NOTES ON GROWING A COMPASSIONATE SOUL: Unsentimental Hope

NOTES ON GROWING A COMPASSIONATE SOUL: Unsentimental Hope

This morning I want to speak with you about hope: back in March when I started doing these live streaming reflections, I sensed that while there was not a lot I could do about the contagion except wear a mask, stay at home, practice social distancing and say my prayers, I could offer a measure of quiet and tender words of encouragement for 21st century adults with a spiritual heart. So, what began as a small online offering of consolation has matured into a still small consideration of how we might move through these perplexing days together albeit apart simply, sincerely, and with solidarity. I like the way Christine Valters Paintner puts it when she says that to be: “A monk in the world means to live slowly in a fast-paced culture, to treasure the gift of 'being' in a world that says my value comes from 'doing,' to linger over life's moments and recognize that what I seek most deeply is already here waiting to be revealed."

That is why I want to speak with you about hope as an act of subversive imagination; hope as prophetic tenderness born of God’s steadfast love within our strong, fragile and often broken lives; and, hope as a conscious conviction to incarnate compassion and clarity into our ordinary, walking around, every day existence. Maya Angelou speaks of authentic, adult hope when she sings

Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops, weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I’ll rise.

In this season of contagion and political reckoning, when a mature and honest hope free from magical thinking, naivete, and judgment, might serve as our North Star, some of us are stumped. You see, for many hope has been given a bad name – and for good reason. Some speak of hope in snappy, sappy, pastel bromides of feel-good religiosity that refuses to acknowledge the place suffering, experience, confusion, lament, and grief play in a healthy spirituality. Others wield hope as a bludgeon to silence our hard questions concerning the complexities of living into the Beloved Community. These privileged but often untested warriors of hope, like their New Age allies, would have us believe that the troubles of the world live on fundamentally because we don’t try hard enough. Small wonder the early church called out such self-absorbed moral and political illiteracy as heresy. For without the wisdom, patience, and humility to grasp the difference between what can and cannot be changed, the peace of the Lord eludes us forever. I like the way Brené Brown puts it: “All I know is that my life is better when I assume that people are doing their best. It keeps me out of judgment and lets me focus on what is, and not what should or could be.”

I think back to the time one of our daughter’s returned home from a regional church youth event wailing: “Dad, I can never do that ever again – all that shiny, bouncy, happy Jesus talk that denies the reality of pain and fear – just makes me want to ralph!” Me, too. Her confession called to mind the time I had to go before a panel of seasoned pastors and educators in anticipation of my ordination. My assignment was to articulate the core of my theological convictions – how I talked about my experiential and intellectual connections to the holy as revealed in Jesus – which I thought I did with verve, poetry, and enthusiasm. After all, I was the co-chair of our student body – an earnest, straight, white, bourgeois, male liberation theology student from Union Theological Seminary in NYC – who had studied in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, organized with Cesar Chavez and the farm workers, gone to Mississippi to organize pulp woodcutters, did get out the vote work in Watts for Jimmy Carter, and could quote Marx and Gustavo Gutierrez chapter and verse. Man, I was at the top of my self-important grad school game when an old pastor from Hungary asked me: “Mr. Lumsden, what is your understanding of sin?”

He took me completely by surprise: in my privileged activism, I was certain I had a monopoly on ways to solve the woes of the world. So, I verbally fumbled around a bit trying to bluff my way through this query, until this seasoned survivor of both WWII and Eastern European Stalinism said pointedly: “Sir, your theological anthropology is woefully inadequate. Before I can in good conscience support your ordination into the way of Jesus and his Cross I need to know that you can dig deeper.” Woah – talk about a smack-down. But… he was right – I needed to be humbled having NO idea what a theological anthropology even meant – and I’ve been working on his assignment to go deeper into the foolish blessing of the Cross ever since. In that time I have come to see how zealous, privileged liberals who self-righteously dismiss those who disagree with us are just as destructive to authentic hope as the shiny, bouncy, pastel Jesus people with no connection to the Cross. The Reverend Dr. Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament professor emeritus at Columbia Theological Seminary and wise, old man extraordinaire, is on the money when he writes:

Hope, on one hand, is an absurdity too embarrassing to speak about, for it flies in the face of all those claims we have been told are facts. Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion; and one does that only at great political and existential risk. On the other hand, hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretention of the present, daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now being called into question (by the holy!) (Hope is, therefore, in our tradition) the decision to which God invites ancient Israel, a decision against despair, against permanent consignment to chaos, oppression, barrenness and exile.

