. But that word is not really a great motivator. It’s usually reminds us we aren’t actually doing well with living as one in the Spirit, one in the Lord, praying that all unity may one day be restored.
Which brings us to the unfortunately relatable struggles of the first century church. And today’s letter from the Apostle Paul to the Corinthian church body.
Commentary from the Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible reminds us that this “letter is a nitty-gritty document written to a church struggling to discover the boundaries and fullness of its life with God.” It goes on to explain saying, “Here are believers in tension with one another and their founding missionary about practical issues the Church struggles with still: divisions caused when people choose to follow this or that spiritual leader; problems that stem from arrogant certitude; and thorny disagreements about right sexual behavior, equal access to power, what makes for worshipful Communion, the proper use of spiritual gifts, even the need for order in worship.” As Paul put it without pulling any punches – “I cannot praise you. For it sounds as if more harm than good is done when you meet together.”
While it would be easy and wonderful to have absolutely no divisions ever, it’s important to note what Paul had to add to this observation, “But, of course, there must be divisions among you so that you who have God’s approval will be recognized!” Now that’s compelling. And confusing. How on earth do we recognize who has divine approval and who doesn’t? Who has the right biblical interpretation, the correct church doctrine and who doesn’t? Have you ever honestly felt, as I have, that you are a more correct Christians than other people who come to the communion table?
Hard truth is, nobody can ever precisely know this side of the heavenly plain who is more righteous than not. That’s God’s judgment alone. Yet there is a faithful litmus test for this. One to apply to yourself before others. It is, as Paul bluntly describes it, when some go hungry while others are drunk.
The great apostle was right to call out the hypocrisy of getting drunk on privilege and selfishness while promoting yourself as a more mature Christian. He was right to shame any corner of and any church that promotes itself while ignoring physical, emotional and spiritual poverty. He was right to pen and thus preach about what Christ-like, nitty gritty unity is and is not. About how the communion table is the Lord’s Supper alone and how Jesus paid for the sacred meal so that all this would could be nourished with divine justice, peace, hope, healing and sublime love.
Celebrating World Communion Sunday reminds of this. It keeps us honest and humble as we focus on the fact this this bread and this juice is not just for some select group of people. It’s for all who hunger and thirst for righteousness and have a heart open to being filled with the Gospel.
Across the Presbyterian Church (USA) we honor this day by collecting a special offering. It’s one of the envelopes in your giving envelopes. And the money dedicated to this goes to support our denomination’s peace and global witness ministry. When you visit their website or review their publications, you’ll be greeted by the tag line “Confronting hopelessness, thwarting division.” This is not easy work. It is the nitty gritty work, as their mission statements declares, of encouraging “the church to cast off anxiety and fear, discord and division, and embrace our God's mission of reconciliation to those around the corner and around the world.” The biblically based resources they offer congregations locally, nationally and globally are for encouraging and equipping us “to find and address the anxiety and discord that is prevalent throughout this broken and sinful world.”
This ministry starts at and is centered in the middle of the Lord’s Supper. Here we are blessed together with outward signs of Christ’s inner grace, connecting one and all who are fed to the heavenly banquet stretching all around the world and all through heavenly life. There are no unwelcomed guests or strangers at this favorite family meal. Amen.
September 2023 sermon series “Agents of Hope”
“The Hope We Need,” September Sermon Series, Part 1
Rev. Rich JM Gelson, Pilgrim Presbyterian Church
I have in my office a twenty-seven year old, completely falling apart paperback copy of small book that teaches about hope. It’s not easygoing, inspirational reading. But I’ve returned to it often in the past decades to refresh myself on the meaning of hope from both biblical and psychological perspectives. In other words, it’s a book from my graduate study seminary training! Our Session is focusing on Pilgrim as a safe place of hope and healing in Jesus’ name, an especially poignant purpose in our post-pandemic life and in the wake of what was our congregation quite a grief struck summer. A September sermon series surveying the book Agents on Hope sure seems right about now.
