Unseen Hope
When I watch the news these days I sometimes feel hopeless – there are so many stories of people really suffering, homeless families, folks who have lost jobs they held for decades, kids going hungry. Not just a few, a LOT of people. At times it seems to me that the situation is really not fixable, and I turn the TV off, because the problem is too big for me. There have been some glimmers of hope that we might have hit the bottom of the recession, but for a lot of Americans new jobs and permanent housing are a long way off. The OT lesson for today has a sense of this desolation and emptiness – Isaiah is sent out to talk with those who can’t listen with their ears and see with their eyes and who won’t turn and be healed. He asks the Lord God, “How long, O, Lord?” And the reading from Romans’ echoes the feeling of even the earth groaning with labor pains. Paul writes, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” The world groans in pain while waiting for redemption. Our world groans in social, financial and spiritual pain while waiting for redemption from the actions of those, and perhaps all of us, who would not see with their eyes, hear with their ears, or turn and be healed.
Almost ten years ago I was working in a Skilled Nursing Facility in San Francisco. And I volunteered with a program at the Episcopal Sanctuary near where I worked. I felt like I was right where I was supposed to be – I loved my job and I loved helping to set up a program at the Sanctuary called CHEFS – Conquering Homelessness thru Employment in Food Service. It was a good time in my life, I felt useful and purposeful. Like I was making a difference in my little part of the world. Then the company I worked for went into bankruptcy and I lost my job. That’s the really short version – I ended up feeling like I had been used and betrayed by the system I trusted and I was scared, too, I had three kids at home and I was a single mom. Having just bought a house and moved to Concord, I wondered how I was going to make ends meet and I have to admit I was more than scared. But I never got to the really hopeless part because I was able to find a job within a couple of weeks. I was lucky and I believe the Spirit was with me. I can’t claim to know what people feel when they are out of work for months, have maxed out their credit cards, have sold everything they can sell and see that their options are running out. That’s where too many people are in America today. This is the dark night of the soul, when hope has run out. I heard a little boy whose family is in a bad financial situation say on the radio the other evening, “I’ve given up.” A seven year old without hope.
St. Paul knows this kind of hopelessness, too. In our reading today St. Paul talks about human suffering from his own experience. During his career of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the gentiles – the people who were not Jews – he had some incredibly rough times: shipwrecks, imprisonment, unfriendly crowds, difficult living situations, depending on the kindness of strangers for food, housing and so on. Paul’s early life as an educated Greek, Roman citizen, respected religious leader, and persecutor of Christians, was totally turned upside down by his call to evangelize for Jesus Christ. As he said himself, he was the most unlikely to be called to be a disciple of Christ. He went from a life of privilege to a life of struggle and suffering for the sake of the Gospel. So Paul knows all about hope. The intensity of his hope is based not on a change in the human condition, but he looks forward with hope to something he couldn’t even imagine – the full glorification and liberation of God’s Kingdom. I can’t even imagine what that might look like. I know what I hoped for in my dark night of the soul – some real human relief from the fear that I might not be able to take care of my family. I got that, thanks be to God, but I experienced something else, too. Paul talks this new Kingdom of Jesus Christ as the “first fruits” of the Holy Spirit. The Sunday after I lost my job I went to church as usual and was very aware of how lost I felt. I sat in my pew and felt all the sadness and fear and wondered what I was going to do – and then I had a thought. I thought, “now I can go to Seminary”. An old deep desire of my heart – something I hadn’t thought of for years – resurfaced by the power of the Spirit through my heart broken open by human grief. And I did eventually go to the School for Deacons at the Seminary in Berkeley and eventually ended up here with you. The fruits of the Spirit opened me to not just a new job, but a new life in Christ, living more and deeper into the Gospel. Thanks be to God.
