Feb. 9, 2003
Keeping Hope Alive
Isaiah 40 : 21-23
I Corinthians 9: 16-23
Kathleen Norris in her book, Dakota, writes about the experience
of moving from New York City to the place where two generations of her
family have lived before her. She says, “Most
visitors to Dakota travel on interstate highways that will take them as
quickly as possible through the region, past our larger cities to such
attractions as the Badlands and the Black Hills. Looking at the expanse
of land in between, they may wonder why a person would choose to live
in such a barren place, let alone love it.” Norris compares herself to the 4th century monks who
moved to the deserts of Egypt, who made a counter-cultural choice to
live in what the rest of the world considers a barren waste. What she
found was a land full of stark contrasts, of blizzards and hot summer
days, and that the so-called emptiness of the Plains is full of such
miraculous “little things”, The way native grasses spring
back from a drought, greening before your eyes; the way a snowy owl
sits on a fence post, or a golden eagle hunts, wings outstretched over
grassland that seems to go on forever.
There are times in our lives that we find ourselves
feeling barren, times when we feel wiped out, burned out, or even at
the end of our ropes. We may feel we have no more to give, that our
energy is depleted, our efforts have yielded no results. In those times
it is important to know that in the desert time of our lives, we can
find life if we just look for them. Isaiah knew this truth as he
addressed a nation who have felt abandoned by God. It is hard for us to
get our minds around what it must of been like to live in exile. We
only have our imaginations to feel like what it must feel like to have
our whole nation conquered, broken apart, scattered throughout the
globe, and forced to follow the customs and laws of people we consider
our enemy. We would have to imagine what it would be like to hear about
the symbols of our nation, like the Declaration of Independence, Mount
Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty, all torn apart, and destroyed. Maybe
if we could imagine these events we could sense what the exiles must of
felt, weary, powerless, exhausted, faint. But in contrast, God is
tireless, never faint or weak, never lacking in energy or vitality. The
non-fainting God ministers to fainting creation.God is indeed exactly
what exiles need. Thus the best and only hope of the exiles was to stay
close to Yahweh, who could do for them what was needed that they could
not do for themselves.
There is an American folk ballad with the lyrics, Let the Midnight Special shine her light on me; Let the
Midnight Special shine her ever-loving’ light on me. The legendary Midnight Special recounted in this ballad
was the Golden Gate Limited that pulled out of the Southern Pacific
Depot at Houston Texas, at midnight, headed for San Francisco. About
thirty miles down the line, its “ever-loving light” would
shine through the barred windows of the Texas State Prison farm at
Sugarland. The prisoners, lying awake in their cells, sent their dreams
of freedom along with the train. According to the legend, if the light
shined in your cell one night, it was a favorable omen that you would
soon be set free. (Alive Now, Jan Feb. 1982.
These prisoners found a way of keeping their hope
alive, because they wanted freedom so much. Even when confined to a
prison cell, they found a way to stay close to Hope. God is the creator
and giver of life, and the text from Isaiah reminds us that God does
not abandon us, is faithful to our freedom from oppression and sin --
once we hope in the Lord we will find strength. The key is staying
close to God, to find hope even in the most barren circumstances of
life.
Kathleen Norris, talks about her experience of her
service to the public as an artist in residence for the North Dakota
Arts Council, a job that took her to schools in small towns throughout
the state. She talks about the constantly “surprising
encounters with children and the great treasure of their writing ...
but ... I have to leave my home for weeks at a time, usually traveling
two hundred miles or more to a town. There in a motel, it’s often
on its last legs, with a rusty tin shower stall and a paper bath mat,
and a pay phone in the parking lot. There’s usually one cafe in
town where I can get breakfast and dinner, though it closes at 6:30 pm.
Worse yet, in more ‘civilized’ areas I might get a motel
room with red and black flocked velvet wallpaper, making me feel as if
I have stumbled into a New Orleans bordello in which I must somehow
feel at home for the next two weeks. The grim surroundings used to
overwhelm me, and it was only when I began to apply what I had learned
from the monks I was reading about that I found I could flourish there.
I began to see those forlorn motel rooms as monk’s cells, full of
the gifts of silence and solitude ... I found I could knit, work on my
writing and do serious reading, in short, be in the desert and let it
bloom” (p. 21-22 Dakota)
The Apostle Paul found himself in a different kind
of desert when it came to Corinth. This city was devoid of a deeply
rooted spiritual practices. It was said of Corinth, that if you could
plant a church there, you could plant a church anywhere. All through
the book Paul gives his followers in this challenging community
instructions on how to be a Christian, how to offer the life giving
water of Christ. In today’s text Paul’s words threaten our
comfort level. How dare he suggest that we need to become slaves to no
one so that we are slaves to all! Specifically, Paul is addressing the
right of an apostle to receive monetary support from the people being
served.
Putting these words in context of today we might
compare how pastors are hired by the communities they serve. In some
denominations, the pastor is hired directly by the congregation. In the
Methodist system, a pastor is interviewed by a local church and is
accountable to the local church, as well as to the Bishop and the
District Superintendents. We pastors are employees in the sense that
each local church is asked to fairly compensate the pastor for their
work. And the role of the local church is important, because they can
provide the feedback to the pastor as to their effectiveness as a
pastor. In accordance with Paul, in either system, what is important is
to maintain the focus of the work of the church and their pastors on
the gospel, keeping themselves and others close to the Good News of
Jesus Christ and the Hope of God. This may mean we all need to give up
freedom in order to serve God and to spread the Good News. It might
mean giving of a portion of our hard-earned cash to the ministries of
the church, it might mean giving up our time for the service of the
Lord, time and money we could use for other more pleasurable pursuits.
But as Jesus promises, those who lose their lives for the sake of the
gospel will find them. As one writer put it, “The “land of
the free” is the promise; the “home of the brave” is
the cost. If our land is to be free and whole, then there is a cost --
the cost of bravery, the cost of sacrifice. If it can be right in some
instances to give up one’s life for one’s country, then how
much more right can it be to sometimes give up one’s reputation
for the church, or to give up one’s career for the church, or to
give up one’s life for God?
The 1995 movie Braveheart
is the story of William Wallace, a Scottish
common man who fought for his country’s freedom from English rule
in the 13th century. Wallace led an uprising against the cruel English
ruler Edward the Longshanks, who wanted the crown of Scotland for
himself. In the end, Wallace was martyred for the freedom cause. In his
final moments of life, as he lay on the executioner’s bench,
Wallace was tortured horribly. He could have ended the torment by
saying the word peace, indicating his acquiescence to Edward’s
ambitions. Instead, Wallace yelled, Freedom! Watching the torture being
inflicted left many viewers with a sense of wonder and awe that a
person could hold on to his principles in the face of such pain. I
wonder, can we all hold onto our faith, can we say we have given
ourselves completely to a God who gives all that we will ever need?
Amen