It’s a book primarily for pastors in training. But it’s fundamentally about every faithful Christian. It was written by the late Princeton Seminary professor Donald Capps. I took a few of his classes while a student there, and he informally became the closest thing I’ve had to a ministry mentor.He was beloved by many for his exemplary, welcoming, kind and calm nature. I always found him wearing jeans, tennis sneakers, and at the ready for coffee and conversation in the campus cafeteria. Beyond talk about classroom topics, I especially loved that he always remembered to ask me how my mom was doing. He not only helped me grow into the pastor I am today, but also the person I am today, reminding me to also always also attend to my self-care and family.
In April of 1996, I asked him if he had a favorite verse or passage of the Bible and if so, to please write that down for me in the cover of this particular book. He wrote, In times of despair, etc., I have found Psalm 131 especially helpful. I guess I can’t think of any better source for words of encouragement than this! This isn’t a Psalm I covered in my now concluded summer sermon series, so know that it’s only 3 verses long and speaks about the need to stay humble and to not occupy our minds too much with holy things too great and too marvelous for us to understand. It concludes, “Hope in the Lord, from this time on and forever.”
And there it is. The hope we all need. Not some abstract, inspiring thought or image. But a hope born by sublime example in flesh and blood. We don’t just live hoping for this and that outcome. We live in the Lord for holy purposes to be revealed through our lives as Gospel people.
Notice that Psalm 131 doesn’t say “Be Optimistic in the Lord, from this time on and forevermore.” Notice also that dear Dr. Capp’s book is not titled “Agents of Optimism.” And this is the first thing it’s important to realize when we are faithfully considering the hope we are always in need of. Optimism and Hope are not interchangeable words and concepts. They are distinctly different. As Gospel people, we are summoned to live with more than an optimistic attitude.
This is something my Presbyterian colleague MaryAnn Dana has very helpfully written about. I’m very pleased that I’ll be participating in person at the retreat she is leading on this topic starting October 9th. She explains the vital difference in this way – “Optimism does its best work in the Before — when the evidence points plausibly in a positive direction, when you can still anticipate the best possible outcome, when things could work out OK. But when the facts suggest otherwise, optimism isn’t enough.” I don’t know if she was a student of Dr. Capps, but it’s clear that she regards being an agent of optimism as being bound by concrete circumstantial outcomes. Further, she clearly regards being an agent of hope as you and I being able to turn any situation over and over in our minds and hearts, refusing to give up on possibilities. Put another way, she writes that optimism is more mechanical compared to hope which is more musical. For sure, many of my favorite sentimental songs lead me to feel hopeful in the face of unknown outcomes. Do you find the same to be true?
I take Mondays as my full day off. When I arrive in the office on Tuesday, I’m optimistic that I’ll be able to select a bible text to preach about, that I’ll have time to do my research, and then have time to pull all my many strands of theological and practical thoughts together in a fairly coherent way no later than Saturday night. I’m also optimistic very little will stand in my way of getting here on Sunday mornings to share this holy work with you all. Deeper than these anticipated outcomes, though, is my default dependence on holy hope. That’s because optimism runs largely on the mechanics of managing my time and energy. And there are very many weeks when circumstances force my study and writing routine to be disrupted. Most especially when there are pastoral emergencies. In my younger years, this would severely tamper my optimism about getting all of Sunday’s prep work done. Back them I was also living with a less manageable anxiety disorder which triggered feelings of despair and failure as I dared tried to write and speak on behalf of Almighty God. The biblically faith driven hope I have within, then and more maturely now, on the other hand, reminds me that the Holy Spirit is always creating new melodies, harmonies and rhythms as I go about being an agent of hope. I’m hopeful that something in every sermon will always be heard in a relevant way through the intercessory interpretation of the Holy Spirit in your faithful hearts and minds -- whether or not I’m happy with what I wrote and how much time, energy and overall well-being I was able to put into it. I’m hopeful that you’ll realize this immediately or someday in the future.