In today’s Gospel, Nicodemus comes to visit Jesus at night. Nicodemus also was a Pharisee, a religious leader, like Paul; and member of the Sanhedrin which was a Jewish council of judges; he was an educated and important man. Some Biblical historians think that he is the same Nicodemus ben Gurion, who is mentioned in the Talmud (a book of Jewish law and writings) as a wealthy and popular holy man who had the power to do miracles. He comes to Jesus by night, looking for some answers. The powers that be have seen the miracles Jesus has been doing around the countryside and they know that apart from a relationship with God, no one can do these amazing acts. Jesus answers the unspoken question Nicodemus asks. Who are you, how can you do this? What does it all mean? Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 8The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus is confused by this conversation because he doesn’t understand life beyond his human experience. Nicodemus has come to Jesus hoping to hear something – but what? When Jesus explains about life in the Spirit Nicodemus thinks Jesus is talking about climbing back into the womb and being born human again. Jesus is talking about the life lived in the Spirit – the great gift of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, given to all of us after the Resurrection to be our comfort and hope in the present days of human suffering. We experience the first fruits of this hope through the Holy Spirit. As adopted children and heirs to the kingdom along with Christ we wait with creation “in hope 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” And what gives us this hope is the movement of the Spirit in our lives. Last Sunday we celebrated Pentecost – the day when the gift of the Spirit was given – and spread through the world through human beings like us. Pentecost brings us together as God’s beloved family and reminds us of Jesus’ commandment that we love one another as he loved us.
Where is the hope that our world needs today? It is foolish to place our hope in things of the flesh, as Paul says, hope that is seen is not hope. And he goes on to say that if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Nicodemus got the answer to his unspoken question from Jesus and evidence of his behavior after this conversation with Jesus shows that he might have had the ears to hear and turn and be healed. And me? My experiences of the power of the Holy Spirit in my life have taught me to depend completely on Jesus for my life and hope. Being human it’s hard not to feel hopeless and desolate at time; it’s hard to always remember that I am born of water and spirit; and I depend on the Holy Spirit to bring me back to hope and love again through the fellowship of the community of believers. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Amen. 17
When I watch the news these days I sometimes feel hopeless – there are so many stories of people really suffering, homeless families, folks who have lost jobs they held for decades, kids going hungry. Not just a few, a LOT of people. At times it seems to me that the situation is really not fixable, and I turn the TV off, because the problem is too big for me. There have been some glimmers of hope that we might have hit the bottom of the recession, but for a lot of Americans new jobs and permanent housing are a long way off. The OT lesson for today has a sense of this desolation and emptiness – Isaiah is sent out to talk with those who can’t listen with their ears and see with their eyes and who won’t turn and be healed. He asks the Lord God, “How long, O, Lord?” And the reading from Romans’ echoes the feeling of even the earth groaning with labor pains. Paul writes, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” The world groans in pain while waiting for redemption. Our world groans in social, financial and spiritual pain while waiting for redemption from the actions of those, and perhaps all of us, who would not see with their eyes, hear with their ears, or turn and be healed.
Almost ten years ago I was working in a Skilled Nursing Facility in San Francisco. And I volunteered with a program at the Episcopal Sanctuary near where I worked. I felt like I was right where I was supposed to be – I loved my job and I loved helping to set up a program at the Sanctuary called CHEFS – Conquering Homelessness thru Employment in Food Service. It was a good time in my life, I felt useful and purposeful. Like I was making a difference in my little part of the world. Then the company I worked for went into bankruptcy and I lost my job. That’s the really short version – I ended up feeling like I had been used and betrayed by the system I trusted and I was scared, too, I had three kids at home and I was a single mom. Having just bought a house and moved to Concord, I wondered how I was going to make ends meet and I have to admit I was more than scared. But I never got to the really hopeless part because I was able to find a job within a couple of weeks. I was lucky and I believe the Spirit was with me. I can’t claim to know what people feel when they are out of work for months, have maxed out their credit cards, have sold everything they can sell and see that their options are running out. That’s where too many people are in America today. This is the dark night of the soul, when hope has run out. I heard a little boy whose family is in a bad financial situation say on the radio the other evening, “I’ve given up.” A seven year old without hope.
