by Cecilia Kingman Miller, Guest Preacher

A sermon given March 30, 2003

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

It’s very good to be here again with all of you this morning. I am, as Brent said, a member of this church. I found my calling to ministry here in this church. I learned everything I know about ministry and about the purpose of the church here, among all of you.

I am extraordinarily proud to be a daughter of this church. Everywhere I go, when I tell people I’m from First Unitarian in Portland, they say, "Tell us what it’s like there." And I puff up with pride and tell them all about you and the wonderful work you are doing here. I am so very proud of you, because you are a light for others to follow—not just in this city but in our Unitarian Universalist Association.

In preparing to be with you today, I read some old newsletters from the last ten years. And in doing so, I found a theme—a theme of hope. This church’s long history of speaking out for the vulnerable and marginalized, over one hundred and fifty years of working for justice, and all of your current efforts—to promote racial healing, a decent education for all children, and economic fairness—this ministry arises out of hope. A hope that things might be different from what we know now.

I chose this topic of hope before the outbreak of war, and now I’m so glad I did. Hope is necessary at these times, and yet it can seem so fleeting. As we hear the news each day, our hearts are burdened by fear, confusion and perhaps even anger. Regardless of whether we support or oppose the decisions of our political leaders, the turmoil of our times weighs heavily on us, and despair can begin to wrap its fingers around our hearts. And so I want to share with you today what we might call a practice of hope.

It is innate in us to long for a nobler world, a better life than we know today. Our hymns and readings point to this longing. It seems we humans are hardwired to imagine more goodness than we know now, to hope and strive for a different and better world.

Religion is one of the means by which we engage this hope. The power of religion lies in what sociologists call "the alternative imagination." This is the ability of religions to posit a different world—a different future than the one we now can see. Religions are, almost by definition, utopic endeavors. Religions say, "Things are supposed to be better than this."

Of course, you realize that no one would practice a faith that said, "Things are supposed to be worse than this."

Today, I want to share with you some lessons from the Christian practice of hope.

Now, I know that, sometimes, Unitarian Universalists can get a little nervous about Christianity. Let me encourage you to hold on to your seats for a bit here. Christianity, part of our Unitarian Universalist heritage, is a complex and multi-faceted religion. I want to distinguish here between two kinds of Christianity—theological Christianity and ethical Christianity.

Theological Christians believe that Jesus was divine, the son of God sent here to redeem the world. Ethical Christians believe that Jesus was not divine, but a man, and yet a man of great holiness and wisdom, whose teachings are a path of peace, integrity and transformative love. As you know, Unitarianism (and Universalism) began as Christian religions. Unitarianism began in the 1500s during the Reformation, in resistance to the doctrine of the Trinity, which named Jesus divine. Unitarians were ethical Christians. Some of our illustrious forebears here in the United States—Emerson, Thoreau, Channing—were this type of Christian. Our Unitarian brothers and sisters in Transylvania practice this kind of Christianity still today.

And lately I have found that this portion of our religious history provides something I deeply need at these times. Ethical Christianity has a particular emphasis upon a radical hope that has been feeding my soul these long days. It’s not the hope so often associated with the Christian faith—of being saved by Christ’s return. Instead, it is a challenging, demanding, and nurturing kind of hope.

Listen to these lines from the book of Hebrews:

These words are part of a letter written by a church leader to an isolated community of Christians, members of the second generation since the death of Jesus. Scholars say this community was most likely living in Rome. They were suffering persecution by the imperial government, and longing for relief.

This small band had been told by the church leaders that Jesus would return at any moment, and bring with him the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom would be a new era of peace and justice. Other names for this Kingdom are the "beloved community," the "reign of love," the "promised land," "Jordan" as our hymn sang, and the "city of light."

Undoubtedly, these folks were beginning to wonder when this much lauded return of Jesus would come. They had been told that they must be prepared at all times for his return—and yet the wait was becoming much longer than originally understood. They were growing impatient, and beginning to doubt their faith and their leaders.

The author of Hebrews has the task of keeping them in the community—of urging them to faithfulness, in spite of their impatience and growing doubt and despair. He urges them to live as if the kingdom had already come—to pursue peace with everyone, care for the weak and resist oppression. But they are under the hand of the Roman Empire. Therefore, there are long passages on what it means to keep faith—to hope and wait and pray in longing for things yet unrevealed.

Over time, as Jesus did not return, his followers came to understand his message differently. Some sects of the Christian church interpreted Jesus’ words, and the words of the early church leaders, as addressing another realm, that of life after death. Heaven. They understood the message of Christianity to be otherworldly—of another world.

But that is not the message of ethical Christianity. Ethical Christians assert that Jesus was not trying to show his followers what life after death would be like. He wasn’t even promising to return and inaugurate this new era of justice. Jesus was trying to show his followers what this world ought to be like. He was expressing a real hope for the future of the real world.

The hope taught by Christianity is a radical and dangerous thing—a faith in a future that will challenge all our notions and convictions, all our structures of power, all our understandings of human relations.

