Chaplain
Mel Baars
Psalm
130
June
10, 2012
“Choose Hope”
If
you have ever been to my office, you know that I love “snail” mail. My walls
are almost completely covered with letters and cards that I have received over
the last eight months. I just can’t bring myself to throw mail away, even when
the correspondence is from a stranger. If it is addressed to me personally,
then I have found room for it on one of my walls. A few weeks ago, I got a card
from a friend which really got my attention. It was simple. On the front, in
water colors, was an “H” and then, written in thin, almost unnoticeable script,
were these two words, “Choose Hope.” I wouldn’t have even seen these two small
words on the front of the card if the sender had not pointed them out to me in
her message. That is how camouflaged they were within the bigger picture. But,
once I noticed them, these words became the most prominent piece of the card’s
front design.
Choose
hope. When stated like that, choosing hope appears to be a seemingly
uncomplicated choice. Choose hope, kind of like choosing a tooth paste brand or
a new pair of running shoes. As simple as this concept may have seemed, I know
better. I decided to tape the card in a place on my wall where I would see it
often. Despite the fact that hope is a simple choice, and despite even, our
knowledge of God’s steadfast ways, I still forget that hope is an active, and
sometimes even risky, choice that we each have to make each and every day. No
matter how much I believe, or at least want to believe, that hope is working in
the world, it is so easy to lose
sight of it. From broken relationships, interminable violence or illness or
both, the wounds that don’t seem to ever fully heal -- considering all that we
are bombarded with each day, it’s easy
to miss hope altogether.
In
this deployed environment, no matter how many months it has been, it is always
an appropriate time to visit and revisit the subject of hope. Here, in our
camp, we work with detainees, some of us with our “hands on,” as guards,
medical professionals, interrogators, others of us as supportive elements to
the mission of detainee operations. While there are occasional glimpses of
hope, kindness shown when we least expect it or even the smallest
acknowledgement of gratitude, mostly what we see and deal with is anything and
everything but hopeful.
The
past few weeks of local news have not helped much either. We have had some of
our deadliest days where suicide bombers and vehicle born explosive devises
have wreaked havoc, the civilian death tolls reaching previously unseen
heights. Just a few days ago, another girls school was poisoned, which makes at
least six schools for girls targeted in the last few months. Afghan teachers
and principals along with government officials have been arrested as a part of
the these horrendous acts. It’s hard to imagine who would target innocent
children. Yet, it happens, again and again. In the face of this and other
difficult, even devastating realities in our world, the light of hope is often
made very dim.
So
what of these three things: faith, hope, love. These are our watchwords; they
are cornerstones of our lives with God. They are at the very heart of God which
means that they should also be at the heart of our lives with God and with one
another. Faith, hope, and love. As much as they are separate ideas, they are
also so intertwined that they cannot ever be fully distilled from the other. To
have faith in God requires hope that
God will make good on all the promises that have been made. To have hope is to believe that despite the evidence to the
contrary, love is possible. As J.R.R. Tolkien once said as a part of his Lord of the Rings trilogy, “Though the
world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still
there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is mingled with grief,
love grows perhaps the greater."[1] Though we may not see it,
hope means that we believe that love
is working in the world, mending and healing even the impossible wounds that we
carry around with us.
And,
this is all very good news. Except that most of the time, we don’t live like we believe it. We are so beat
down that one foot in front of the other is as good as it gets, and on some
days, for some of us, even that is a stretch. It is from this place, from this
dark and deep place of pain, that our psalmist cries out to God, saying, “Out of
the very depths, I cry to you O Lord.” This is how it all begins. And, thank
God for the psalmist and his courage to give voice to the suffering that he is
experiencing. I wish we would follow his lead more often. Out of all that he
utters in these eight verses, his naming of where he is, just how far gone he has become, this is an
incredible act of bravery. And, as they say, naming the problem is half the
battle. This is exactly what he does when he calls out to God, asking for an
audience, recognizing that he is lost and in need of being saved by someone
other than himself.
I
have to wonder how our psalmist landed in these depths in the first place. Was
it a result of his choices or someone else's? Could it have been natural
disaster or just plain bad luck? We really have no way of knowing, which is one
reason this psalm has the power to resonate with so many people. People end up
in the depths for many reasons-- too many to account for here. No doubt, there
are times when our choices yield very painful consequences. But, sometimes we
have little control of the way that life unfolds around us. Often, it is the
choice of someone else which has a ripple effect whether on a single
relationship, a family, or a whole community, bringing with it a cloud of darkness.
Blame and pain are not always partners in crime. Think about Job or even the
cross. There was no reason for either Job or Jesus to be cast into the pit, but
they both were. This is life. As my own father has reminded me whenever I have
struggled with my own suffering and grief, at times, life is just plain tragic.
It hurts. It brings us to our knees.
When
the psalmist mentions iniquities, he opens the door to the reality of sin, of a
creation that is cracked and broken apart. Yet, he does not claim these
iniquities for himself or place the cause of his pain elsewhere. Instead what
he does is make a subtle point. Wherever the blame may lie, at the end of the
day, suffering is a rampant issue. The whole human family is threatened by the
broken shards of glass which are continually shattered by sin-- individual,
communal, collective-- so where do we go from here?
Over
these eight verses, the setting of our psalm doesn’t change. We begin in the
depths and we end there, too. But, what does change is the psalmist's outlook
on the darkness that surrounds him. With some time and maybe even a little
perspective, and most importantly, growing patience, he remembers something
that he had forgotten. Even in the pit, with no light in sight, with nothing
but darkness as company, he remembers God. He remembers that God is still at
work. This is hope. It is what the psalmist holds on to when there is literally
nothing else.
Like
every good poet, our psalmist helps us to see the significance of waiting, by
his use of repetition. We he says, “My soul waits for the Lord more than those
who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning,” he gives
us a palpable example of the difficulty of waiting. I am willing to bet that
every one of us has had the pre-dawn shift of watch at one time or another in
our military careers, even me. It’s
the hardest shift because, even when we know, inevitably that the sun will
rise, watching for it to actually happen, is like watching for water to boil.
It’s almost impossible. There is this moment when, despite knowledge of science
and physics and whatever else, it feels like it’s never going to happen.
For
those of us who live in a world of instant gratification, of constant
communication, of texting and updating, and emailing and gchating and more,
waiting is a tall order. It is one of
the hardest things that we will ever do. But, just as it was then, when our
psalmist cried out to God from the depths, the practice of waiting is an
important part of participation in a community of faith, hope, and love. For when
we wait with faith and hope and love, we become witnesses to the work that God
is doing in the world, even here, even now.
One
of my favorite theologians and priests, Henri Nouwen, wrote extensively about
his own struggles with suffering and the prayers he prayed because of the pain
that he experienced deep in his own pit. One of my favorite quotes of his about
hope is this, “When you pray with hope, you turn yourself toward
a God who will bring forth his promises; it is enough to
know that He is a faithful God.”[2] The depths may still be dark, at times pain and grief
may threaten to undo what we love most, but with open hands and hearts, we can
still choose hope. For God has promised to make good out of our ashes. Surely, this
promise is enough. Amen.
Great sermon, Mel - I doubt if students read it now, but Jurgen Moltman's "Theology of Hope," published in the early 1960's, did more to shape my theology than perhaps any other book. Can't wait to see you soon. John A
ReplyDeleteThis was an amazing tonic to read after loosing a friend on Friday, thank you.
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