Lucia Lloyd’s sermon: Hope is...
Oct 20, 2019
22 Proper 29 Year C
Luke 18:1-8
“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul” writes Emily Dickinson. It is a beautiful image of hope. A thing with feathers is not limited to its surroundings on the ground; a thing with feathers can rise above its surroundings, it can defy gravity, and it can soar into thin air and get a wider view. When we feel limited by the restrictions of our present circumstances, it is hope that enables us to rise above the problems of our present circumstances, to get a wider view that enables us to see that the problems of the present moment are not all there is. Hope lifts us into the air where we can see the possibility of a future that is better than the difficulties of the moment.
I was an English major before I went to seminary. I loved that description of hope as the thing with feathers, and I still do. I was a bit startled the first time I came across the image for hope in the ancient church: the ancient church’s image for hope is an anchor. An anchor? It seems like the exact opposite of the thing with feathers: where feathers are light, anchors are heavy; where feathers soar, anchors sink. I had heard that hope is a thing with feathers; now I was hearing hope is a thing of iron. Where did that idea come from?
We often overlook Jesus’s teachings about injustice, but Jesus talks about injustice repeatedly. In today’s gospel passage, Jesus tells us about a widow living in a situation of injustice. The judge is someone who neither fears God nor has respect for people. Not only is the widow living with her opponent’s original injustice against her, now she is also dealing with the judge’s refusal to judge her case fairly. Now there is her opponent’s injustice, plus the judge’s injustice. Everyone expects her to give up. Instead, the widow keeps coming to the judge and telling him, “Grant me justice against my opponent.” The judge still keeps refusing. This woman does not give up. This woman keeps showing up day after day after day, keeps insisting over and over and over that this judge grant her justice against her opponent. Finally, it is the judge who gives up. He says to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” What is it in this woman that enables her to persist, to keep going out to face this obnoxious man who holds all the power and who doesn’t fear God or respect other people? What is it in this woman that enables her to keep getting up every day and going to insist on justice with a judge who keeps on telling her no, no, no.
What enables her to do all this is that her hope is a thing of iron.
Her hope is a thing of iron that anchors her and keeps her steady despite being buffeted by the winds and the waves. What Jesus is teaching us isn’t true just in parables; it is true in real life. Every time we look at the life of someone who won out over injustice, whether it’s Martin Luther King or Gandhi or Susan B. Anthony or William Wilberforce, we find that in each of them is hope that is a thing of iron. There is a toughness to their hope, a solidity to their hope, a weightiness to their hope that anchors them and keeps them steady over years of adversity in the fight for justice. True hope involves being anchored, and the people whose hope is a thing of iron know that best of all. As Martin Luther King says, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” When hope is a thing of iron, it lasts. This iron hope is present not just in the few leaders who are in the spotlight, it is also present in all the ordinary people who have worked to achieve justice throughout history. Whether they have been working against the injustices of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, or any of the ways in which human beings treat others as second-class citizens, it is the iron hope that has anchored them and enabled them to prevail.
That’s the difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is nice, but it only gets you so far. Optimism involves seeing that things might be better; hope is the virtue that motivates you to keep working to change things for the better. Optimism would have enabled the widow to imagine that her situation might get better on its own; hope is the virtue that motivates her to keep showing up and insisting on justice until she achieves it.
That’s what makes hope powerful; hope is the virtue that enables us to persevere through the difficulties of the present in order to reach the good of the future. Accomplishing things that involve delayed gratification is possible because of the virtue of hope. Our hope for a greater good in the future is what enables us to make sacrifices and make an effort in the present. The virtue of hope is an essential element of many other virtues. The virtue of hope is an essential element of courage, because it enables us to endure suffering or fear in the present, for the sake of the justice or goodness we hope for in the future. The virtue of hope is an essential element of patience for the same reason.