Jesus, our ultimate agent of hope, teaches us to believe in the biggest possible picture of a world being rescued and redeemed from sin by his grace. Don’t’ just be optimistic about your life, about this congregation, about our country and about this whole world. Join the symphony of hope, even and often especially when it means challenging traditions and official religious doctrine.
I say this confidently because this morning’s story from John’s Gospel is a near perfect example. Seemingly right after Jesus finished speaking with a Jewish Pharisee named Nicodemus, he leaves that high worldly authority behind and immediately meets up with an unnamed woman of an enemy people, the Samaritans. By “enemy,” I invite you not to think about foreign ones so much as the fact that many Americans regard each other with tremendous prejudice and enmity along political, ideological and yes, along various Christian denominational and theological party lines.
On a day she was inherently optimistic about getting her routine chores done, she instead has an encounter with Jesus that stirs and raises up fresh, fluid hope from the bottom of her soul, from the well of her best self-understanding, from the much and mire of messed up human relationships. If Jesus had been any ‘ol agent of mechanical optimism, he would have kept the traditional peace by keeping far away from enemy turf. He would have never dared be seen speaking with someone considered ethnically inferior. And, in strict adherence to prejudiced cultural expectations of his day, he surely would not have walked in the direction of an unknown woman.
But our ultimate agent of hope knew that this unnamed woman was living through an unending spiritual conflict. She believed in a coming Messiah, but continued to be entrapped by ancient cultural baggage regarding religion and race and gender identity. She was therefore skeptical about this radical Jewish man talking to her about far more than daily sustenance. She was skeptical about a time coming when division would not longer exist and all people would worship one God.
Everyone’s ultimate agent of hope busted through mechanical social barriers built to offer hope only to certain highly select people. Jesus’ words and actions are instead a symphony of ever expanding possibilities. We see this in our bible passage today and throughout all the Gospels. This hopeful action is and will always be exceptionally inclusive, compassionate and challenging of the status quo in church and beyond. The woman at the well story fills us with hope, with believing that on just another ordinary day, the immediate future and eternity itself can unexpectedly look brighter and more joyful, more full of world-changing, living water. When we accept this, we flow with it, just as she did upon returning to her hometown to proclaim what had happened. Meanwhile, the disciples return, are shocked and prejudiced against what had just happened and don’t even have a note of optimism let alone hope in their questions concerning why Jesus had done what he did.
In the weeks to come, listen for the hope that is continuous between both the Old and New Testaments. Being agents of biblical hope is always about patiently, trustingly, expectantly, confidently, and most often joyfully waiting on God’s good promises, words and actions to be fulfilled. It always points to a better future yet to be seen. It always resurrects despair. Hebrews 11:1 captures this broad yet deeply personal view by proclaiming that our “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Amen.
“Hoping in Perceiving,” September Sermon Series Part 2
Rev. Rich JM Gelson, Pilgrim Presbyterian Church
This past Tuesday was a particularly glad one for me because the newest novel by my favorite contemporary novelist William Kent Krueger was released. I didn’t fall asleep that night until I was several chapters deep!
The mystery novel is titled The River We Remember and is set within a small county in Minnesota. One of the characters is a widower named Felix. He’s a friendly older man except for when he slips up finds himself sobering up in the local pokey. Fortunately, the main character, Sheriff Brody Dern, is a compassionate friend who, when the going is slow, helps Felix dry out by playing Chess and sharing in meaningful conversations.