St. Paul knows this kind of hopelessness, too. In our reading today St. Paul talks about human suffering from his own experience. During his career of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the gentiles – the people who were not Jews – he had some incredibly rough times: shipwrecks, imprisonment, unfriendly crowds, difficult living situations, depending on the kindness of strangers for food, housing and so on. Paul’s early life as an educated Greek, Roman citizen, respected religious leader, and persecutor of Christians, was totally turned upside down by his call to evangelize for Jesus Christ. As he said himself, he was the most unlikely to be called to be a disciple of Christ. He went from a life of privilege to a life of struggle and suffering for the sake of the Gospel. So Paul knows all about hope. The intensity of his hope is based not on a change in the human condition, but he looks forward with hope to something he couldn’t even imagine – the full glorification and liberation of God’s Kingdom. I can’t even imagine what that might look like. I know what I hoped for in my dark night of the soul – some real human relief from the fear that I might not be able to take care of my family. I got that, thanks be to God, but I experienced something else, too. Paul talks this new Kingdom of Jesus Christ as the “first fruits” of the Holy Spirit. The Sunday after I lost my job I went to church as usual and was very aware of how lost I felt. I sat in my pew and felt all the sadness and fear and wondered what I was going to do – and then I had a thought. I thought, “now I can go to Seminary”. An old deep desire of my heart – something I hadn’t thought of for years – resurfaced by the power of the Spirit through my heart broken open by human grief. And I did eventually go to the School for Deacons at the Seminary in Berkeley and eventually ended up here with you. The fruits of the Spirit opened me to not just a new job, but a new life in Christ, living more and deeper into the Gospel. Thanks be to God.
In today’s Gospel, Nicodemus comes to visit Jesus at night. Nicodemus also was a Pharisee, a religious leader, like Paul; and member of the Sanhedrin which was a Jewish council of judges; he was an educated and important man. Some Biblical historians think that he is the same Nicodemus ben Gurion, who is mentioned in the Talmud (a book of Jewish law and writings) as a wealthy and popular holy man who had the power to do miracles. He comes to Jesus by night, looking for some answers. The powers that be have seen the miracles Jesus has been doing around the countryside and they know that apart from a relationship with God, no one can do these amazing acts. Jesus answers the unspoken question Nicodemus asks. Who are you, how can you do this? What does it all mean? Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 8The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus is confused by this conversation because he doesn’t understand life beyond his human experience. Nicodemus has come to Jesus hoping to hear something – but what? When Jesus explains about life in the Spirit Nicodemus thinks Jesus is talking about climbing back into the womb and being born human again. Jesus is talking about the life lived in the Spirit – the great gift of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, given to all of us after the Resurrection to be our comfort and hope in the present days of human suffering. We experience the first fruits of this hope through the Holy Spirit. As adopted children and heirs to the kingdom along with Christ we wait with creation “in hope 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” And what gives us this hope is the movement of the Spirit in our lives. Last Sunday we celebrated Pentecost – the day when the gift of the Spirit was given – and spread through the world through human beings like us. Pentecost brings us together as God’s beloved family and reminds us of Jesus’ commandment that we love one another as he loved us.
Where is the hope that our world needs today? It is foolish to place our hope in things of the flesh, as Paul says, hope that is seen is not hope. And he goes on to say that if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Nicodemus got the answer to his unspoken question from Jesus and evidence of his behavior after this conversation with Jesus shows that he might have had the ears to hear and turn and be healed. And me? My experiences of the power of the Holy Spirit in my life have taught me to depend completely on Jesus for my life and hope. Being human it’s hard not to feel hopeless and desolate at time; it’s hard to always remember that I am born of water and spirit; and I depend on the Holy Spirit to bring me back to hope and love again through the fellowship of the community of believers. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Amen. 17