Oddly enough, the virtue of hope is an essential element of forgiveness. None of us have gotten this far in life without ever having been hurt by anyone. And so forgiving the people who have hurt us is something every single one of us deals with. I once heard Barbara Crafton give some talks on forgiveness, which you can find online as well. She told the story of a member of the parish of St. Clement who was angry at another man, so much so that when he thought of him he felt like punching the wall. He most definitely did not feel like praying. Barbara Crafton gives him some unusual advice in how to go about forgiving. She tells him to pray for him every day using no words at all except his name. Just say his name to God and that’s it; that’s all. No words at all, no “please help him to,” no “please help me to,” nothing but saying his name to God every day. It is prayer without an agenda. She tells him that it will take a long time, but it will work. Reluctantly, he agrees. He keeps on with these prayers because he has hope that forgiveness can happen in his soul. She goes on to recount all the wonderful things that slowly change in him as he says this man’s name to God every day. In simply saying the person’s name to God each day, the forgiveness happens.
I have done very similar things at various times in my life with people who have hurt me and people I’ve been angry with. It is hardest at first because it is a reminder of the hurt and anger I would rather avoid, but since it’s only the name itself, that’s manageable. And I can tell you from my own experience, this stuff really does work. Barbara Crafton is absolutely right.
We can handle the discomfort of saying the person’s name to God because it is an act of hope that our reaction to the person in the future will be better than the reaction we have in the present. It frees us from having to mentally relive the hurt of the past, so that we can move freely into the future. It takes time, as the work of hope does, but it is so worth it. It ends up anchoring us in peace. I am going to join with Barbara Crafton in encouraging each of us who has ever been hurt to simply say the person’s name to God every day, and see what God does with your hope.
St. Paul is at his very best and most poetic in 1 Corinthians 13, the passage which begins, “love is patient, love is kind.” This passage culminates in the verse that says, “Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” St. Paul gives hope this place of honor alongside faith and love, and church tradition since then has called faith, hope, and love the three theological virtues.
Hope is an essential element of faith because it enables us to remember that what we see right now and what we feel right now are not necessarily All There Is. As I look back over my own faith life I can remember that there were all sorts of scriptures that seemed impossibly problematic to me at the time, and doctrines that drove me crazy at various points in the past. And the biggest obstacle to faith is often plain old ordinary inertia; cultivating a spiritual life involves showing up. When we hit those rough patches in faith or those lazy patches in faith, hope is what gets us through them because it reminds us that there’s more to see in the universe than what is right in front of our face. There is more to see of God, and hope enables us to see past the problem in the present moment so that we can experience the rest. Luke tells us right from the start why Jesus is telling us the parable of the widow and the unjust judge: “Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” There it is: Jesus is telling us about our need to pray always—not just when we happen to feel like it—Jesus is telling us about our need to pray always. We need to pray alone on a daily basis, and we need to pray together, as we gather on Sunday mornings. Jesus tells us about our need to pray always, and not to lose heart, not to lose hope.
“Faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love.” A relationship of lasting love is always built on hope. A relationship of lasting love often involves setting aside what you feel like in the moment for the sake of the relationship’s development over the long term. Sometimes this involves talking when you don’t feel like talking. Sometimes it involves listening when you don’t feel like listening. But couples’ hope in the future of the relationship enables them to do those things. Hope provides an anchor for lasting love against all the pressures from the outside that try to say that the love isn’t good enough or true enough or worth enough. Hope reminds the couple that the love is good and true and worth it all, worth more than all. A couple whose lasting love has spanned the decades can look back at how far hope has brought them. Who they were back at the beginning, and what life was like then. The problems that once seemed insurmountable. All the ups and downs of the years. All the shared joys and sorrows, all the ways the love has become deeper, stronger, has soaked into who they are. Hope finds its fulfillment in lasting love.
They are both right, the poets and the theologians, Emily of Amherst and Paul of Tarsus and Jesus of Nazareth. Hope is the thing with feathers. Hope is the anchor of iron. Hope is the widow who keeps calling for justice.