On one occasion, for example, Felix turns to Brody and says, “It’s my birthday today, you know. I turned sixty.” The Sherriff responds by saying that this was news to him. Felix continued by saying that ever since his wife died he’d stopped caring about his birthday. The day of this conversation had, however, changed his outlook about this. It was day of he witnessed the aftermath of a major crime scene down by the local river. It was a reality check for Felix. Mostly because it reminded him of his time serving in the Great War. As he tells Brody, “Every time I woke to a new day, I celebrated. That’s because I never expected to come back alive. Amazing how in the middle of hell something as simple as dawn can be the most beautiful thing imaginable.” He compared that experience to a conclusion he’d made about the untimely demise of a wealthy but miserly neighbor. He concludes the conversation by explaining, “I never saw a smile on the man’s face. He had a wealth of blessings, but I never once saw him celebrate his life. And now he’s lost his chance. Makes me think it’s time I started celebrating again before it’s too late.”
The experience of hoping, as Donald Capps points out in his book Agents of Hope, is always a process of perceiving. I haven’t finished the new novel yet, but notice how Felix lets us know perceived daily dread on the battlefields of war. But then every bright new dawn shifted his outlook into an experience of hoping for and working toward his survival and his safe return home to life with his beloved wife. Felix then let’s us know that the heavy, dark eyeglasses of despair and dread had returned upon her passing. He felt empty and hopeless without her light in his life. But then he sees a tragic situation, counts his remaining blessings, and begins again to process how he can go about hoping again for the remaining days of his life.
We all have times of dwelling on what is missing from our lives. Especially when the emptying grief of losses and mortality visit our hearts and minds. And in many different kinds of personal and cultural circumstances, undercurrents of despair can linger all life-long, leaving a hard residue of resentment from feeling cheated since birth. There’s no avoiding the hard times, and even having great faith doesn’t fully protect us from the perception that this or that is a hopeless situation. Plus, naming hopes can feel uncomfortable and downright risky. We don’t want to come across as naïve. So we gently but defensively say things like, “I know this will sound silly but …” It’s just a truth that hoped for outcomes of all sizes may or may not be realized. Perhaps if you’re hopeful about getting a can of soda they do, but not when it comes to our most profound needs.
By God’s grace and through the gift of faith and especially of faith community, however, there are always new dawns to witness and to have negative perceptions dispelled by the eternal light of Jesus Christ. We can prayerfully perceive the bright, beautiful panoramic view that is before us at all times, the view outside of Jesus’ empty tomb, the view that takes off the dark, heavy eyeglasses of dread we all wear from time to time and puts on a persistent, clearer-lensed desire to make a positive change happen, to believe that God’s good will, love, peace, and justice is still ahead for us and ahead for this whole world.
Long ago, we are told in today’s Gospel story, there was woman deprived of healing. Healing for twelve years of physical hemorrhaging, a condition that also caused her to be socially ostracized. Most pointedly by religious figures in Israel who regarded her incurable condition as a consequence of sin. She would have been labeled religiously unclean and thus untouchable. Apparently, though, she was someone with enough wealth to have seen and paid for countless doctors of her day to find a cure. Any bit of hoping for that had, it seems, died. Somehow, she caught wind of an alternative healer. I can’t help but wonder if she was ever hesitant about taking the risk of hoping in this Jesus, this miracle worker from the backwater town of Nazareth. Maybe so, but by the time we meet her, she had shifted the perception that nobody could relieve her of her suffering to seeing Jesus jammed up in a distant, demanding crowd. She has discovered within herself a persistent desire to meet him. So strong was her hoping that she didn’t sit around waiting to be noticed by Jesus or introduced to him by his disciples. Her condition would have placed in toward the back of any gathering, so that’s the way she went. Coming up behind him, and reaches out to him. So strong is her perception that Jesus was the answer to her prayers, she believed even touching just the hem of his robe would suffice to relieve her of her terrible suffering. And so she did. Jesus immediately noticed his healing power had been tapped like maple tree. But we are told he didn’t know who’d done so. I believe he did know and wanted to teach his disciples a deeper lesson about hope. They responded to his seeking out the person his power had just flowed to with doubt and despair by saying there was no way to possibly know who among the excited throngs had done this. They couldn’t perceive that Jesus would know everything. He likely knew the woman as well, but he waited for her to process the experience of her blessed healing, her restoration to good health and better social standing. Once she did, her desire to put her trust and hope in Jesus caused her to fall prostrate before him. He didn’t look upon her and say, “That’s right, I healed you!” This story is less about the holy one who came to serve and not to be served, and more about a suffering soul’s experience of hoping beyond anything this world can offer. Confirming she is indeed a daughter of God, he said these beautiful words – “Your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.”
