Arvada UMC August 14, 2014 Rev. Valerie Oden From Despair to Hope There are times in life when what goes on in the world around us, in addition to the difficulties of our own lives, tugs on our heart strings as we seek Meaning. This week has been such a time in our country. This week we have seen the deeply rooted racial tensions of our land rise up once again, this time in Ferguson, Missouri. Our cultural psyche cannot help but hear in these events echoes of the LA riots of 1992, or remnants in our system of the riots of the 1960 s; perhaps even the horrors of the Civil War ring out across the land through our ancestors hearts. We wonder if healing will ever come to this deep, often unconscious, tear in our national health. This week we have hurt with the news that Robin Williams, one of our celebrated cultural icons of humor and hope, lost his own sense of both humor and hope, lost all sense of meaning, was engulfed in the darkness that sees not even a glimmer, and ended his own life. We have watched this week as our country s war planes flew once again in Iraq in response to atrocities delivered by extremists, rescuing some refugees while having to turn away from others. Our leaders continue to wonder how to respond to the same atrocities next door in Syria without starting World War III with Russia and China. In such times as these, when compassion is blocked by fear of greater consequences, when history repeats itself, we may wonder if ways of wisdom that bring peace will ever shine across the globe. We are reminded each day of the challenges in remote villages in several countries struck by Ebola, recognizing that there is really no such thing as remote in this global world. We extend hearts of gratitude to medical personnel not deterred by the danger to their own lives, and perhaps we find ourselves just a little bit in awe at their courage, wondering how their own sense of meaning abides through such service and risk. And this week, peace between Israel and Gaza hangs by a thread, in such an incredibly complex battle for home. These events are communal events. They alone may leave us feeling overwhelmed as one of our members wrote last night. And they don t even include the challenging events in our own lives deep grief at losing a family member or friend; the diagnosis we never wanted to hear that sends us into chaos; core relationships tearing, or breaking; a job lost, a hungry child, a daughter in jail.
Arvada UMC Rev. Valerie Oden 2 And so I ask with you this morning, on the heels of a difficult week for our country: What is Christianity's message of hope and eternal meaning, for the individual and for the community, in such times as these? (Pray) The word despair means without hope in its origins: de- sperare. The prophet Job captured the sentiment like this: Job 14: 19 The waters wear away the stones; the torrents wash away the soil of the earth; so you destroy the hope of mortals. Job is unapologetic in blaming God. It s only natural. We expect something back from our faith, don t we? And yet, we know our faith is not a shield against pain. It is, rather, a promise that abides beneath and through pain. Our faith tradition doesn t tell us that we will never know pain or difficulty. It promises that we will never be alone in that pain. It promises a meaning that abides through pain. There are times in every human life when that promise gets challenged, individually at times, collectively at times, even in the hearts of those our culture might consider keepers of the light. Robin Williams was one such keeper of the light. He made us laugh through the decades, and he played many roles that embodied deep hope in life. Consider his wisdom-mentoring in Dead Poets Society, or the way he offered the hand of hope to a young man in Good Will Hunting, or Mrs. Doubtfire s stop-at-nothing love, or the sheer magic of Aladdin, or the faith and vision of the human spirit he played in Awakenings. You may have heard this story this week; it s been circulating on the news, told in different ways. It s from the poem To Laugh While Crying by the Spanish poet Lorrando: A man went to see the doctor because he couldn t sleep; he was nervous and worried all the time. The doctor recognized that the man needed a lift, needed to laugh. So he said, Go see the Great Garrik. Anyone who sees him will laugh harder than they ever have. He has an amazing artistic grace. He alone can help you. The man looked at him and quietly said, shaking his head, I am Garrik. There is no hope for me. When an icon of hope and humor loses site of both and ends his own life, our cultural psyche takes a hit. Our own fragility is put right in front of our eyes, as if to say, just in case we had missed it, we're all a thread away from despair.
