Hope? What is that?

"Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near." Luke 21:28

Rather odd words for the start of our Christian new year.  Disaster, the second coming of Christ, signs and portents in the sky, doomsday is coming.  Hardly the way to get things going unless you want to start things off with a bang.  People are fainting with fear and foreboding, according to one translation, which does not sound like a comforting thought. And this is how we start looking for a baby in a manger who has been given as a present to us as hope for the future of all the world? Yikes!  I’d rather go watch the Eskimos!

This doomsday scenario is a reminder to us all that terrible times do happen to everyone, and that finding hope in the middle of such dreadful situations is hard. And what is hope anyway?

I think that in some people’s minds hope stands for happy optimistic positive energy, and that if only we think the right thoughts and eat the right foods and live the right lifestyle, we will have a wonderful life untouched by trauma of any kind.  They can be very annoying when you complain of your latest crisis, because they will lecture you that you need positive thoughts, and that if you would change your thinking, all your problems will be solved.  There are others who think that hope is a fool’s game, and that it means hedonistically outrageous primitive emotions, and that there is no such thing as hope for life is a terrible game of winner takes it all, and the looser is an insignificant individual to be stepped on because they did not have the strength of character to risk everything to come out on top.  There is only success, the one thing to which all may be risked and gambled.  No cost is too great, no sacrifice too small to pay for success.  In money we trust, and Heaven help the fool that disbelieves that.  It is a dog eat dog world, survival of the fittest and hope is something that is a waste of time and money.

Others think that hope is having oodles of possessions for eternity.  Christmas is a glimpse of hope for them when they will finally have enough stuff or enough money or enough house or enough car or whatever it is that they think will mean that they have enough for security.  According to a Reader’s Digest article, 70% of lottery winners lose or spend all their money within 5 years, and some even end up bankrupt afterwards.  One lady from England who won a large amount at the age of 16 blew her money on plastic surgery and drugs, became suicidal and ended up living with her parents again working as a maid.  As the Beatles said long ago, “Can’t buy me love.” To which Jesus might say, can’t buy me security, safety and happiness either.

So many different schemes for hope seem to be, well, fluffy and hopeless.  We look at life and ask, “is that all there is?”  We might as well do the ‘eat drink and be merry for tomorrow will be a disaster, and medicate ourselves into numbness.  Many do just that.  As Jesus said, “Be on guard so that your spirits do not get bloated with indulgence and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth.”

And we think of hope primarily as an emotion that will come and give us an adrenalin boost, which will help us maintain the lie that everything is going to be fine.  Sometimes the reality is that life is really tough, and it’s hard to stay happy and positive.  But hope is not a feeling.  I think it’s a commitment to action.  Big ideas.  Big goals, big dreams.  It can be taught and it can be contagious.

Winston Churchill made a speech to the British people on the brink of war that inspired them with contagious hope.  He finished it by saying, “If at last the story is to end, it were better it should end, not through surrender, but only when we are rolling senseless on the ground.”

He didn’t talk of victory in that speech, but he did remind them of their story, the importance of their way of life, and the need to protect it at all cost.

We Christians have a long story too.  I remember reading somewhere that the first refugee camp was started by Augustine of Hippo.  Rome had been sacked three times by Visigoths who took slaves and gold from the city and destroyed what they wanted.  The church of St. Peter and Paul became a sanctuary for many people, and was respected by the invaders.  The Romans turned away from Christianity, accusing the Christians of corrupting the Empire with their faith, and called on fellow citizens to repent and follow the old Gods, Jupiter, Mars, Juno and Minerva.  Christians left Rome in droves and fled to Hippo in Africa where Augustine took them in and began writing his massive book, the City of God, as a way of finding hope for Christian people.

Even in our times, we can find signs of hope when people turn misfortunes into the courage to make a difference for many.  I was struck with the interview this week on CBC with the Kurdi family, some of whom will be coming to Canada soon.  They are doing their best to rebuild after their losses. Abdullah, the father who lost his family, talked about building a school and hospital in their memory.  We, by allowing them in, are choosing to give them something to hope for, a safer life.

In some ways Hope is like feeding 250 people spaghetti like we did on Friday.  It’s messy, and it takes time, energy and co-operation.  It can be taught, and it can be nourishing.  It focuses on the people it is serving.  It needs many people with many different gifts working as they can however they can. It remembers to feed its own people and flourishes with encouragement. In the end, Hope is a commitment to a story that will make the world a better place. Hope sees that Jesus may be just around the corner in ways we don’t expect.