Hoping is always a process. A process of perceiving. Donald Capps also writes about how hopeful living involves images and projection. Kind of like luminous images being cast upon a movie screen in a darkened theater. We project images of ourselves in more hopeful situations in a brighter future. We see ourselves home and feeling much better in mind and body after the doctor gives us good test results. We see ourselves on the other side of starting a new job, all settled into a new home and making new friends. We see ourselves finishing a novel and feeling relieved to learn that Felix wasn’t the one who committed the stories central crime! Hey, I’m hopeful about that.
I’ll leave you with this image that literally is about having a bigger, different perspective, one that is risky to defend but is nonetheless very valuable. It was a story that appeared recently in the New York Times about how high tech will possibly replace human fire spotters, the folks that work on top of remote mountains vigilantly scouting for wildfires. Seems to make sense since we have satellites and such to keep this important watch. That’s one perspective.
Ask the fire spotters, however, and you get another one. Satellites, they say, can easily mistake sun warmed rocks for fires. And they have a greater range of vision during bad weather since helicopters can’t hover in thunderstorms. Their view can be more precise as well, such as when they survey narrow valleys that planes cannot navigate. Not to mention half their job happens when a fire is underway. That’s when they relays messages between emergency dispatchers, watch how weather is shifting the blazes, and so on.
I’m sure high tech can help, but I’m surely hoping the fire spotters keep their jobs. Hoping is always a process of perceiving, and what they can perceive is of tremendous benefit to a hopeful outcome. I can relate to them from my place of spotting as pastor of this congregation. I can uniquely see sparks of hope as well as flames of concern among all of you. Most importantly, in person and when there is a crisis. Not because I’m any bit holier than anyone else, but because of experience and training. I’m always hoping to help you all see a bigger, brighter picture of our Lord in your life and alive in this world.
As you head home to your home screens, consider and discuss and pray about what persistent desires and hope-filled self-projections most empower you to seek out and feel the healing power of Jesus Christ. Amen.
“Hoping Includes Despairing,” September Sermon Series Part 3
Rev. Rich JM Gelson, Pilgrim Presbyterian Church
The hope we all need is something far more than mere optimism. Being optimistic is helpful before certain life events happen but it’s much less so when expectations get dashed by doses of disheartening reality. The hope we all need is a process, a process of prayerfully partnering with the Holy Spirit and perceiving this world through God’s good, restorative grace in Jesus Christ. Spiritually seeing beyond immediate circumstances and toward the horizon of holy light bathing everything is our daily duty as agents of hope.
Now let’s look directly at a different duty – the duty to acknowledge despair in both our personal and our congregational faith journeys. Despair can be a small roadblock and it can be a sinkhole. It can be a not-too distant dark horizon or total blindness to a desired future. It dents us all. And it’s important not to deny that despair dents congregations. It’s there when common, hopelessness hued questions arise such as “Where are the young people? Where has this person or that person gone? How much longer will we be able to rely on our quickly dwindling investments to cover costs?” These are commonly accompanied by feeling apathetic and thus exhausted about a current situation. Despair can also be far more dangerous, as when church members or church leaders succumb to it and can’t escape destructive thoughts and behaviors. I like how the orphan in the novel Anne of Green Gables imaginatively and woefully expresses it, “My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.”
