Sermon for November 4th 2012 - Living Hope ...

There is a story about an Irish man named Paddy, who couldn’t – he just wouldn’t see the positive in anything. He constantly bemoaned the circumstance and happenings in his life; nothing satisfied him. Everyone in the village knew this and they tolerated him.

But then one summer afternoon, the sun broke through after a grey and dreary morning, and the hillsides were bathed in a glorious light – it was a wonderful afternoon on the green hills of Ireland.

The parish priest was strolling by Paddy’s yard as Paddy was tending his garden, and called over the stone fence: “Eye, Paddy tis a beautiful day isn’t it?”

Paddy looked up and shrugged and answered with a moan – “Ah, sure Father, … but will it last?”

Joan Chittister, notes in recounting this story that despair such as Paddy’s colours the way we look at things. Despair makes us suspicious of the future and makes us see the present in very negative terms. But most alarmingly, despair leads us to ignore the very possibilities that could save us, or cause us to actively hurt ourselves or those around us …

Jean Vanier writes of that place where despair has completely usurped and overwhelmed hope when he observes the following:

I once visited a psychiatric hospital that was a kind of warehouse of human misery. Hundreds of children with severe disabilities were lying, neglected on their cots. There was a deadly silence. Not one of them was crying. When they realize no one cares, that nobody will answer them, children no longer cry. It takes too much energy. We cry out only when there is hope that someone may hear us. (JV pg9)

We cry out only when there is hope that someone may hear us … despair robs us of hope and begins to shut us down … BUT, by faith we are a hopeful and HOPEFILLED people. We are about far more than despair. Jean Vanier offers this reflection in the opening pages of his book “Becoming Human” which calls us to revision our view of the world and how we interact with it. For Vanier, it’s about embracing and embodying hope in our lives, our faith and our relationships.

Today, we stand on All Saints’ Sunday when we acknowledge and give thanks for the Saints of every time and every place who have been part of this great cloud of witnesses that is the family of God. All Saints is about embracing the totality of our relationships past and present.  

As protestants, we also stand in the shadow of the young clergy man named Martin Luther, who on Halloween 1517, nailed to the door of the Church in Wittenburg 95 questions he wanted to discuss with Church authorities … instead of a dialogue and a process of dynamic growth and change, Luther was excommunicated, a bounty was placed on his head and the Protestant reformation was begun …

Our legacy today as people of Hope, is to not only acknowledge and celebrate the many people like Luther, who asked the tough questions, but to honour and celebrate the everyday saints who have touched our lives by their example of LIVING the tough questions and embodying Hope and Faith in everyday life. The people who have effected and shaped our lives.

All Saints is about ALL the Saints – the average ordinary people who have left extra-ordinary legacies by living, sharing and celebrating their faith in communities just like ours. It is about our circle of family, friends, and mentors around us.

Being a Hope-filled and hopeful people of faith is not about big showy Saints that have special saint days and statues put up in churches and gardens and on dashboards. Being a people of hope and faith means being like those folks who helped by setting an example for us through their everyday lives.

We live in a time, when Hope is seemingly in short supply.

If we listen carefully to the election campaign south of the Border, or even some of the political rhetoric in our own country, we hear a thick heavy stream of fear running through the appeals of our politicians and leaders.

They want us to trust them … they want to offer easy solutions to complex questions … they want us to be comfortable and to deny the reality of our fear rather than addressing it. Perhaps the shining example of this came when President Bush, with the smoke of 9/11 still swirling around him, called on American to just resume their normal lives – he even dropped the encouragement to “go shopping” in the face of the horrific events we ALL watched …

Our modern consumerist culture wants us to deny our fear and substitute that ache of loneliness and despair with SHOPPING … the biggest, the newest, the best, the most up to date gadget, gizmo or electronic … instead of seeking hope … we try to fill the space – the ache – with other things …

Jean Vanier observes this when he notes:

