Hope While We Wait - Metanoia XIII – Hope

Lessons: Jeremiah 29:10-14, Psalm 130, Romans 8:18-25, Mark 13:24-37

Beloved in Christ,

I have been thinking about hope this week.

Not the easy kind.

Not “I hope things work out.”

I mean the kind of hope you have to hold onto when things have not worked out.

When you prayed and the answer did not come the way you wanted.

When the situation did not resolve.

When somebody died.

When somebody left.

When the money stayed tight.

When the Church disappointed you.

When you look at the world around us and wonder how much more people are expected to carry.

That is where our Scriptures meet us today.

Not after the trouble has passed.

Right in the middle of it.

Jeremiah speaks to people living in exile.

The psalmist cries out from the depths.

Paul says creation itself is groaning.

And Jesus describes a world where everything people trusted to remain fixed seems to be shaking.

And somehow, in the middle of all of that, Scripture has the nerve to talk about hope.

So we need to ask what kind of hope this is.

## Hope in Exile

Jeremiah is writing to people who have lost the life they knew.

Jerusalem is behind them.

The Temple is behind them.

Their homes are behind them.

Their routines are behind them.

They have been carried into Babylon.

And some religious voices were telling them what desperate people always want to hear.

This will be over soon.

God will fix this.

Everything will go back to normal.

Jeremiah tells them something harder.

No.

You are going to be here awhile.

Build houses.

Plant gardens.

Raise your families.

Seek the welfare of the place where you live.

And then, in the middle of exile, comes the promise we heard today.

“You will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.”

“You will seek me and find me.”

“I will restore you.”

Notice where God speaks the promise.

Not after Babylon.

In Babylon.

God does not say there will be no exile.

God says exile will not have the final word.

That matters.

Because a lot of us were handed a version of Christianity that suggested if we prayed enough, believed enough, served enough, gave enough, then somehow the worst things in life would pass around our house.

Scripture never promises us that.

Jeremiah does not.

Paul does not.

Jesus does not.

The saints do not.

Faith does not keep us from suffering.

Faith teaches us how to live while suffering is present.

There is a difference.

Some of us have spent years waiting for life to return to normal.

Maybe you know what I mean.

I will start living when the grief gets easier.

I will breathe when the finances settle down.

I will be happy when the family situation gets resolved.

I will serve when I feel stronger.

I will trust again when the Church stops hurting people.

I will hope again when I know what comes next.

Jeremiah says something different.

Plant the garden now.

Love people now.

Build something now.

Pray now.

Live now.

Not because everything is fine.

Because God is still God even here.

That is not denial.

That is hope.

## Hope from the Depths

Then Psalm 130 takes us somewhere deeper.

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.”

I love the honesty of that.

The psalmist does not clean himself up before praying.

He does not pretend.

He does not say, “Everything is wonderful because I have faith.”

He says,

I am in the depths.

God, hear me from here.

That prayer is enough.

We have done people damage in the Church by teaching them to perform hope.

Someone is grieving and we tell them God needed another angel.

Someone is suffering and we tell them everything happens for a reason.

Someone is scared and we tell them they need more faith.

Someone is angry and we rush them toward forgiveness before we have even listened to what happened.

Sometimes we are so uncomfortable with another person's pain that we try to talk them out of feeling it.

The Psalms refuse to do that.

Scripture gives us permission to cry from the depths.

To lament.

To question.

To grieve.

To say, “God, where are you?”

And still be faithful.

Hope is not pretending the darkness is light.

Hope is trusting the darkness is not permanent.

The psalmist says,

“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits.”

And then,

“My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning.”

Think about the watchman.

The watchman cannot make morning come.

He cannot pull the sun over the horizon.

He cannot shorten the night.

His task is to stay awake.

To watch.

To trust the morning will come.

Some nights are long.

Some seasons are long.

Some prayers take a long time before we understand what God is doing.

Sometimes we never fully understand.

But the Christian life is not built on our ability to control the sunrise.

It is built on our trust that morning belongs to God.

Julian of Norwich lived through disease, political unrest, suffering and death.

She knew something about long nights.

And still she wrote those words Christians have carried for centuries.

“All shall be well.”

She was not naive.

She was not saying everything around her was well.

She was saying the love of God reaches beyond everything presently wrong.

That is different.

## Creation Groans and We Groan With It

Then Paul takes us even further.

He says creation itself is groaning.

Not only us.