Jesus experienced despair as he wept over Jerusalem, over the death of his friend Lazarus, over all kinds of merciless injustice, over betrayals in his inner circle, over the specter of his torture and death. His first disciples dealt with despair too – from not catching any fish, to not having enough bread, to frequently failing to understand what Jesus was saying, to their falling asleep and straight up abandoning Jesus in his final hours. And many believers in the early church had to deal with the horrifying despair of not knowing if they were going to be the next human tiki torch to light one of Emperor Nero’s garden parties.
Attempts to deny the existence of despair in the past and in our present just aren’t healthy. And they just won’t work. The denting can’t be overlooked any more than a roof leak. Despair must be faithfully acknowledged while steadfastly hoping for the holy grace to calm its storming before causing collapse.
As my favorite seminary professor Donald Capps makes clear in the book this series is based upon, despair and its close cousins apathy and shame are not evil. Processed in healthy and faithful ways, they are a normal part of what it means to live hopefully in the Lord.
“In holy contemplation, we sweetly then pursue, the theme of God’s salvation, and find it ever new; set free from present sorrow, we cheerfully can say, ‘Let the unknown tomorrow, bring with it what it may.’
These words are from a hymn written in 1779 by renown English poet William Cowper. They are poignant and hopeful, yet written by a man who suffered a lifetime of fathomless despair.
Cowper was a preacher’s kid. Not for any old local congregation, but because his father was the royal chaplain to King George II. From what little I’ve read, it seems he wasn’t particularly devout for the first three decades of his life. Related to this or not, he chose to become a lawyer. Overall, we can imagine that he may well have suffered a lot of pressurized family and social expectations. Whatever drove him toward deep despairing, it all came to a head at age 32 years old when he was nominated for a position requiring a public examination. He very nearly committed suicide. Three times. This led to a year and half stay at an asylum. Some asylums back in those days had charming names like “The Hospital for Lunatics.” Keep this context in mind next time we sing his words about being set free from sorrow by contemplating God’s salvation.
After the asylum he went to live in the care of a clergyman with an ironically despairing name – Rev. Unwin. When he died his family – and Cowper – had a special visitor who encouraged them all to move to his hometown of Olney, England. He was a cleric and former slave ship captain named John Newton, who, if that sounds familiar, wrote the despair dispersing hymn “Amazing Grace.” Longer story made short, he continued to battle despair born of poor health, depression, paranoia and fear of damnation. But he did so by spending a lot of his time seeing and supporting Olney’s poorest people. This led to time in prayer groups, which then led to writing hymns for those prayer groups. And so the royal chaplain’s son enduring mental illness became a community chaplain for King Jesus.
The writings of the Apostle Paul – which make up around 25% of the New Testament – apparently had the greatest impact on helping him healthily incorporate despairing and hoping. It’s easy to understand why when we reflect on today’s Paul’s pastoral letter to the first century church in Corinth.
Paul’s conversation and liberation from being a brutal, Pharisaic persecutor of Christians didn’t mean his life was then devoid of despair. Church-planting back then was a dangerous duty. Not just from megalomaniac rulers, but also from all kinds of factions and false prophets. Being the founding pastor of those churches and thus the chief authority on all congregational matters surely wasn’t ever a cakewalk. Firm devoutness to Christ didn’t mean he and his leadership team were immune to feeling terribly exhausted and despairingly vulnerable. As he himself reported to the culturally conflicted church in Corinth, “We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure and we though we would never live through it.”
This acknowledgement of deep despair was part of the process of hoping. Because of it, Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 1:9, “we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to reply on God, who raises the dead.” This is not a statement of casual optimism. This is a declaration of fervent hope, of fully trusting in the living Lord and of perceiving and projecting a much grander picture than the grim reality of any given moment.
Despair is not evil, it is not the opposite of hoping, it is not an antidote of despair. I mentioned in my first sermon that I’ll be on a church retreat next month with the author of the book “Hope: A User’s Manual.” MaryAnne Dana acknowledges that hope and despair have a messy relationship. She’s seen the unnerving impact of this up close through her daughter’s struggles with depression. And she has concluded that the messiness leads to feeling whole. It leads to feeling more alive through both joy and sorrow, through love and anger. It moves you to act, to do something.