 Hope is the action of “standing up and raising our heads” as Jesus taught, and as Paul and Augustine did.  Hope is providing love to all humans as Paul hoped we would, practising radical hospitality.  And Hope is an action, maybe it can be “Hear and Obey the Priority of Equality.”

A Rant about Christians

There’s a song that was on the radio last week and it has some lyrics that go “shot through the heart and you’re to blame, you give love a bad name.”  That got me to thinking about all the media we have been inundated with about Paris and those terrible Syrian refugees that the government has been threatening to inundate us with.  And some of the rhetoric in the States has been truly horrific.  Some people, claiming to be Christian, have said that we should only allow Christian Syrians into North America, others have said that every Syrian is dangerous and a terrorist.  Wow.  They conveniently forget that the Paris terrorists only had one Syrian passport in the bunch found in the raid, and that Syrians are getting robbed for their passports and Isis doesn’t like Syrians leaving in the first place as it wants to act like a country and have people make more babies for its caliphate.  No, refugees like the little three year old who drowned, were running away from terrorists, not trying to be terrorists.  Alayn Kurdi, that sad little boy, had no home left.  If you see photos of his home town, there are many houses without roofs and the streets are rubble.  Sad how one day we are clamoring to our government to let his people come to Canada, and the next we are clamoring to keep them out.  But it’s bigger than that.  I am tired of American Christians who talk about judging and criticising all kinds of people, the negativity that they express and especially the close-mindedness they depict to the public.  Build walls around Mexico, criticise anyone who doesn’t look like us, talk like us or believe like us.  Enough already.  Jesus said that our first commandment is to Love God.  And the second commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves.  The second commandment is not to judge our neighbor or criticise our neighbor or convert our neighbor or tell them that they are full of the devil or are not good enough to get into heaven or any of that.  No!  Jesus said love your neighbor.  Your neighbor next door who maybe plays the radio or tv too loud first thing in the morning or last thing at night, who cheats at cards or takes the last cookie at supper.  Your neighbor who pops her knuckles loudly at the dinner table or thinks it’s funny to play tricks on people or fiddle with their dentures or gossips behind our backs.  You see, I don’t think being a Christian is easy, Jesus never said it would be.  And being a Christian isn’t about being nice either, and letting people walk all over you.  Sometimes we have to speak up and say that God doesn’t want three year olds drowning in the sea because their houses are destroyed.  But being Christian is seeing beyond black and white situations, “I’m good and my neighbor is bad” or even black white yellow and red like the old hymn we used to sing about Jesus loving all the children of the world.  But instead Jesus calls us to be loving towards our neighbors, especially when we are afraid of them.  Our Christian beliefs must be shaped by the remembrance that Jesus lived and died in the Middle East, and was living in a country full of violence and on the verge of civil war.  Even then, he called his people to love, and we are still called to love.  That should be the hallmark of who we are as followers of Christ.  Love of God, love of neighbor.  It's time to remember to sing "They'll know we are Christians by our Love" and then to go do it.  Love God, Love your neighbor, love yourself.  The rest is commentary.  May it be so for us all.

Skating on Thin Ice

Mark 13:5 Jesus began to say to them, "Beware that no one leads you astray."

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about hockey recently, and now that the Oilers have won a few games it reminds me of the days of Messier, Gretzky, and the rest.  The glory days when the Oilers were unstoppable.  Did you know that Gretzky retired at the age of 38 after 20 years as a pro?  Did you know that the average NHL hockey player is 28 years old?  Over half of NHL players play less than 100 games, and 5% only ever play one game.  There are about 5600 players in the NHL, and most of them play for 5 years.  So a kid who turns pro at 18 will likely be out of a job by the time they are 23.  And the chance of a kid in Athabasca bringing home the Stanley Cup is about the same chance as his parent winning the lottery.  It makes me wonder what we are doing to our children.  This came home to me when I heard a sports reporter talking about Connor McDavid’s shoulder injury.  He said “you’ll never see him play with the same abandon and passion again.  It happens every time a new NHL player gets an injury.  He’ll always be looking over his shoulder for the next hit.”

I’m biased, I guess.  One of my classmates in the maritimes had a brain injured son.  He had gone to her covenanting service instead of his hockey game and was kicked off his team because according to his coach, his priorities weren’t right.  Hockey before everything, even God and your mother becoming a minister.  Since he was 16 and a very good player, he quickly found another team.  But he happened to be playing his former team when some NHL scouts were in the stands, and one of his former team mates hit him so hard in the head that he had to learn how to walk and talk again.   I came home horrified by this story, and mentioned it to a friend.  “Oh yes,” she said, “that happened in Alberta, only it was my relative that did the hitting.  The scouts told him that he was not the kind of person they wanted on a pro team and he spent the next few years playing video games in the basement waiting for the phone to ring with his NHL offer.  He was sure they would see him as a potential Dave Semenko.  They didn’t.

