False-hope, Despair, and…

Hope from the bottom of Pandora’s box

No Nabobs of Negativity

When I saw these readings for today
I had a hunch
that turned out to be right.

The fifth Sunday of Lent 2020,
which was the last time in the Lectionary
this grouping of readings came together,
was the second Sunday of the shut-down
when we started to realize
it could be awhile
before we worshiped together again.
We had no idea in that moment
how bad
or how long
or how truly dangerous
the pandemic was going to be.
We had never known
a pandemic or shut-down before.

Nothing was clear
and nothing seemed safe.
Remember?

Just two weeks prior
Katy and I moved into our downsized
net-zero solar home
never suspecting
that she would be teaching from there
at the same time I would be writing from there.
That’s when I made an office for myself
here at Trinity Place.

Just as an aside,
because it is important to step back
and reflect sometimes,
I think we did pretty good
as a congregation
navigating the shut-down and beyond.
The diocese recognized us
with a grant
because we were one of the few
congregations
that grew its outreach
at that time.
So people across the diocese
were encouraged to donate to us
and a congregation in Rochester.

But first we had drive-thru palms in the rain.

Then we had drive-thru communion
and then we had lawn chair communion
and then finally we had tent communion.

We had zoom coffee hour
in which people reported
getting to know one another better
than in-person coffee hour.

And we started up the Wednesday Noon Zoom
book study that continues today
and has picked up two people not a part
of the worshiping congregation
as regulars.

And finally, like so many other
congregations did, we went online.
We did it a little differently —
making meditative worship videos
thanks to Lisa,
and thus created another form
of the Trinity Place community
in which anywhere from 120
to 220 people join us each week.
Some of those folks have sent in donations
to support what we do. (Thank you.)

Our pledges didn’t even really fall off
unlike a lot of congregations.
Unfortunately, our expenses didn’t either
they just shifted to adjust to the new reality.

But standing on this side of March 2020,
on the first Sunday we are mask-optional
three years later,
it is good to be reminded
of how we did.

We did well. Thank you, everyone.

But also looking back
there was a lot of despair and false hope
filling the space around us.
And that is the miasma
Ezekiel is trying to penetrate
with his valley of dry bones prophecy.

You see, false-hope
knows the way to go.
False-hope has a vision
of how it is supposed to look
when the world is as it should be,
and it has a variety of
ideologies,
and theologies,
and prototypes
that spell out
exactly how to get there.
Just look on Amazon
where you can buy thousands of book
hawking false-hope.
But that leads to despair.

Because every false-hope
sooner or later
disintegrates into ashes
and when it does
it is replaced by despair.

And despair
is such a barren ground —
a damp pall
heavy
and suffocating
and hopeless.

False-hope and wishful thinking
always turn sour
and then we are left
with despair.

So Ezekiel
points the way to authentic hope,
and unintentionally, that
has also become a kind of
subliminal theme
in this year’s Lenten preaching.

But let’s begin with Ezekiel.

You may remember this
because I have shared it before,
it was in the first fifteen years
of Israel’s captivity in Babylon.

It was a time of deep
and pervasive darkness
for those who had once known
sovereignty
and faith
and a sterling confidence
in the future.

Suddenly the nation had been eliminated
by the colossus Babylonian Empire,
swallowed whole through the teeth of a Leviathan,
leaving them bloody and torn.

The last of the David kings –
the royal linage
promised by God
to the people of Israel —
was now shackled in a prison
in a far away and foreign land.

The Temple in Jerusalem
which they believed
was the vessel for the Holy of Holies
and that was built upon the promise
that God would always,
always
dwell there,
was now a rubble of broken stones.

The city of Jerusalem –
the Holy City
on the Holy Hill
that was promised
to be a beacon of light
to the entire world,
was now smoldering ashes.

The land –
the once PROMISED land
given to Abraham
delivered to Moses
taken by Joshua
divided because of Solomon –
was now taken
and owned
by an evil empire.

The exiles looked
and all they could see
were their bones —
the skeletal remains
of all those promises
made by God.

Bitterly they asked,
“Where is God now?”

Was the promise betrayed?
Was it all over?
Had they misunderstood?
Had it been a delusion?
Was it time to abandon their faith
and their hope,
and the faith
and the hope of their ancestors,
and instead
embrace the gods of Babylon?

And then Ezekiel whispers his vision.
The little, lonesome voice
of Ezekiel,
a poet of small consequence, speaks.
He sees a valley of dry bones.
They are right there
as if he could reach out and touch them.