Creation.

The whole thing.

And I think we understand that image better than we sometimes admit.

Especially here.

We live in the desert.

By the end of August, we know something about creation groaning.

The heat has worn people down.

Electric bills have stretched family budgets.

People who work outside carry the heat in their bodies.

People without stable housing face conditions that are not merely uncomfortable but dangerous.

Families across this Valley are trying to make ordinary things work.

Rent.

Groceries.

Utilities.

Childcare.

Gas.

Medicine.

One unexpected expense becomes a crisis.

And all around us, people are tired.

Some are tired physically.

Some financially.

Some emotionally.

Some spiritually.

There is a lot of groaning.

And then we look beyond our own city.

Wars continue.

People are displaced.

Families are hungry.

Communities live with violence.

Creation bears the wounds of what humanity has done to it.

People are frightened about the future.

Others are exhausted by the present.

Paul does not deny any of it.

He gives the groaning a name.

Labor pains.

That changes the image.

There is pain that only destroys.

But there is also pain connected to something being born.

Paul says creation is groaning because something is coming.

Something is being made new.

We do not see it fully yet.

That is why he says,

“In hope we were saved.”

And then,

“Hope that is seen is not hope.”

Of course not.

If I already have the thing in my hand, I do not need hope.

Hope lives in the space between promise and fulfillment.

That is the hard part.

We are people who live between resurrection and resurrection.

Christ is risen.

We say it.

We sing it.

We build our entire faith around it.

And still people die.

Still bodies get sick.

Still injustice happens.

Still violence happens.

Still people hurt one another.

Still creation groans.

So we live between what God has already done in Christ and what God has promised to finish.

That space has a name.

Hope.

And hope is not passive.

This matters.

Sometimes Christians talk about hope as if our job is to stand around waiting for God to clean everything up.

That is not the Gospel.

If we believe God is making all things new, then we start living now like new creation is real.

If we believe peace is coming, we practice peace.

If we believe justice belongs to God, we do justice.

If we believe reconciliation is part of God's future, we become people who reconcile.

If we believe every person bears the image of God, then we defend people whose dignity is denied.

If we believe creation belongs to God, we care for it.

If we believe death does not win, then we stop letting fear make our decisions.

Hope gets its hands dirty.

St. Óscar Romero understood this.

He ministered in a country marked by violence, poverty and oppression.

He knew speaking clearly would cost him.

He knew silence would be safer.

Eventually, he was killed.

And still he preached.

Still he called the Church to stand with the poor.

Still he told the truth.

That is hope.

Hope is not believing nobody will hurt you.

Hope is knowing fear does not get to own you.

## The Metanoia of Hope

And here is where this becomes Metanoia.

Because hope asks something from us.

Metanoia means turning.

Changing direction.

Changing our mind.

Changing how we live.

And maybe the repentance required of us today is not turning from sadness.

Sadness is not sin.

Grief is not sin.

Fear itself is not sin.

Sometimes life hurts.

Sometimes people are exhausted.

Sometimes despair comes close because somebody has carried too much for too long.

We need to be careful before judging people for that.

But there is another thing.

Cynicism.

Cynicism feels wiser than hope.

It feels sophisticated.

It tells us we have seen too much to believe anything will change.

It tells us people never change.

Institutions never change.

The Church never changes.

The world never changes.

Nothing matters.

Why bother?

And if we live there long enough, cynicism begins to protect itself.

We stop expecting goodness because disappointment hurts less when you expect nothing.

We stop serving because somebody else should do it.

We stop speaking because nobody listens anyway.

We stop trying because the problem is too large.

We call it realism.

Sometimes it is resignation.

Metanoia asks us to turn from that.

Not toward naivety.

Toward hope.

Hope says I see what is wrong.

I am not pretending.

And I am still going to participate in what is right.

Hope says the problem is bigger than me.

And I will still do my part.

Hope says I cannot heal the whole world.

But I can feed this person.

I can make this phone call.

I can tell the truth here.

I can forgive here.

I can protect someone here.

I can refuse cruelty here.

I can build something here.

I can plant something here.

That is repentance from cynicism.

And some of us need it.

## Keep Awake

Then we come to Jesus.

Mark 13 is not a comfortable Gospel.

The sun darkens.

The moon gives no light.

The stars fall.

The powers are shaken.

Jesus speaks about the Son of Man coming in glory.

And then he says,

Keep awake.