We treat our young men like war heroes when they win, and failures when they lose.  This starts early. When my son was nine, he was terribly upset when his floor hockey team lost.  He saw himself as the good guy, and the other team had the bully on it.  Surely, he would win against the bully, just like all those Disney shows.  What upset my son the most was not just the bursting of his Disney sports bubble, but the fact that many cheered on the bully who was a good player.  It wasn’t fair, he said.

Life is not fair.  We don’t win the Stanley Cup or the 649.  We hit a moose, we find ourselves addicted to gambling or porn or alcohol or pain meds or gossip or anger.  We see ourselves as the wonderful hero, and don’t understand the bully’s point of view.  We put our trust in political parties or systems or pension plans or insurance policies.  When things go wrong as they so often do, we look for someone to point the finger at.  In short, we are human.

We are fragile, we are temporary and we are sensitive to anything that might be seen as a threat.  Jesus saw the Jewish love of the Temple as a crutch and a danger.  Some thirty years after his death, the Temple was destroyed by Romans, and that was a tremendous shock to every God-fearing Jew, including those self-same disciples and the Hebrew followers of Jesus who our letter was written to.  It was such a shock that Jews today still go to the only part of the Temple that is standing, something we know as the Wailing Wall.  What are we to depend on if the Temple itself is destroyed?

The Author of Hebrews wrote to the people to have confidence in Jesus and each other.  To continue to come together and remember Jesus who could have chosen violence to destroy the Roman Empire, and war over peace, but chose water, wine and bread as symbols of a new way of facing down bullies and terrorists.  Jesus knew he was living in a corrupt society which did not value every human as worthy of dignity and respect.  Jesus knew he could be executed on the flimsiest charges at the whim of a bored Roman diplomat.  Indeed, he had no rights under the Roman Empire. Unlike Paul, who was a Roman Citizen by birth so could appeal to Caesar for justice, Jesus had no lawyers, no law for that matter that would give him justice.  Jesus only had his stories, his wit, his tremendous faith in God, and his commitment to not choose violence to end oppression and fear.  And yet, when you think about it, Jesus and his followers were able to undermine and survive the collapse of not one but two systems of oppression; the overuse of ritual which had forgotten what its purpose was, to remind people of God’s presence in the everyday activities of their lives, and the Roman Empire which dictated that the strongest man had all the rights and the powers, and weaker men could only have what they could defend.  There is no emperor in Rome today, after all, although other empires have risen and fallen since then. 

Still, more and more we hear of peace being a hallmark of healthy societies.  When was the last time we heard of the Tamil Tigers, or the last USSR communist threat, or IRA bombing?  And 1.6 billion folks are Muslim, and much less than 10,000 are at war.  If the CIA claims that Isis has at max 30,000 fighters; that leaves us with 99.81% of Muslims who want to live in peace.  Isis is a psychopathic bully that wants to scare us into playing a game of violence that will only cause more bloodshed.  And like any bully, we can either choose to become a bigger bully or find some other way to deal with the issues at hand.  Jesus chose not to be a part of the system of bullying priests in the temple who felt justified in accepting a widow’s last coins.  Jesus chose to live a life contrary to that kind of systemic violence. 

 Jesus wasn’t just condemning the temple, or predicting doomsday.  He was pointing to the human tendency to crave security, to protect oneself, to look at things as that which will keep us safe from danger.  And whether he was speaking to his disciples or speaking to us modern disciples, the message is the same.  What we put our hopes on to protect us from life will not work.  Only our faith will help us. 

Stop thinking that life is some giant hockey game with bad guys and good guys.  God is not some goalie in the sky who will protect the team from losing, or that God is the referee who will force everyone to follow the rules and send people to the penalty box, or even that God is the coach who will come up with the training schedule and the game plan and the motivational speeches.  No, life is a great skating party and God is the ice under our feet, that supports us as we play, that helps us glide and spin, that is firm when we feel like we are on thin ice, and is always there whether we fall or fight.  God is found in the hot chocolate that warms us from the inside and in the community that builds a bonfire for roasting marshmallows despite the cold and frosty weather. Let us pray for courage to choose the road to peace, the courageous choice that Jesus made even though it cost his life.  The choice he made out of love for us all.