The Way Forward: Hope
The Way Forward: Hope
Psalm 25:4-5
I want to talk about hope this morning but I don’t want to talk about otherworldly hope. It is a totally natural thing to think occasionally about what happens when this life ends. Such thoughts become much more pressing when I’m losing or have lost someone that I love. As we grow older, our own mortality becomes more evident every time we look in the mirror and every time we go to the doctor and something new isn’t working quite right. The urgency with which we ask the question grows.
I’ve never been one to think that the whole point of Christianity is to go to heaven after you die or at least to stay the heck out of hell. I think God loves us all…because the Bible tells me so. I think the God who loves us our whole life long will love us beyond this life. If I have any enduring otherworldly hope it is two fold: that God will be there and waiting for me, and, perhaps most tellingly, that all the dogs and cats that I’ve ever loved and all the people I’ve loved will be standing there waiting for me too. I hope for reunion and reconnection. I’m hoping the key phrase is, “Let’s get this party started!”
If I’m not interested in talking about other worldly hope—afterlife stuff—I’m also not interested in talking about hopes that are just fantasies. You can hope for world wide peace and enduring justice. You can hope for the Bears to win a Super Bowl. If you’re young, you can hope for all that you’re worth that you’ll get an A on the math test and that the teacher will actually bring you to the front of the room just so your whole class can see what a great mathematician looks like.
It’s not hard to imagine things being different and everything being great. There might even be value some times to letting our imaginations run wild. Having a fantasy hope might help me put together a more realistic vision of what’s possible. However, in the nitty-gritty world of daily life, fantasies—if we’ve really bought into them— all too often just make us profoundly disappointed in what’s real. It’s not hard for me to imagine things being different. Why, then, aren’t they actually different.
The hope that I want to chase this morning is the every day, realistic, sustaining hope that helps us focus our energy on what we can actually get done: “Here’s my hope for today;” “Here’s my hope for this meeting;” “Here’s my hope for the leadership transition at the Union Church.” These hopes have far less to do with fantasies than they do with setting reasonable goals. These hopes help us to track what matters and to let go of what is not in the service of progress. Let me explain…
I remember a particular basketball game in high school. We were having a very good season but the truth was that we had not yet played any teams that were that good. We knew that good teams were out there. We knew that the challenges were going to come. We wouldn’t know how good we were though until we played them. Of course, we were high school kids so we took full advantage of our wave of support and developed a bit of a swagger.
Then, we played one of those good teams. From the moment the game started, they could not miss. We were stunned and mostly stood around slack-jawed as they showed us a variety of the game that we loved that we had never seen before. At the end of the first quarter, we were behind by twenty points.
Our coach that year was the one good basketball coach that I ever had. He didn’t yell at us. He didn’t micromanage us. He was there to teach us. So, it wasn’t a surprise in this game that while the other team was pulling out to a twenty point lead, he was sitting quietly on the bench with a bit of a smile on his face. 99 out of 100 coaches would have called time out, if only to prove to the crowd that they were there and coaching and that they recognized the disaster that was unfolding. Not our coach. His message to us, without ever saying the words was, “You figure it out.”
When the quarter ended and we ran to the bench, everyone gathered around him. He looked us each in the eyes. Then, in a normal voice, he said to us, “There will be days like this—and not just on a basketball court—days when nothing is going right, when you feel like you’re barely even in the game. They question you have to ask will be, ‘How do I get back in the game. What’s my strategy?’ Here’s our strategy guys. We’re down by 20. At the half, their lead is going to be 10. By the third quarter, we’re going to cut that lead in half again to five. With two minutes left, it will be anyone’s game. They’re not going to hand this to you and you’re not going to erase a 20 point lead with one shot. Let’s work together. Let’s work hard. Let’s work smart. Team on three…”
In that little moment, which I vividly remember, I had this concrete experience of hope leading to real possibility. The coach didn’t trash us for playing poorly. He didn’t say, “I think you all are a bunch of losers.” When he looked us in the eye, what he was saying was, “I believe In you and all is not lost.” What he was saying was, “There is a way to do this.” What he was saying was, “This is going to be hard but we’re going to do this together.” We believed in ourselves. After barely playing the first quarter, we were ready to play the game.