A sense of loneliness can be covered up by the things we do as week recognition and success. This is surely what I did as a young adult. It is what we all do. We all have this drive to do things that will be seen by others as valuable, things that make us feel good about ourselves and give us a sense of being alive. We only become aware of loneliness at times when we cannot perform or when imagination seems to fail us. (JV pg 7)

We are perhaps first and foremost, a people of imagination who DARE to proclaim hope in our world – we dare to live it. In the face of despair and hope we speak a different language. We know:

Hope is not some kind of delusional optimism to be resorted to because we simply cannot face the hard facts that threaten to swamp our hearts. People do die and leave us. Friends do leave and desert us. Businesses do crumble and destroy us financially. Loves do dry up and disappear. Desires do come to dust. Careers do come to ruin. Disease does debilitate us. Evil does exist. But through it all, hope remains, nevertheless a choice.

Hope rides on the decision either to believe that God stands on this dark road waiting to walk with us towards new light again, or to despair of the fact that God who is faithful is eternally faithful and will sustain us in our darkness one more time. HOPE MEANS: We can begin to build a new life when death comes. We can reach out to make friends with others rather than curl up, hurt and angry waiting for someone to come to us. We can allow ourselves to love again, knowing now that love is a prize that comes in many shapes and forms. We can allow ourselves to cultivate new joys, new interests. We can take the experiences of the past and use them to mine a new life lode. … we can let go of a finished present so that what is about to happen in the future can begin. (JC pg 105-6)

We know that Hope is about action. Following the lead, and the example set by the Saints we’ve known and that we live among, and sharing our faith by word and deed … Hope is rolling up our sleeves and getting busy showing the world that this fear and despair and loneliness isn’t what God wants for us, and it isn’t what we deserve … there is something more!

To borrow another joke – despair and fear is akin to the man who watched the rising flood waters surrounding his home and called out to God to rescue him. Shortly there after some kids in a canoe happened by and called to the man, who was busily piling sandbags if he wanted to be rescued.

“No” answered the man, “I’m waiting for God to rescue me.”

Later after the sandbags breached and his house was flood, the man retreated to the second floor and a police boat came by and called on the man asking if he wanted to be rescued, and again he offered, “No, I’m waiting for God to rescue me.”

Finally as he clung to the chimney with the water swirling around his ankles a helicopter thundered overhead and a rope was lowered for him to grab and be carried to safety by he refused , being adamant in his faith that God would rescue him … the story ends with him standing before God at the pearly gates and asking “Why didn’t you rescue me?”

God chuckles and said – “What more did you want? I sent a canoe, a police boat and a helicopter …”

There is a fine line between despair and fear and stubborn blindness … admittedly, with the events along the coast line of New York and New Jersey in recent days, the prospect of someone losing everything including their life is no laughing matter – but the lesson of this facetious tale remains. In the face of despair, we are called to be a Hopeful and Hope-FILLED people, but our hope must be tempered by a realism. We can, as the flood waters rise, call out to God to rescue us – but, we must be willing to see the canoes, boats and helicopters as part of that response.

We must live with a sense of hope that allows us to overcome despair.

Joan Chittister says bluntly that :

Hope lies in the memory of God’s previous goodness to us in a world that is both bountiful and harsh. … God has given us in this unfinished world a glimpse of eternity and walks with us through here to there, giving us possibility, GIVING US HOPE. (JC pg 104-5)

Our readings today are about living faithfully. Ruth and Naomi live faithfully to each other, and to the circle around them – Jesus challenges the disciples to live faithfully, a challenge that resonates across time to us … love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul and you should love your neighbour as yourself … it’s ALL about living faithfully in relationship with yourself, with God, with our community, and with those around us.

It’s about embodying Hope. Sharing Hope. Living Hope.  

It’s about embracing the unfinished world around us, and not just giving and sharing hope – but BEING HOPE.

May it be so – thanks be to God … let us pray …

JC – Joan Chittister - “Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope”

JV – Jean Vanier - “Becoming Human”