I rather like the insights of Pope Francis, too. Born Jorge Mario Bergolio in Buenos Aires, Argentina this Jesuit priest with advanced degrees in philosophy and chemistry who lived through his nation’s fascism in the 70ès wants us know that hope has been woven into the tapestry of creation by God.

Rivers do not drink their own water, trees do not eat their own fruit, the sun does not shine on itself nor do flowers spread their fragrance for themselves. No, living for others is a rule of nature. We are all created to help one another. So, no matter how difficult life becomes… goodness is built into it all for your happiness. Life is good when you are happy, but so much better when others are happy because of you.

There are three different but inter-related insights about hope I have come to trust from within the Judeo-Christian tradition that I want to share with you as my take on why I hold fast to hope like Langston Hughes did dreams in his poem: Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go, life is a barren field frozen with snow.

In our culture and context, hope has become more of a vague feeling of anticipation than a spiritual practice rooted in trust, patience, and a counter-cultural character – and herein lies the problem. Contemporary Western Christianity – and to a lesser extent other spiritual traditions in the West – has lost its counter-cultural identity. In what may be his life’s work, Walter Brueggemann writes that the distilled purpose of Torah – the redacted insights of Moses and the commitments of Sinai summarized in the Ten Commandments – is to offer Jews a script for living as a displaced people. Those who have been exiled “need a place from which to validate a theologically informed peculiar sense of identity and practice of life. The traditioning process that produced Torah” Brueggemann notes trained God’s people in the practice of wonder and waiting, gratitude, grace and justice in ways that stood in vivid contrast “to the dominant culture of empire” that skillfully destroys distinctiveness with conformity while replacing the paradoxical dance of celebration and lament with complacency, busyness and anxiety. Brueggemann carefully concludes:

Torah, in its final, normative form, is an act of faithful imagination that buoyantly and defiantly mediates a counterworld (to the status quo) that is a wondrous, demanding alternative… The world visibly and immediately at hand is characteristically a world that has no patience with Jews nor with the God of the Jews, that has no tolerance for wonder when the world can be managed, no appreciation for gratitude when the world can be taken and owned in self-sufficiency, and certainly no readiness for obedience when the world is known to be an arena of autonomy… It has been a characteristic of Jewish teaching, nurture, and socialization to invite the young into the world of miracle and to resist assimilation… and only recently have alert Christians begun to notice that the challenge that has always been before Jews is now a fresh challenge to us as well… The liberal Christian temptation is to accommodate dominant culture until faith despairs. The conservative Christian temptation is to fashion an absoluteness that stands disconnected from the dominant culture… but neither sustains the community in its mission to love and heal the world.

Like Brother Brueggemann, I too believe that a renewal of a peculiar, counter-cultural identity for those committed to the way of Jesus is the key to unlocking the beauty and promise of authentic hope. And what I find as I wade through the competing and often complex stories, poems, songs, and narratives of the Hebrew Bible is a practice that integrates expectant waiting and imaginative trust as the core of faith both personal and collective. Biblical scholars and theologians are clear that there is no SINGLE word for hope in the Hebrew Bible. The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament tells us that, “There is a “highly differentiated cluster of linguistic tools” used by the authors of the Hebrew Bible to speak to the concept we call “hope” in English” including such words as trust, wait, patient longing, and expectant searching. There is consensus that the two most “relevant Hebrew words for our consideration are yachal and tiqwah meaning to trust with expectant waiting and to live anticipating the arrival of God’s blessings.

Hopeful waiting is different from feelings or desire for there is an expectation of wonder that can be trusted. Jeremiah 29 puts it like this: I know what I am planning for you, says the Lord, a life of peace not evil and a good ending (that is, a hopeful end) filled with blessing. Isaiah 40 tells us that: those who trust and wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like the eagle: they will run and not be weary, they will walk and not be faint – to which we often add the sung chorus: teach me, Lord, teach me Lord… to wait.

To hope in the tradition of our spiritual heritage is to look at life expectantly, know how to pause with a reverent patience, and accept that pain is woven into the fabric of creation as well as joy. It is not coincidental, I think, that the wisdom literature of ancient Israel, along with the prophets and the Psalms, speak more of hope, patient waiting and living with an expectation of blessing than the early narratives. Such hope has been shaped by both suffering AND exodus, exile AND restoration, sorrow AND celebration. This hope knows the polarity of reality where to everything there is a season. At the same time, knowing and trusting this rhythm that God has built into creation cultivates a character that trusts God’s love to be unfailing. Psalm 33: the eyes of the Lord are upon those who stand in awe of Go as they trust and hope in God’s unfailing love.