As a further, broader example, she shared a perspective by Austin Channing Brown. She is an author and speaker on racism in America who is frequently asked if she is hopeful about this on-going reality getting better. When white people ask her, she concludes that they are asking if she is optimistic. As I reaffirmed at the start of my message today, optimism isn’t very helpful after expectations have been dashed. And goodness are they ever dashed again and again … look for this in daily news headlines. Dismissing optimism, Brown, speaking summarily on behalf of black Americans, deals with despair by staying hopeful, which is always call to duty, legacy and to fighting the good fight. “This is the shadow of hope,” she writes, “that we may never see the realization of our dreams, and yet are still showing up.”
This statement is a direct descendent of Jesus’ teaching and the apostle Paul’s subsequent counsel to the Corinthians. It reminds us, as scholar N.T. Wright has noted, that “Christian service takes place in a series of strange paradoxes: power in weakness, triumph in tragedy, strength in vulnerability, and death blossoming into life.”
Hope and despair dancing closely together is paradoxical in precisely this way. And may we always thank God for that. Amen.
“Hoping is Trusting,” September Sermon Series, Part 4
Rev. Rich JM Gelson, Pilgrim Presbyterian Church
The familiar words of Jeremiah 29:11 can be found enshrined on all sorts of gift shop items -- baseball caps, t-shirts, bracelets, wall hangings, blankets, mugs and more. It’s a comforting, inspiring go-to verse for faithful people who are struggling with life stuff, who can’t quite keep up with hoping and despairing doing the tango. Like a pinhole of light in the deep canvas of a night, it offers blessed reassurance -- God has plans for you…good plans…you will not be destroyed…you are part of God’s good future!
As I browsed online for various perspectives on this verse, I came across the following comment by Jodi Hasbrouck on an evangelical athlete’s website – “When hard times came, a part of me held on to this verse like a lifeline to keep me afloat. The other part of me thought this verse was utterly ridiculous.” She goes on to share that the “ridiculous” response showed up most undeniably when she was a university track coach and one her students drowned to death while on a Spring Break trip to Florida. It was ridiculous to think of this tragedy being anything at all close to God’s good plans for that young adult’s life. While wading through the painful “whys” and heartache of it, however, she found herself believing that it was God’s good plan for shocked, grieving people to come together and be of tremendous comfort and courage for one another. She found, trusted in and shared a holy peace that understood and could see beyond all agony.
Last week here in worship we considered how despairing and hoping are not opposites. Expanding on this, and for the conclusion of this sermon series, let’s affirm together today how trusting is the bridge between them and is the greatest ally of hoping.
On April 22, 1978, comedian Steve Martin performed a novelty song on Saturday Night Live about King Tut. Remember that? I was nine years old so I didn’t exactly see it’s on-air debut! It’s a silly song, though it was apparently inspired by the legendary comedian’s taking offense at the way rate artifacts of King Tutankhamun were being paraded on a tour of America. Anyway, the part of the lyrics I most easily recall is when it whimsically talks about Tut being born in Arizona and moving to Babylonia. What’s this got to do with trusting? Well, I only mention this bit of pop culture flotsam to help you remember some historical context for Jeremiah. The prophetic word of hope he delivered was to Israelites who, because of a king not named Tut had moved from their sacred homestead of Jerusalem to Babylonia.
There was nothing silly about this, though. Nothing at all. These faithful people didn’t move voluntarily. They were forced into exile when the forces of the ruthless Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar utterly destroying Jerusalem. Solomon’s great temple – the magnificent, central hub of everything holy to the Israelites -- was completely wiped off the map. Can you even come close to imagining the despair of this desecration? Of this soul-stripping relocation?