This is a future without greed, without war, without poverty. Jesus lived that future—he modeled it for his followers in the way that he ministered to the poor and sick and outcast. He said the kingdom of God is coming, and that this is what it will look like: all will be fed. All will be free. All will be loved. In that future, the longed for tidal wave of justice arrives.

But all too often, we despair of such possibility. We say it can’t happen. We say that liberation will not come. We say that suffering has always been with us, as have war and the poor and all other sorrows of history. And we deny the possibility of the arrival of the kingdom of God.

What causes this crisis of hope? I think we lose hope when we place our expectations for liberation outside of ourselves. When we believe that some force beyond us will act to rectify the world’s wrongs, whether it is history, or governments, or God. We lose hope when we realize, like the early Christians, that God has not come to save us from the messes we have made here on earth. Then we say—see, there is no hope.

I myself get caught in this trap. I was raised Baptist, and I was told quite clearly that God would arrive and set things straight on earth. Although I no longer believe this, when I see what terrible things we have done, I want so desperately for God to come and fix it all. And when God doesn’t, I get mad, and sad.

I recently heard another minister say, not too long ago, that there would be no moment in human history when God would act to bring in that holy kingdom. I was startled by that statement. "How dare someone say that," I thought. "And he’s a minister!" But then I began to reflect more upon what he said.

And I think my colleague, in fact, was right. There will not be a moment in history when God will save humanity. The early Christians misunderstood. It is not that the Messiah will return and bring with him justice and mercy. The early church waited, and waited, believing that their beloved teacher would return quickly to them, and bring with him the reign of God. But nowhere does Jesus make this explicit promise.

But remember what he did say: the kingdom of God is in your midst, and the kingdom of God is at hand.

The reign of holiness is always present, as possibility. God will not enter in and set things straight for us, while we sit around in pious postures. Rather, God enters, over and over, when human beings act. We must do the work of forgiveness and reconciliation; we must feed the hungry and free the prisoners. It is we who must make room for God’s entry. Just as Jesus did, when he dared to hope and make room for holy possibility. When he dared to act as a faithful servant of God—to treat all with love, to refuse the injustices of his time, to deny the power of oppression and greed.

This is the kind of radical hope that fuels great change. This hope has been expressed by people acting to liberate themselves throughout history. Listen to these lines from Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright turned dissident turned statesman (turned retired statesman now). He writes:

Diana Eck tells us:

"We have to practice and refine our human capacity for such expectant and wakeful hope."

What does it mean to practice this hope? It means we act, we work for the kingdom, as the old gospel hymn sang. But don’t be afraid, my overburdened friends, for this is work that you already know how to do. You have been doing it faithfully here, all along. This hope calls some of us into international work, and some of us to heal the earth, and others to comfort the broken-hearted. This hope pulls some of us out into the streets, and it draws some of us to care for small children, or to sit at the bedsides of the dying.

All of these acts are acts of hope. These tasks, which you have faithfully performed, these are the miracles and cures and healing wells that the poet speaks of.

When we work for the beloved community, we create hope in the world and in ourselves. It frees us from those feelings of frustration, of sorrow, of uselessness in the world. Our work not only begins to create that new future we are striving for, but it refines our capacity for hope. And then we realize that a further shore is reachable from here . . . if we are willing to row like mad for it.

This radical hope of Christianity can be a bit unsettling. It is not the religion of the way things are—not the religion of the status quo. But remember, I said that this hope also nurtures us, because it calls us into a loving community. When Jesus said, "the kingdom of God is in your midst," that you he addresses is decidedly and deliberately plural.

We are not expected, nor encouraged, to strive for this future by ourselves. We are called to do so in community, in covenant with one another. The writer of Hebrews urged the early Christians to keep steadfast in their church gatherings. He knew they would need one another in the days of struggle to come. Like them, we need one another now. For it is in our togetherness that we find our strength and solace.

At times like these, the covenant of this community needs extra care. There may be confusion or even disagreements ahead: about the politics of the day and the proper response of the church. How do we navigate these times and protect this community? By maintaining what we might call vigilant tenderness with each other. Vigilant tenderness. By listening carefully to each other, and speaking with love. By remembering the basic tenets of our Unitarian Universalist faith: love, compassion and respect for all people.

You see, our coming together each Sunday is also an act of hope. This church—every church—is a foreshadowing, a glimpse, a promise of the beloved community. Here we bolster one another’s hope, we strengthen each other’s hearts, and we heal one another’s wounds. If we can practice that radical hope here, then we will be prepared to carry it forth into the world.

So do not despair, my friends, for you are not alone in these troubling times. You are held in the embrace of this beloved community. And you are held in the eternal embrace of the loving God, who sees your practice of hope and rejoices in it. So be it. Amen.

PRAYER

Holy God of Love: As we face the days ahead, help us to practice hope without ceasing. Help us to care for our brothers and sisters, and to speak out for goodness and mercy, so that the tidal wave of justice will rise up, and hope and history will at last rhyme. And help us to know your presence, your love, in the arms of this beloved community, that we might gain strength and courage for all the days of our lives. Amen.
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Copyright 2003, Cecilia Kingman Miller, Guest Preacher.  All rights reserved