Hope is our prayers, as we pray them with faith and love.
Faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love.
**Note on Martin Luther King quote, from Wikiquote.org: King's often repeated expression that "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice" was his own succinct summation of sentiments echoing those of Theodore Parker, who, in "Of Justice and the Conscience" (1853) asserted: "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."
I was an English major before I went to seminary. I loved that description of hope as the thing with feathers, and I still do. I was a bit startled the first time I came across the image for hope in the ancient church: the ancient church’s image for hope is an anchor. An anchor? It seems like the exact opposite of the thing with feathers: where feathers are light, anchors are heavy; where feathers soar, anchors sink. I had heard that hope is a thing with feathers; now I was hearing hope is a thing of iron. Where did that idea come from?
We often overlook Jesus’s teachings about injustice, but Jesus talks about injustice repeatedly. In today’s gospel passage, Jesus tells us about a widow living in a situation of injustice. The judge is someone who neither fears God nor has respect for people. Not only is the widow living with her opponent’s original injustice against her, now she is also dealing with the judge’s refusal to judge her case fairly. Now there is her opponent’s injustice, plus the judge’s injustice. Everyone expects her to give up. Instead, the widow keeps coming to the judge and telling him, “Grant me justice against my opponent.” The judge still keeps refusing. This woman does not give up. This woman keeps showing up day after day after day, keeps insisting over and over and over that this judge grant her justice against her opponent. Finally, it is the judge who gives up. He says to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” What is it in this woman that enables her to persist, to keep going out to face this obnoxious man who holds all the power and who doesn’t fear God or respect other people? What is it in this woman that enables her to keep getting up every day and going to insist on justice with a judge who keeps on telling her no, no, no.
What enables her to do all this is that her hope is a thing of iron.
Her hope is a thing of iron that anchors her and keeps her steady despite being buffeted by the winds and the waves. What Jesus is teaching us isn’t true just in parables; it is true in real life. Every time we look at the life of someone who won out over injustice, whether it’s Martin Luther King or Gandhi or Susan B. Anthony or William Wilberforce, we find that in each of them is hope that is a thing of iron. There is a toughness to their hope, a solidity to their hope, a weightiness to their hope that anchors them and keeps them steady over years of adversity in the fight for justice. True hope involves being anchored, and the people whose hope is a thing of iron know that best of all. As Martin Luther King says, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” When hope is a thing of iron, it lasts. This iron hope is present not just in the few leaders who are in the spotlight, it is also present in all the ordinary people who have worked to achieve justice throughout history. Whether they have been working against the injustices of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, or any of the ways in which human beings treat others as second-class citizens, it is the iron hope that has anchored them and enabled them to prevail.
That’s the difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is nice, but it only gets you so far. Optimism involves seeing that things might be better; hope is the virtue that motivates you to keep working to change things for the better. Optimism would have enabled the widow to imagine that her situation might get better on its own; hope is the virtue that motivates her to keep showing up and insisting on justice until she achieves it.
That’s what makes hope powerful; hope is the virtue that enables us to persevere through the difficulties of the present in order to reach the good of the future. Accomplishing things that involve delayed gratification is possible because of the virtue of hope. Our hope for a greater good in the future is what enables us to make sacrifices and make an effort in the present. The virtue of hope is an essential element of many other virtues. The virtue of hope is an essential element of courage, because it enables us to endure suffering or fear in the present, for the sake of the justice or goodness we hope for in the future. The virtue of hope is an essential element of patience for the same reason.