To put this in a ridiculously smaller context, imagine if troops of Saddam Hussein – who I understand had been an obsessed fan of Nebuchadnezzar -- destroyed our church building and forced us to live in his foreign, pagan land. Now imagine I gather us up when we get there and preach about how God has a good plan for our future. I sincerely offer it as a lifeline, ridiculous as it may sound given the tragedy. Then I share how God told me we will have to spend 70 years living under the thumb of that maniacal foreign ruler. How would this word sit with you? You may find comfort in knowing you won’t survive that long, but then what would you say to your children and your children’s children? Would it really fill any hurting heart with hope? Would you trust that what I’m saying is indeed the Word of the Lord?
Jeremiah would have been justified to go on and on out how he warned them this would happen. He had spoken a great deal against being sabotaged by superstitious falsehood. They hadn’t listened and the nation got sacked. He also could have exhorted the exiles to live for seven decades as Babylonian policy bashing, Hebrew nationalist extremists. Other prophets had advised this as the only way to keep hope alive for hastening their homecoming back to their holy city.
Jeremiah had a different kind of prophecy. We can even call it innovative. He advised them to hold onto their identity and put their trust in God during the exile by assimilating into Babylonian culture. As Lutheran pastor and professor Monica Melanchthon explains it, Jeremiah advocated a “policy of accommodation, cooperative political activities, and praying to God for the well-being of a foreign city.” Jeremiah preached that God’s good plans for the future were not going to be discovered if the people remained resolutely focused on a return to the past.
In quite a similar way, our congregation and our denomination won’t live into the hope of Jeramiah 29:11 by radically resisting cultural changes and trying to recreate some kind of glory days of church life based on the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s. We have to acknowledge changes within and all around our faithful homestead and pray to understand what it all has to do with the good future God has planned.
Professor Melanchthon, who was born in India and is on staff of the University of Divinity in Melbourne, Australia, further writes that Jeremiah’s word to the exiles was that “for the time being, they needed to accept that the places where they were settled within Babylon were home; they needed to stop living out of their suitcases, begin establishing roots, affirm, maintain and continue ties of family, and work towards peace and community building in their own neighborhoods.” They could no longer bring their bodies to the Great Temple; but they could act as one adaptive body, one new kind of Temple to God together. They could spend their seven decades faithfully rooted while being agent of fresh hope in God’s future reconciliation and salvation. This called for creating a compassionate counterculture where violence, exploitation and idolatry did not rule. They were to be the Un-Nebuchadnezzar right under that big Babylonian bully’s nose.
Truly trusting God’s good plans for the future is how despair and hope bridge together. This doesn’t ever mean staying stuck in the past or passively waiting for the future to unfold. Our hearts can rest on our Jeremiah 29:11 throw pillows, but our minds and bodies are prophetically called to vigilantly, actively, world-changingly partner with God’s ever present, guiding Gospel hand here in our church building and in every corner of modern day culture. We don’t sing to or serve King Tut or King Nezzer (as the Veggies Tales series called him). We serve Christ the King, whose reign covers all the earth as it is in heaven. Everywhere we gather in Jesus’ name is home. It’s where we plant and bear, gather and share all the good fruit of God’s unfolding future plans. Plans not for destruction, but for peace and prosperity among all people. By whole heartedly seeking God’s good will, we won’t dwindle away!
I guess I have comedians on my mind this week. Thinking about the unexpected places we meet God and do God’s good will brought me back to a great scene in the movie Bruce Almighty. In a moment of world-on-fire personal despair, Jim Carrey’s character cries out to God. The trust shown by this gets him an immediate audience with the Almighty. But it’s not up in a cloud or in some great cathedral. Or in a bar, a la John Denver and George Burns. Instead it’s in an almost empty and dark office space where God, played by Morgan Freeman, is dressed as a janitor and is mopping the floor. After saying hello, God hands Bruce a second mop. They start cleaning together. Bruce realizes how good this is. God responds by pointing out some everyday miracles and saying, “People want me to do everything for them. What they don’t realize is, they have the power…be the miracle.”
To this, fellow agents of hope, I say Amen.