Our mentors in ancient Israel also remind us that our waiting is NOT forever. Like the seasons that come and go, so too our joys and sorrows bringing a patience like God’s own. And that is important because the character of Torah is meant to cultivate the character of God in human beings NOW as we ripen beyond abstract feelings into a life of love, joy and shalom. Individuals nourish this with practices that cultivate patience and the greater community does likewise by teaching stories of people like us who experienced God’s presence in the midst of their compassion, humility and quest for shalom. The Rev. Dr. Cherice Bock, professor of ecotheology at Portland Theological Seminary, put it well:

This is a much deeper and richer understanding of hope than can be found when looking at hope simply as goal creation or at hope from an individual psychological perspective. When we recognize a hope that goes beyond our personal lifetime and is mediated by a broader vision than our own comfort or current level of life satisfaction, we are able to draw on a vast and deep well of experience, communal vision, and purpose than we can when we only have our own life experiences and past successes and failures upon which to base our hopes. This communal understanding of hope allows us to continue working for justice and righteousness even when we despair of that hope manifesting fully in our lifetime.

The foundation of authentic Judeo-Christian hope is NOT feelings but cultivating a character that trusts expectant waiting and knows that lamentation is not the end of the story. Pain is REAL – but not eternal. A poem by Audre Lord speaks to these complexities.”

For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone - for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward at once before and after seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our children’s mouths so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours;

For those of us who were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk for by this weapon this illusion of some safety to be found the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us this instant and this triumph we were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard
nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid

So it is better to speak – remembering - we were never meant to survive.

First, hope is cultivating a character committed to living a counter-cultural resistance to empire personally and as a community. Hope is not desire, feelings or abstract anticipations, but all that helps us expect and experience fully joy and sorrow, wonder and waiting, gratitude and lament as our place within the sacred cycle of life. Second, the cultivation of character that once shaped the Jewish identity as the early disciples of Jesus was always meant to be part of our formation, too. Spiritual practices became the minority report in Western Christianity, but the charism of prophetic imagination continues to be trusting the grace of God profoundly enough to tenderly, patiently, and incrementally carry the truth of the periphery into the center of our being.

Jesus spoke to this saying where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. That is, the values and habits we cultivate and practice at our center will disclose our true nature: Do we love God and neighbor with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, strength and being? Or are we conflicted with how hard this truly is? Are we at war with hope, or, do we recognize we’re a work in progress and give ourselves time and space to ripen and face our fears, addictions, and confusion?

One of the gentle truths I have come to trust about God’s love is that often prophets articulate God’s truths to us obliquely using music, poetry and the arts to awaken our dreams. If you watched any of last week’s Democratic Convention, you saw some prophets in action. They touched our long dormant and broken hearts with songs and poems and words that rang true beyond the divisions of race, religion, gender, and class. That montage of children singing the National Anthem was salvific. Same for Springsteen’s reworking of “The Rising,” Gabby Gifford telling us that the forces of hatred can try to silence her with a gun but will never take away her voice. Common and John Legend singing “Glory” and Brayden Harrington sharing his stutter was holy ground, too. I can tell you without hesitation, there wasn’t a dry eye in our house on those nights – and that was true for much of America and the world. We wept as deep called to deep and the prophets called us to trust our better angels.

The former president of Chicago Theological Seminary, the Rev. Dr. Susan Thistlethwaite, confessed just how parched her soul had become over the past four years when she realized “It’s like we’ve been drinking sand and were finally given cool, clean water to sip” as real people spoke of truth and love to the hatred and fear of this regime. I don’t know about you, but I heard the poetic prophet, Isaiah from today’s lesson, singing last week singing: Rise up, come on, rise up!

Listen to me, all you who are serious about right living and committed to seeking God. Ponder the rock from which you were cut, the quarry from which you were dug. Ponder Abraham, your father, and Sarah, who bore you. Think of it! One solitary man when I called him, but once I blessed him, he multiplied. Likewise I, the Lord your God, will comfort you, comfort all the mounds of ruin, transform your dead ground into Eden, your barren moonscape into the garden of God, a place filled with exuberance and laughter, thankful voices and melodic songs

This foundation shaped Jesus as well as Rabbi Saul whom we know as St. Paul. In chapter 12 of Romans where the apostle instructs us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice this is a poetic way of calling us to practice cultivating the character of hope within and among us. Earlier in this same letter to Gentile believers in Rome, St. Paul tells us that patient and expectant waiting is both at the core of our spiritual practices; and, how we experience God’s spirit being poured into our hearts by love.

