A stout and burly trust

Picture this scene.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
sits by himself in an anteroom
with his head in his hands
knowing that assassins
are prowling the perimeter of his life.

Even so he must go forth into that hot, steamy
church filled cheek-to-jowl with other frightened,
angry, and desperate faces
seeking hope
upon which to hang their lives.

He already knows
what it is like to be near death
because he was stabbed
by an attacker’s knife
with the blade
a sneeze away
from rupturing his aorta.

Death threats were daily fare for him,
and the FBI, that could be counted upon
to protect a white minister,
seemed as menacing as the anonymous threats.
But the crowds were getting bigger and bigger
and the agitation toward violence
greater and greater.
Surely, looking down that dark tunnel
made it more difficult to preach.

When finally he left the darkness
within himself,
and stepped into that pulpit
to preach that night,
he did not ask “Why?”

Instead, he fell back
upon the solid wall
he always leaned against
in such dark moments: Isaiah.

At least, that is how I imagine it
because I also lean on Isaiah
when the sky is gray
and the light too thin
to shine.

At the Lincoln monument, for example,
King’s famous “I have a dream…” speech,
rang out with a resonance
that eventually
changed a nation.
He preached those dreams
riffing on Isaiah’s words.

Then, the day before he was assassinated,
King left the relative safety of Atlanta
to help sanitation workers in Memphis.
He did so against dire warnings from his colleagues.
He did so to help sanitation workers
because no one else was going to do it.

What we know now,
with the publication of his diaries and those
of his family and friends,
is that he was terribly afraid.
He awoke many a night in a sweat,
knowing that at the dark edges of his life
lurked a hatred that would kill him.
Even so, at his last public appearance —
“the night before he died for us”
as we say about Jesus — he preached Isaiah.

He preached that mountaintop again,
in a sermon that has no equal
in the annals of American history —
except maybe the Gettysburg Address.

He said he would not get there with us,
but that he had looked over the mountain top
and seen into the promise land.

In the midst of darkness Rev. King preached hope.

He preached Isaiah.

So let’s go back to Isaiah,
the poet who fueled Martin Luther King, jr.,
and who burns like a candle in the darkness
across millennia and lives —
a light that has not been extinguished
even now.

Isaiah lived in a very hazardous time.

The Northern Kingdom of Israel
had already been annexed by the Assyrian Empire,
and Judah,
where Jerusalem was situated,
had to pay bribes to the Assyrian Emperor
to keep from being crushed.
The King of Judah
and power elite of Jerusalem
did whatever dark deed
was required by the Assyrians
in order to keep from being gobbled up by them.

Through Isaiah’s prophetic eyes,
like the ones that the Rev. King inherited,
Isaiah could see
more than the obvious
which is all others around him saw.

Indeed, he saw the horrendous injustice
of his society.

He saw that the national and religious leaders
lived a far distance
from the values and spirituality
they publicly espoused
and said they cherished.

He saw the deathly disparities
in wealth,
and an economy
based upon violence and war.

He could even see
the grim mayhem
waving unseen by his colleagues on the horizon.
It was a time not unlike our own…

Isaiah foresaw
a time of national disaster
when everyone,
from the highest religious leaders
to the King,
would groan in despair
and question “Why?
“Where is our God now?” they would groan.
Isaiah had no answer
for the injustices he saw.

He had no answer
for the fact that God,
supposedly a God of justice and mercy,
was negligent.

He had no answer
for what seemed like God’s utter neglect
of those who were most vulnerable
and who had to miserably fend for themselves.

He had no answer
for why bad things happened to good people
and why so many bad people
got away with so much bad.

Isaiah had no answer for any of it.

The prophet who could see
the present disaster
that everyone else seemed blind to — or denied.

But even so, he had no answer
for it.
Isaiah could see the moment
but he could also see
the other side of the moment.

Like the Rev. King,
Isaiah could see
what had brought them
to that moment;
and he could see both the moment
AND the light-gilded edge on the other side
of the mountain top.

But for what lay in between
Isaiah had no answer.
Isaiah could only hold hope — relentless hope.
Even without an answer
for what would come next
he held onto what we could call trust.
A very stout and burly trust.

The reason it requires trust
is that we see too little to answer
the “Why” questions.
In fact, we don’t even know if there is an answer.

We see too little,
we know too little,
we think too small.
In the absence of better knowledge,
in the presence of such a severe gap
between what we want to know and our answers,
we can only trust — or,
we can pretend;
make things up;
fantasize — or,
we can become cynical and angry.

It is a trinity of options:
trust,
pretend,
or become bitter.

To trust God means
to make hope our default setting,
the way Isaiah and Martin Luther King did.
It is the simplest of the three options:
put one foot in front of the other
and keep walking
toward the mountain.

The season of Advent
is a little trick
the Church uses to remind us
that we do not get to know
the answers to the questions
that agitate us most.

We do not get to know
why war persists.

We do not get to know
why humans beings,
with all the evidence to the contrary,
continue to organize
our economies and our societies
around such self-defeating behavior
as greed, lust, and coercion.

We do not get to know
when peace will arrive.

We do not get to know

if we will really and truly do what it takes
to minimize climate change —
only that the following generations
will get to know.

We do not get to know
answers to problems, dilemmas, and conflicts
that make us crazy.
We only get to know
our own efforts
to care for
and respect other people.

The most we can do is trust
and hold hope.

You see, Advent is an exercise
in holding hope
and practicing trust.

We always live in an in-between time.
Always the in-between.
While the most visionary among us
may be able to see the edges of the future,
we do not get to know.
But we do get to choose
which will guide us:
denial, bitterness, or trust.

Welcome back to Advent, an exercise in practicing trust.