He looks and he sees
the piles of shoes
and suitcases
at the National Holocaust museum.

He looks at the skeletal remains
of Native American genocide
publicly displayed behind museum glass
for all to view.

He looks at the ragged nooses
and blurry photos of thousands of lynchings
at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice
in Montgomery.

And God asks Ezekiel: “Mortal, can these bones live?”

Well, the exiles, they say, “No.”
Martha and Mary say, “No.”
The voice of reason and rationality
in our own little heads say, “No.”

Three years ago
standing on the other side
of a video camera,
I asked you:
”Can these bones live?”

I said then
that we were looking at the world
with exiled eyes.
We were those exiles,
still in our homes
but exiled from our lives –
from our communities
from our families
from our hopes and dreams.

“Mortal, can these bones live?”
That is the very moment
when false-hope or wishful thinking
is most dangerous.

Cynicism, that nabob of negativity,
will of course, say, “No.”
But False-hope
stubbornly answers, “Yes!”
and then, as I said, purports
to know exactly which way to go.
Such hope is rooted
in the way “we want things to be”
while authentic hope
is rooted in trust
”even without knowing how things will be.”

Authentic hope has a radical faith
that answers the way Ezekiel did: “O God, you know.”

It is not “no”
and it is not “yes” –
it is, “O God, you know.”
“I do not know if these bones can live
but you, O God, know,
and I am sticking with you.”

Authentic hope
and radical faith
do not predict the outcome
nor do they have a comprehensive program
or how-to book
that will get us to the promised solution.

Authentic hope
and radical faith
places its tiny hand
into the hand of a power greater than ourselves
and walks forward.

Authentic hope
and radical faith
places its hand into the hand of Go
and moves forward WITHOUT the answer
AND – this is important –
without despair
even though there may be fear
in the absence of knowledge and control.

We understand that faith
is often hawked as something else these days,
something we are supposed to get something for –
as in happiness,
the blessing of riches
or eternal life.

And Hope is often sold these days,
as trust in a solution
that will make everything turn out okay –
hope painted in the happy sounds
and comfortable images of a Disney ending.

But Ezekiel has a very different take on hope.
He tells those people
who had endured more violence,
suffering, and pain
than any of us will likely ever know,
“Trust God. Just trust God.”

Do not put your trust
in your current grief and despair, he says,
as if your despair is the proper punctuation
at the end of the world.

Do no put your trust in economic blueprints, he says,
or in political ideologies,
campaign promises,
or religions that promise paradise.
Hope is not a whitewash of wishful thinking
over your current struggles, he says.

Do not put your trust
in yourself, he says,
as if you can escape the present moment
and live on your own
in some hidden valley
where you’ll get along just fine
without the rest of the world.
The world is too small, he says,
and the chaos too pervasive.

Trust God, he says,
and if we trust God
our trust will be our hope.
Get it?
Our trust will be our hope.

Again, it is not
a trust that God will do
a particular thing.
That is false hope.

Rather, that we trust God
is a lover –
a lover of our souls,
and therefore,
whatever may happen
it will have meaning
and purpose
even if we
never get to finally understand
what it was all about or how it turned out.

The trust being commended to us here,
is the trust that Moses
and Isaiah
and Ezekiel
and Dr. King
and Mother Teresa –
just to name drop a few –
what they had when they realized
they may not get to the other side.

But they knew,
because they trusted God,
there is another side.

It is the trust
that Jesus had when he entered Jerusalem
knowing he could not face down the Roman Empire,
but he knew
there was another side
even if he could not see the other side.

All those folks,
and almost all the people we claim to admire,
did not hope for something in particular,
they trusted in God as their hope
and that gave them courage
and strength
and peace
even in the midst of chaos.

“O God, you know.”
It is not “no”
and it is not “yes” –
it is “I don’t get to know,
but you, O God, know.”

Every single one of us here,
both individually
and collectively,
face a valley of dry bones.
It may be in our past
or it may be coming to us in the future —
perhaps yours is right in this moment.

As we face that valley
we will be afraid
and we will feel alone.
That is a fact.
God’s question comes to us
in such moments,
”Mortal, can these bones live?
The answer is not “yes”
and it is not “no.”

The answer is, “O God, you know.”
An answer
given with a gut-deep tenacity
to trust God
and to trust that God
is a lover of souls —
yours
and mine.