Oddly enough, the virtue of hope is an essential element of forgiveness. None of us have gotten this far in life without ever having been hurt by anyone. And so forgiving the people who have hurt us is something every single one of us deals with. I once heard Barbara Crafton give some talks on forgiveness, which you can find online as well. She told the story of a member of the parish of St. Clement who was angry at another man, so much so that when he thought of him he felt like punching the wall. He most definitely did not feel like praying. Barbara Crafton gives him some unusual advice in how to go about forgiving. She tells him to pray for him every day using no words at all except his name. Just say his name to God and that’s it; that’s all. No words at all, no “please help him to,” no “please help me to,” nothing but saying his name to God every day. It is prayer without an agenda. She tells him that it will take a long time, but it will work. Reluctantly, he agrees. He keeps on with these prayers because he has hope that forgiveness can happen in his soul. She goes on to recount all the wonderful things that slowly change in him as he says this man’s name to God every day. In simply saying the person’s name to God each day, the forgiveness happens.
I have done very similar things at various times in my life with people who have hurt me and people I’ve been angry with. It is hardest at first because it is a reminder of the hurt and anger I would rather avoid, but since it’s only the name itself, that’s manageable. And I can tell you from my own experience, this stuff really does work. Barbara Crafton is absolutely right.
We can handle the discomfort of saying the person’s name to God because it is an act of hope that our reaction to the person in the future will be better than the reaction we have in the present. It frees us from having to mentally relive the hurt of the past, so that we can move freely into the future. It takes time, as the work of hope does, but it is so worth it. It ends up anchoring us in peace. I am going to join with Barbara Crafton in encouraging each of us who has ever been hurt to simply say the person’s name to God every day, and see what God does with your hope.
St. Paul is at his very best and most poetic in 1 Corinthians 13, the passage which begins, “love is patient, love is kind.” This passage culminates in the verse that says, “Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” St. Paul gives hope this place of honor alongside faith and love, and church tradition since then has called faith, hope, and love the three theological virtues.
Hope is an essential element of faith because it enables us to remember that what we see right now and what we feel right now are not necessarily All There Is. As I look back over my own faith life I can remember that there were all sorts of scriptures that seemed impossibly problematic to me at the time, and doctrines that drove me crazy at various points in the past. And the biggest obstacle to faith is often plain old ordinary inertia; cultivating a spiritual life involves showing up. When we hit those rough patches in faith or those lazy patches in faith, hope is what gets us through them because it reminds us that there’s more to see in the universe than what is right in front of our face. There is more to see of God, and hope enables us to see past the problem in the present moment so that we can experience the rest. Luke tells us right from the start why Jesus is telling us the parable of the widow and the unjust judge: “Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” There it is: Jesus is telling us about our need to pray always—not just when we happen to feel like it—Jesus is telling us about our need to pray always. We need to pray alone on a daily basis, and we need to pray together, as we gather on Sunday mornings. Jesus tells us about our need to pray always, and not to lose heart, not to lose hope.
“Faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love.” A relationship of lasting love is always built on hope. A relationship of lasting love often involves setting aside what you feel like in the moment for the sake of the relationship’s development over the long term. Sometimes this involves talking when you don’t feel like talking. Sometimes it involves listening when you don’t feel like listening. But couples’ hope in the future of the relationship enables them to do those things. Hope provides an anchor for lasting love against all the pressures from the outside that try to say that the love isn’t good enough or true enough or worth enough. Hope reminds the couple that the love is good and true and worth it all, worth more than all. A couple whose lasting love has spanned the decades can look back at how far hope has brought them. Who they were back at the beginning, and what life was like then. The problems that once seemed insurmountable. All the ups and downs of the years. All the shared joys and sorrows, all the ways the love has become deeper, stronger, has soaked into who they are. Hope finds its fulfillment in lasting love.
They are both right, the poets and the theologians, Emily of Amherst and Paul of Tarsus and Jesus of Nazareth. Hope is the thing with feathers. Hope is the anchor of iron. Hope is the widow who keeps calling for justice.
Hope is our prayers, as we pray them with faith and love.
Faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love.
**Note on Martin Luther King quote, from Wikiquote.org: King's often repeated expression that "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice" was his own succinct summation of sentiments echoing those of Theodore Parker, who, in "Of Justice and the Conscience" (1853) asserted: "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."