I wonder…after a lifetime of slavery…how many dared to hope what Moses said? I don’t know about you…but I don’t like to get my hopes up. It’s too discouraging. I’m one of those people who likes to keep my expectations low, so I don’t get disappointed. I mean, I’m grateful for the dreamers and hopers and believers…but I’m kind of a skeptic at heart. I’m too aware of how messed up things are. I’m too aware of history…and how much ugliness persists.
So, I wonder…how many of those slaves dared to hope that they would actually be freed?
There was a quote by an historian that was making the rounds a couple years ago — “People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider’s webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go.”
Hope is tough, daring, gritty stuff. It is not, after all, a thing with feathers, perching on the soul…as Emily Dickinson said. Rather, it is the stuff of blood and tears and sweat and determination. Hope, you see, is not for the faint of heart. Paul, in Romans, tells us that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us. No…hope is not something that comes easy. It rises up courageously and defiantly in the darkest of times. In the midst of slavery. In the midst of persecution.. In the midst of exile. The passage Debbie read this morning from Isaiah was written after Jerusalm had been razed to the ground and the Israelites had been taken as captives to Babylon. It is a defiant hope in the face of complete devastation.
No…It is not a light thing to be a person of hope. To believe that the oppressed will be set free. To believe justice will come. To believe that the broken of this world will be lifted up and that they will have joy instead of grief. Hope does not come easily…especially for skeptics like me. But that is precisely the gritty path that God invites us to walk. The path of hope. The path that refuses to accept cruelty and injustice and evil as “just the way things are”….and dares to believe and fight for a different way. Actually, this is what it means to take up your cross in this world….it means that on the road to hell…in the midst of all that is wrong in the world….we dare to hope…we dare to believe that God wins. Even if we die along the way. We believe God hears the cries of those who are suffering. We believe that every time the captives are released…that is where God is. Sheldon Thomas, Barry Lee Jones, Lamar Johnson….three men who spent 18, 25 and 30 years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit…were finally released this year. They know something of the suffering that produces endurance and the endurance that produces character and the character that produces hope. They know something of hope…in a world where so often injustice masquerades as justice…hope that is defiant and has dirt on her face.
Hope is where we see God….and not the “I hope I get to go to Cancun” kind of hope. But rather in the daring hope that believes that the greed and corruption and hatred that so often fuel those who have power….do not prevail. God’s hope is resurrection after the powers of this world rip the flesh of Jesus’ body and hang him publicly to die. God’s hope is for slaves…the slaves in Egypt and the slaves in America, and for the victims of the racism that slavery left behind. God’s hope is for the exiled Isaraelites in Babylon…and for native and indigenous tribes throughout the world and every refugee who has lost their home through violence and war. God’s hope is for every person who has been abused, who has been mistreated, who has been violated. God’s hope is for the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill. And you know what….God’s hope knows that Pharoah lies…just like every one who loves power…and that overcoming evil will not happen overnight…but will take time after time after time…and even then…as we’ll learn next week….Pharoah will keep coming. But God wins. That is our hope. And when we stand, bloodied, fighting for what is right…we stand with God. We stand with God.
In the story of history….God’s story is not told by religious folks. We are not telling God’s story when we talk about what churches have done, or any religious people have done. If we learn anything from Jesus…and from the rest of scripture…it’s that the religious people are often the most misguided. They are the most likely to justify hate and war and violence as ‘godly’ in their zealotry for righteousness and purity. So…if you have a hard time believing in God because of what has been done in God’s name throughout history…that’s more than understandable. But the story of Jesus tells us … that’s not where we see God. If you want to see where God is…you will go to the places where the hungry are fed. You will look at the work of the Innocence Project, seeking to free those unjustly convicted. If you want to see God…you will look at the places where people are caring for the broken hearted, the oppressed, the hurting. You will look at places like Youth Emergency Services, offering support to kids whose families have abandoned or rejected them. Places like the Pend Oreille River school…where teachers fight to give kids a chance, when most people have given up on them. You’ll look at Second Harvest, feeding the hungry. You’ll look at Union Gospel Mission and their care for the homeless. You’ll look at PFLAG and their unwavering advocacy for the LGBTQ community. You’ll look at the Martin Luther King Center providing support for people of color and low income families in East Central Spokane. You’ll look at Spokane Angels and their support for foster kids and their families.
In Lutheran-ese…we call this the “Theology of the Cross”. And it means that we don’t look for God in the temples or palaces or churches or capitol buildings of the world where people with power make things happen. Rather, we will see God most clearly, when we go to the places where people are suffering…because that is where God goes. That is where God is at work…bringing good news to the oppressed, binding up the broken-hearted, proclaiming liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners. Elie Weisel was a prisoner in Auschwitz and survived. One of the books he wrote was “NIght”. In it, he shares a memory of watching an innocent young boy being hung for collaboration along with two others in the camp. As they watched that sweet boy struggle for more than half an hour at the end of the rope before he died, multiple prisoners questioned where God was. Elie responds in his mind with, “’Where is he? Here he is. He is hanging here on this gallows…’” Where do we find God? Not in churches or governments that claim God’s authority…but only where people care about the fate of young boys and girls whose lives are hanging by a thread. Where do we see God? On the cross…where the religious and powerful impose death and suffering on anyone who doesn’t “fit” their agenda.
Where do we see God? In hope…hope with blood on her knuckles…hope that doesn’t give up. Hope that believes that God, and the love God has for ALL people…wins. This wais the hope of Jesus’ mother, who sang a song before he was even born…a song that believed that the world could turn. That justice could come. We are here today…because we have hope. The hope of Jesus…and that hope…WILL NOT disappoint us. Amen.
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