Sermon

Questions to Live By:  Can We Resist Hope?

November 14, 2004

By Rev. Dr. G. Penny Nixon

When we open the door to the memories locked in our hearts, we open the door to hope.

Our traditions give central place to stories of hope: hope borne in the Exodus from Egypt, hope shared in bread and cup. These are stories of hope rising out of adversity.

This week, we remember the events of August 13, 1961, of November 9, 1989, and the years in between. We remember the Berlin Wall, former barrier surrounding West Berlin, and symbol of the Cold War. We remember 96 miles of a barbed wire barricade and concrete wall with an average height of 12 ft. We remember 171 people were killed or died attempting to breech the Berlin Wall. We remember the wall as a divide between the two greatest stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction ever to exist.

And, we remember: 15 years later, there is now a generation of young people who do not know a world with a Berlin wall.

This morning, we celebrated a special service, “Generations of Hope”. In planning the service, we started talking about hope, and yet wound up talking about all the tough times we’ve survived as a people. Talking about the tough times is a kind of affirmation of all we’ve been through, and talking through the tough times opens us to hope.

We may well dream of a life free of pain … yet pain is necessary for life:
Here’s a story from Patterson, Georgia, as reported by the Associated Press:

Ashlyn Blocker's parents and kindergarten teachers all describe her the same way: fearless. So they nervously watch her plunge full-tilt into a childhood deprived of natural alarms.

Ashlyn is among a tiny number of people in the world known a rare genetic disorder that makes her unable to feel pain.

It’s called congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis, or CIPA.

"Some people would say that's a good thing. But no, it's not," says Tara Blocker, Ashlyn's mother. "Pain's there for a reason. It lets your body know something's wrong and it needs to be fixed. I'd give anything for her to feel pain."

Family photos reveal a series of these self-inflicted injuries. One picture shows Ashlyn in her Christmas dress, hair neatly coifed, with a swollen lip, missing teeth, puffy eye and athletic tape wrapped around her hands to protect them. She smiles like a little boxer who won a prize bout.

Her first serious injury came at age 3, when she laid her hand on a hot pressure washer in the back yard. Ashlyn's mother found her staring at her red, blistered palm.

"That was a real reality check for me. At that point I realized we're not going to be able to stop all the bad stuff," Tara Blocker says. "She needs a normal life, with limitations."

A normal life, with limitations …

I'd give anything for her to feel pain …

That’s how much Ashlyn’s mother loved her, that she could say that; that’s a powerful love.

We might hope for some kind of safety zone, barrier, or wall – between us and whatever hurts us spiritually…

But if it’s actually dangerous physically for us not to be able to feel pain, might it not also be dangerous spiritually, too?

As spiritual people, it means that we have the opportunity to open to our pain, to stay with it, to search it until in its midst we find some glimmer of hope.

As spiritual people, we are called, always, to be ready to let the faintest hope ignite our spirits, awaken us, move us to new life.

This is why we find such inspiration in the stories of those who face great adversity and yet succeed in living in hope.

When we open the door to the memories locked in our hearts, we open the door to hope.

This is why we, here, are such an inspiration.

We’ve been the church of the outcast.
We’ve been the church with AIDS.
We’ve been the church of social justice.
We’ve been the gay marriage church.

Through it all, we’ve been the church.

My vision for us is a revolutionary vision, a transformational vision, inspired by these words from
Isaiah, chapter 65:

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent--its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all of my holy mountain, says God.

Can you see it?

Do you believe in the power of intention?

Do you believe that if we all, really believed the world could be like that, that it would be?

More than once I’ve been told, “that’s a nice spiritual vision, but that’s not how the world really is.”

You know what – yes it is really how the world is.

All the love, all the justice we dream of is right here. We just need to see it.

All the food – you know, there’s more than enough food for everyone in the world. We don’t have a food problem, we have a food distribution problem.

We don’t have a housing problem, we have a housing distribution problem. Housing – there is enough housing for everyone in San Francisco – do you have a spare room? Room on your sofa?

I’m going to stake a claim here … and it might sound a little presumptuous, a little like boasting.

But you know, I read somewhere that no one lights a lamp and puts it under a table. Or something like that.

I’ll tell you what I see: I look out on the faces here, week in, week out, and I see in this place, the new Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was the place of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, and Abraham said of Jerusalem, "This is the place where God is seen."

I see God here.

The Talmud says Jerusalem was named by God. The name has two parts: Yira, which means "to see," and shalem, which means "peace."

I see peace here.

In Jerusalem, God is seen, and felt, as a tangible presence.

I see you feeling God here.

In Jerusalem we reach beyond the frailty and vulnerability of our lives, and we sense and strive for transcendence.

I see transcendence here.

Jerusalem is a metaphor for a perfected world, and it gives us perspective on our lives.

When Aldous Huxley said, "we have each of us our Jerusalem," he meant much more than a temporal city of taxi cabs and traffic jams. He meant a vision of what life might be.

I don’t think we’re perfect … but when I am here,
I have a vision of what life might be.

And so I have a lot of hope that the world as it might be is the world as it will be.

We can’t resist hope!

Embodying our dreams means that we will continue to be a people of remembrance and a people of hope.

We will do this together, and in ourselves.

If you have loved, and lost love, don’t try and forget it – remembering the love you have lost will kindle hope for the love you have yet to experience. Love is sacred, it’s a gift. Cherish it, and hope will come alive in you.

If you have been healthy, and now live with illness, don’t forget your time of health – remembering the strength of your body will help you find the places where you are yet strong. Your body is sacred, it’s a gift. Cherish it, and hope will come alive in you.

If you have been at peace, and struggle with anger, don’t forget your time of peace – remembering the peace you had will show the way toward the peace you desire. Be peaceful and hope will come alive in you.

We have welcomed members into this community, and we have said goodbye to many who have died – remembering those who have gone before opens our hearts to those yet to come. Hope comes alive in open hearts.

We have moved from place to place in this community, embracing and letting go of this and other spiritual homes – remembering this will help us let go of this place, when it is time, and embrace the possibilities of a new home. Hope comes alive in possibilities.

We have settled on ways of doing and being community together – remembering the good we have done by these means will make us hunger to do more good, and open us to the ways we need to change to reach more, teach more, heal more, feed more, love more. Hope comes alive in transformation.

So – how can we resist hope?

We must enlarge our territory:

We must stand, as Penny has said, for a spirituality and a rationality that is sufficiently complex to hold the mystery of life and of its living.

We are called to continue to bear, to share, the same healing that we have received ; our work reconciling sexuality and spirituality is FAR from over; our life as a community where this happens is far from over.

This building holds our dreams, and our memories, and we need a building that can embody our dreams and embody the legacy to which our memories point.

We are a prophetic people, a prophetic community - called out from God’s people to be a witness to hope today and hope for tomorrow.

And so we will grow – we will enlarge our territory, by remembering and hoping.

We Remember. Always, we remember.
And we hope. Always.

Amen.