“Beloved we celebrate our sufferings because we know from previous experience that suffering can produce endurance, and endurance can strengthen our character, and as our character learns to wait patiently, God gives us hope, a hope that does not disappoint because hope is God’s love being poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit in real time.” 

We don’t often talk about that anymore: hope being our experience of God’s love being poured into our hearts by the Spirit. But it could help. In chapter 8 St. Paul adds: we know this is true whenever the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for human words. The former rabbi Saul is teaching the Gentile folk of Rome what he learned from Torah shaped by exile: we have all had hard times before – and we’ll know them again – but we have also known joy and celebration, too. Those who practice waiting upon the Lord shall renew their strength. Those who practice trusting the wisdom of the Cross know that nothing can separate us from the love of God. 

Can hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we have experienced God’s presence with us through love. Therefore I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God revealed to us in the life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus our Lord.

Character cultivated in the Cross incarnates a unique identity that is a bold and tender contrast to the status quo. We live by trust, not just what we can touch. We live by gratitude because this is what God’s love feels like. We live by patience for this is how we discover the extraordinary within the ordinary. Like God coming into the world as a baby in the manger, our eyes are not on the grandiose and haughty but on all that is simple, humble, and real. Which is where the third insight about hope is revealed: in the Cross.

· Do you know that grand old hymn, “I have decided to follow Jesus – no turning back – no turning back?” The closing verse is: “The world behind me, the Cross before me… no turning back, no turning back.”

· By “the world” we don’t mean real life, but the status quo – the domination system of fear, competition and hatred – the rat race – empire. In John 3: 16 and 17 the gospel tells us that: God so loved the world that God shared the Son with us so that everyone in the world who learns to trust may not perish but have everlasting life. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but to heal it and make it whole.

A counter-cultural character committed to compassion is at the core of the Cross revealing a hope that weeps as well as laughs, waits in wonder for what is here within and among us right now, and shows us how new life springs from death throughout all creation. This third way of cultivating hope has a few different names. Henri Nouwen calls it the wisdom of the Eucharist. The early church mothers and fathers called it the Paschal Mystery. Fr. Richard Rohr calls is the core of the cosmos:

Jesus’ life, death, and raising up is the whole pattern of creation revealed, named, summed up, and assured for our own lives. It gives us the full trajectory that we might not recognize other-wise. He is the map. The Jesus story is the universe story. When we follow Jesus through his life, death and resurrection we have the universal and salvific message for the rest of the earth.

Dying to self, trusting that God’s love is bigger than our fear, is how hope grows: as we let ourselves rest into God’s presence and trust that God will carry us beyond all we know, in this death new life begins. Like the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault says: “Dying-to-self… is not only possible but imperative for to fall through fear into love is the only way we will ever truly know what it means to be alive.” The heart of Christ’s truth – the essence of the Paschal Mystery – is found in the story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples that is then embodied when he goes to the Cross, suffers death and is raised by God’s love beyond death.

· Jesus is patient with his hard-headed disciples at the Passover foot washing just as he has been patient with them along the backroads of ancient Palestine. Almost every time Jesus speaks about the necessity of his death, the disciples argue with him and among themselves. They want to win – not die. They want a king not a suffering servant messiah.

· So, Jesus kneels at their feet, like a servant, washes them and tells them: THIS is my new commandment. You are to love one another patiently. Humbly. Over and over, not for yourself, but for one another. And here’s the blessing: as you let go of yourself you will find new life.

If you want to be important, serve others. The son of man himself did not come to be served but to serve, to give his life so that everyone might be set free (Mark 10:42-45). Jesus offered the world a new pattern of power and leadership, which few in church or state have ever really agreed with.

Sometimes

if you move carefully

through the forest,

breathing

like the ones

in the old stories,

who could cross

a shimmering bed of leaves

without a sound,

you come to a place

whose only task

is to trouble you

with tiny

but frightening requests,

conceived out of nowhere

but in this place

beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what

you are doing right now,

and

to stop what you

are becoming

while you do it,

questions

that can make

or unmake

a life,

questions

that have patiently

waited for you,

questions

that have no right

to go away.

(David Whyte, Sometimes)

Hope takes practice – a lifetime of practice – so be gentle with yourselves. You are already doing the best you can – and God cherishes that. Hope cultivates the character of Jesus – Torah – the Living God in our small and humble lives, not empire. For hope embraces joy and sorrow, the prophetic challenges as well as the healing of grace, waiting and wonder.