That is the command.

Stay awake.

Every generation seems to read passages like this and decide Jesus must be talking about them.

People make charts.

They calculate dates.

They identify political leaders with biblical figures.

They look at wars, earthquakes and elections and announce that they have finally solved the mystery.

Jesus specifically tells us we do not know the day or hour.

So perhaps the point is not figuring out when.

Perhaps the point is learning how to live until then.

Keep awake.

Do not let cruelty become normal.

Keep awake.

Do not let suffering become background noise.

Keep awake.

Do not let politics teach you who is worthy of love.

Keep awake.

Do not let the Church become so concerned with protecting itself that it forgets the Gospel.

Keep awake.

Do not let disappointment turn into cynicism.

Keep awake.

Do not let fear make you cruel.

Keep awake.

Do not let exhaustion convince you nothing matters.

That is where hope becomes work.

And I need to say something here about our particular calling as Convergent Catholics.

We talk a lot about convergence.

Scripture.

Tradition.

Reason.

Experience.

East and West.

Sacrament and Spirit.

Ancient faith meeting the world as it exists now.

But convergence is not about collecting traditions because we like beautiful liturgy.

It is not about creating one more corner of Christianity where people feel comfortable.

We exist because we believe the ancient faith still has something to say to a wounded world.

And if our faith does not produce hope for people who have been pushed to the margins, then we are doing something wrong.

If our Eucharist does not send us toward the hungry, something is wrong.

If our prayers do not make us more attentive to suffering, something is wrong.

If our theology makes us more certain but less loving, something is wrong.

If our tradition teaches us to protect institutions before people, something is wrong.

Hope has to become flesh.

Otherwise it is only a word.

The world does not need Christians who predict the end.

The world needs Christians who live like resurrection is true.

People need to see communities where enemies learn to sit at the same table.

Where people who have been rejected find a home.

Where questions are not treated as rebellion.

Where grief does not frighten us.

Where people do not need to pretend they have everything together.

Where justice matters.

Where mercy matters.

Where truth matters.

Where the poor matter.

Where the lonely matter.

Where the wounded matter.

Where the stranger matters.

Where every person who walks through the door is treated as someone bearing the image of God.

That is hope made visible.

## The Work Before Us

And so this week I want to give us three things to do.

Nothing complicated.

### 1. Name the place where you are waiting.

Do not dress it up.

Where are you waiting for morning?

Where are you tired?

Where are you uncertain?

Where have you been trying to control something you cannot control?

Name it before God.

Pray Psalm 130 if you need words.

“Out of the depths I cry to you.”

Start there.

### 2. Plant something in Babylon.

I do not mean literally, unless gardening is your thing.

Do something faithful before the situation changes.

Call the person.

Feed somebody.

Apologize.

Volunteer.

Give.

Rest.

Write the letter.

Show up.

Tell the truth.

Forgive where forgiveness is possible.

Set the boundary where a boundary is needed.

Check on somebody who is struggling in this heat.

Help somebody whose budget has been stretched beyond what they can manage.

Pay attention to the person the rest of the world passes by.

Take one concrete action that says,

I still believe God is at work here.

### 3. Stay awake.

Pay attention this week.

Pay attention to the person who is being ignored.

Pay attention to the moment when cynicism starts speaking louder than faith.

Pay attention to the opportunity to choose mercy.

Pay attention to where God is already bringing life out of something you thought was dead.

Keep awake.

## Even While It Is Still Dark

Beloved, hope does not mean we know what happens next.

Jeremiah did not.

The psalmist did not.

Paul did not.

The disciples did not.

We do not.

Hope means we know who holds what happens next.

We have seen enough of God to keep walking.

We have seen God bring people home from exile.

We have seen morning come after long nights.

We have seen life come out of graves.

We have seen frightened disciples become apostles.

We have seen broken people become saints.

We have seen the Church fail terribly and still watched the Spirit raise up people who called it back toward Jesus.

And some of us have lived long enough to look back at things we once thought would destroy us and realize they did not get the final word.

So we wait.

But we do not wait helplessly.

We pray.

We work.

We love.

We resist despair.

We turn away from cynicism.

We stay awake.

We plant gardens in exile.

We cry from the depths.

We groan with creation.

We keep watch for morning.

Because Christ has died.

Christ is risen.

Christ will come again.

And until all things are made new, we will live as people who believe the morning is coming.

Even while it is still dark.

Amen.