Anyone who reads my Bellringer columns has heard me mention many times Bishop Browning’s book of meditations, A Year of Days, with which I’ve started my mornings for decades. The year I was given the book I opened it on November 13th to find the line from the Prayer Book that Bishop Browning focused on that day was from the birthday prayer. November 13th is my birthday. Every year since it has felt as though I’m receiving a personal birthday greeting from Bishop Browning when I encounter that reading anew. Many years after I received the book I opened it on January 20th, 2009, and the quote Bishop Browning focused on was from the catechism: Why do we pray for the dead? The first line of his meditation was, “Because we still love them and they still love us.” My mother had died the evening before. Without a doubt the force we know as love connects us through space and time to those who have gone before us as surely as it does to those most dear to us who walk the earth with us now, be they present with us at this moment or living thousands of miles away. Clearly love is central to our faith, to our way of being as Christians, as followers of Jesus Christ. Out of that love that God has always had for us and that we have for one another arises another critical aspect of being a Christian: hope.
In his letter to the Ephesians Paul prays that the “God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.“ What is that hope to which we’ve been called? For that matter, what is hope? The dictionary says that hope is “desire accompanied by anticipation or expectation.” Sadly one of the most pervasive effects of the past three years has been the degree to which we have lost our ability to hope. We have been disappointed so many times when we thought we had put the widespread presence of Covid behind us. We live with constant stress over our fraught political situation, complicated by uncertainty about a world economy tinkering on the brink of recession or worse due to the lingering effects of the pandemic complicated by the war in Ukraine. As a result, for far too many people today anticipation has been replaced by fear, expectation by dread. I strongly believe that’s what’s at the root of the great exhaustion Bingham and others have written and spoken about, because while love empowers us, and faith directs us, hope is what sustains us. Without hope it’s hard to find the strength to go on.
Now hope, as I’m using the term, is as far removed from the empty “Oh, I hope I win the lottery” type of statement as love as a way of being is from the sappy sentimentality of greeting cards. Rather, I would suggest in many ways hoping is simply praying without mentioning God. Please, God, let him make it home safely and Oh I hope she doesn’t have any problem with these icy roads, come from the same place inside us. Indeed in Spanish ojalá, derived from the Arabic phrase meaning God willing, is used all the time by my Mexican friends to mean God willing or hopefully. So how do we regain our ability to hope? Maybe we need to focus on taking more time to pray. The simple act of praying reminds us that we’re not alone, which in itself can be a great comfort. One of the interesting things about prayer is how it can evolve over time. Early in one’s life or faith journey it seems as though petitions make up the bulk of what gets said. Please God help me…. Please guide the surgeons….. Please help her make a wise decision…. Over time, we may learn that prayer is about more than speaking, we’re also supposed to listen. We’re meant to quiet our own inner voice and, following God’s admonition in Psalm 46: Be still and know that I am God. Still later, if we’re truly fortunate, we internalize the truth of Meister Eckart’s statement: If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.
Nearly thirty years ago when I was president of Central Convocation and Father Ted was the dean, I went to Ted when I wasn’t even a member of St. Mary’s because I simply didn’t know where else to turn and I was truly at the end of my rope. Life at that juncture was really difficult. I keep thinking things are going to get better I told Ted, but they just seem to keep getting worse. Sharon, Ted told me, I’ve sat and talked with a lot of older people - many of whom were probably younger than Ted and I are now - and they’ve told me one way or another they’ve learned that life doesn’t get better, life is, and it’s up to each of us on a day to day basis what we make of it. The other bit of wisdom Ted shared with me that day came from a book entitled To Give Thanks in All Things which Penny’s first husband Rudy, while on his deathbed, had made Ted promise to read. After Rudy died Ted did of course read the book and upon finishing it concluded it was the stupidest book he’d ever read. However, he couldn’t forget it, and over time, Ted told me, it changed his life. No matter what was happening, he gave thanks. I was feeling desperate enough to try anything so I started by making a list in my head every morning when I woke up of things for which I was thankful. I’d do the same when I was driving my car or pretty much anytime I had the chance. Over time the practice of repeatedly taking stock of all for which I was thankful changed me. It has become so ingrained by now I don’t even think about doing it. Even when things were really hard this past summer I’d still break into prayer while I was out walking. Thank you, God, for this gorgeous day, for this incredibly blue sky and the ability to see it. Thank you for the friends who have been so kind, and on and on. I sincerely believe that an overriding sense of gratitude is intimately related to the ability to hope, just as the ability to hope is an integral part of who we are as Christians.
We are, after all, a resurrection people, who enthusiastically live our lives here on earth all the while with a sure and certain hope of heaven. While that particular hope isn’t necessarily our focus on a day to day basis, it undergirds all that we do hope for, because it reminds us that there is so much more to be hoped for than we can possibly imagine. Our horizons are limited after all. Unlike God we can’t see all there is to see, we can’t know all there is to know. Only God can do that. And, because God is a loving God, God doesn’t merely see what we need, God helps those needs to be met, often in completely unexpected ways. I believe that’s what’s at the heart of the beatitudes. Jesus is reminding his listeners that this isn’t all there is. Today’s circumstances aren’t going to be your circumstances for all of eternity. God is with you. You may be hungry or poor today but you won’t be forever. God is with you. And if you’re well off now, you may find yourselves wanting in the future, but your needs then will be met, maybe differently from how you might imagine, but they will be met, because God is with you.
How often do you actually stop and think about that? Last summer my younger sister fell twice in ten days. The first time she fractured her patella which was surgically repaired four days later. All went well. Things were looking good. But six days after the surgery she fell again and fractured her pelvis in three places. It was a nightmare, beginning with the fact that the kind EMTs who responded to my 911 call informed us they couldn’t transport Kendra because there was not a single ambulance available anywhere in Eugene. They didn’t know what was going on, but people were having cardiac arrests all over the area. We basically got no help from the medical community for a week and a half. Mind you, I was scheduled to leave for Mexico two weeks after that second fall, my brother and sister-in-law were leaving for Hawaii two days before I was scheduled to fly out, and Trudy doesn’t drive. One could say I was more than a little stressed. But, exactly at the point Kendra took that second fall, a long time friend of hers who has done in home health care for over twenty years, lost a client, so she had Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons free. Some would call that a happy coincidence. I call it the Holy Spirit working overtime. Sharee was truly a gift from God. I hired her for four weeks, to take us through until I got home from Mexico. Ten days after the second fall we were able to see Kendra’s primary care physician, who happens to be a member of St. Mary’s and who agreed to see us late on a Friday afternoon. She prescribed in home physical therapy, which meant there was going to be someone coming to see Kendra five days out of seven for the next three weeks, and Zack agreed to stop by on weekends. I left for Mexico with a clear conscience and an equally clear sense of just how close at hand God really is.
Hope, Paul’s wish for us, Jesus’ gift to us. We come here week in and week out and are greeted by the cross, an instrument of death that is the ultimate symbol of hope, because it is empty. The cross didn’t win, Jesus did. Death didn’t win, life did. That is the hope to which we have been called. And so we find ourselves today surrounded by the names of people special in our lives who have gone before us. We give thanks to God for giving them to us, their family and friends, to know and to love as companions on our earthly pilgrimage. We rejoice that they have found their way home to God, knowing full well that someday we will join them. And of course we pray for them, because we still love them and they still love us. Amen.