Arvada UMC Rev. Valerie Oden 3 We have experienced in this congregation the pain of that last thread coming unraveled in one of our own. Once a life gets down to that last thread, there is simply nothing a loved one or a community can do. Robin Williams family bears no responsibility for his death. Neither does the family of anyone who walked the same course. What we can do is recognize and remind each other that the last fragile thread that keeps us from despair is woven into a tapestry of goodness, a presence of love; that even that thread is of the Source, if only those in its trail could follow it all the way down. Our lives of faith are about strengthening the whole tapestry. Our faith calls us to evolve through our lives in our connection to meaning, a meaning we call God, a meaning that will stand through the hard times because it doesn t depend on the good times. It abides beneath both, eternally. I cannot, of course, tell you what that means for you. Your faith is being requisitioned in times such as these, and your faith has to answer, for you, how to find the meaning that abides eternally beneath both the good and the bad of life. I believe Jesus shows us that Life is not here to serve us, and neither is God. We are here to serve Life, God. If we are serving the deepest meaning we know, of God, then when our days turn south we hold no blame, no victimhood, perhaps not even a Why me!? We abide in the hard times with the same deep spirit that we abide in during the good times. The wind blows where it will and we abide in the Spirit. The waves rise and fall and we abide in the Deep. When we serve what is most meaningful, at any given moment in our lives, we know that what is most meaningful abides. No matter what. I believe it is what we mean when we pray Thy will be done. We are praying that the abiding meaning of Life, God, might have presence in and through our lives, individually and communally. It is a prayer that we might shift our perspective from us being the center of our lives to God being the center of our lives. Such a shift in perspective answers despair. It grounds us in hope, real hope, deep hope, not hope that there won t be a long line at Starbucks. The great theologian Paul Tillich said that when we search for hope, it already has some presence within us ("The Right to Hope"). Is not the same true of meaning? Of God? By seeking hope, meaning, God, goodness, we are claiming it as real.
Arvada UMC Rev. Valerie Oden 4 As a community of faith, we gather each week to remind each other of real hope, real meaning, real goodness. We gather in the name of the Christ, and we proclaim that God is real, that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it. The early Christians gathered to do the same: to remind each other of Jesus, to tell stories of him and break bread in his name. They held the Christ light for each other. So do we, here, hold the Christ light for each other and for the world. We even sing of it: I will hold the Christ light for you In the night time of your fear I will hold my hand out to you Speak the peace you long to hear. (Sung by Tim) Perhaps we mean more to each other than we know. Is there not an unseen connection between us? And as we share the waves of our lives with one another, we cultivate this unseen connection as the garden of the Deep in our souls. We cultivate it by holding each other in our hearts and in our prayers, by helping each other with meals and cards and companionship, by being together in fellowship, over coffee, in studies and groups and rehearsals; we cultivate it by reaching out to others, to those less fortunate who yearn as do we for the light. It all matters. It matters not by way of filling our hours, or making us important. It matters because we are tending the garden of hope-- hope in our own lives, hope in the lives of those we connect with and hold, hope in the lives of downtrodden strangers. We are proclaiming, through connections with each other, through our service to those beyond us, through how we lift each other and help each other, that despair shall not have the last word. We are strengthening the whole tapestry. We are nurturing the space of hope in our own hearts and in our world as real and good. In these moments together, and for each moment when we listen deep within, when we listen and respond to what is beneath convenience or comfort, when we listen and respond to the whisper of goodness that includes us but comes from beyond us, in these moments we know that we belong to Life, it doesn't belong to us. Our real hope lies not in what life will give us, but in what we will give Life. And in these moments together, we proclaim that we are not alone. We proclaim with Paul that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8: 38-39)
Arvada UMC Rev. Valerie Oden 5 God is with us, even when we feel separate. The separation is only on our side. We are actually never abandoned. That is existentially simply not possible. What is Christianity's message of hope and eternal meaning, for the individual and for the community, in such times as these? Christ crucified and risen shows us how to abide in eternal meaning, in the real hope that whispers inside us, abiding no matter what, in the good times and the bad. We are not alone. God is there, even in the guillotine. I began this week in ER with my brother Monday night. He had gone in with excruciating pain later discerned to be a kidney stone. It was through him as he lay there in ER that I learned of Robin Williams death. Bryant went home Tuesday, and Wednesday night recorded a new song, raw. Most of his songs are geared for children; they are humorous, studio engineered, sped up. This song, however, he recorded raw, in his real voice, and posted it vulnerably on his Youtube channel called Songdrops. He dedicated it to the memory of Robin Williams, and introduced it with a spoken word to his young fans that they are not alone. "You Are Not Alone" I invite us to open our hymnals to page 883. I invite you to join me in claiming this moment as a moment of hope. We are not alone. Thanks be to God. We are not alone, we live in God's world. We believe in God: who has created and is creating, who has come in Jesus, the Word made flesh, to reconcile and make new, who works in us and others by the Spirit. We trust in God. We are called to be the Church: to celebrate God's presence, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, our judge and our hope. In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God. Amen.