The rest of the story? Honestly—we lost the game. However, the strategy worked. We crawled back into the game incrementally until we found ourselves with a chance with two minutes to go. Really, in the actual world in which we live, that’s all we can ask for right—a chance. Losing the game was almost immaterial at that point. What we’d learned was that we could be a team, that together we could be resilient, that opponents were worth respecting and that we had a hell of a coach. That game was when our team started on a journey that led to a place in the state championship game.
Realistic hope comes from being challenged, from facing those challenges with an enduring effort, and from learning to accept progress as a good result. Focussing on outcomes leads to discouragement and hopelessness. Focussing on outcomes requires that I have way to simplistic of a view of the world and a very inflated sense of my own power and control. Life is complicated. We have to do the best we can but the best I can do today may be really different than the best I could do yesterday. We have to do our homework and work smart. Mostly, though, we have to stay together and each play our part and, together, we have to claim the little victories along the way.
To a large degree, this has been the daily experience for me across 30 years at this church. The challenges have always been there. Early on, money was tight enough that we celebrated that the doors had not been nailed shut yet. I worked for 10 years without medical benefits or a retirement plan which drove my parents crazy. The challenges kept coming: what about the boiler; what about doing more outreach for those in need; what about staffing to grow; what about a work trip; what about the organ that seems to be dying a little more every day; what about the asbestos in the building? All of those things were faced and overcome. We got through those things (and many more) because on this “team” at our little church, there are a ton of talented people who were willing to share their gifts. We got through most of those things, not all at once, but a step at a time. And somewhere in the middle of each challenge there were moments when we caught a glimpse of God’s presence, gently providing a little extra nudge or simply whispering, “You’ve got this.”
It’s this later point that the psalmist is pointing out. He prays to God, “Show me…teach me…guide me.” Notice, the prayer is not, “Do this for me!” The prayer is not, “Make this happen!” The prayer is not, “You owe me!” No, the prayer is much more, “Open my eyes and help me see.” The prayers is, “Help me find the next step.” The prayer is, “Help me to not get lost along the way.”
What the Psalmist is saying, most deeply, is that his hope rests in God. Again, this is not the God of guaranteed outcomes. It is not the God who gives us whatever we want. (We all know that parents who give their children everything they want are not doing their children any favors!). The God of the Psalmist is the same God who wandered through the wilderness with our oldest ancestors, the former slaves, and Moses: “Lead me, God. Feed me. Show me the way.”
I completely believe in the future of the Union Church of Lake Bluff. The challenges ahead, of course, will be very real. It’s not easy to change leadership after thirty years. It can be energizing and life-giving but it will not be easy and smooth. It’s not easy to live with the frustrations and set-backs and unknowns of an open ended process. Things won’t go exactly as planned. We’re going to have to live with the answer, “Not yet…” However, next week, everyone is going to have their first chance to meet the “coach” for this process—Matt Cook. And I will tell you that for Tracy and me, and for the committee, getting to know Matt has been a bit like hearing that high school coach of mine lay out the plan for making sure we’re in the game.
What do I hope for? I hope for a new and wonderful chapter in this church’s life. I hope for a chance for the next pastor to fall in love over time with this congregation just like me. I hope for that pastor to get to feel loved and valued and respected, just like I’ve felt along the way. I hope the process will be challenging enough that as a whole church family, in the end, you all will huddle shoulder to shoulder with one another, look each other in the eye and say, “Union Church of Lake Bluff…on three” and walk into that exciting next chapter together.
What is my hope grounded in? I believe that God has been present with us through every moment of crisis and every occasion of joy for 30 years. The God who leads and nudges and reassures and loves will be with us. I believe in the abundance of gifts and talents of the individual members of this congregation and in the generosity with which people share those gifts. I believe in the resilience of a faith community that has risen, again and again, often against the odds, to make progress and move a step closer to the church that God would have us be.
When push comes to shove, though, everyone needs to step up and be a part of this process. Next Sunday is the first congregational conversation. I need you—everyone of you—to be there. And, if you have a conflict for that Sunday, then we really need you to be there for the other two. The best shot we will have at a good result will be if we have everyone’s input.
We need to hear from you. We need to see your commitment that in a time of change you are willing to “double down” on this church being your church. We need you to be a part of finding the way forward.