Hope in Uncertain Times
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, 26th Sunday after Pentecost, November 17th, 2024
Wow, this has been quite the last couple of weeks! The aftermath of the presidential election has left some of our fellow Americans feeling completely elated and triumphant, and others altogether bereft and discouraged about our future as a nation. And most people in Arlington and here at Saint George’s are in the latter group. Roughly 80% of voters registered in Arlington voted for Vice-President Kamala Harris and roughly 20% voted for President-elect Trump. But whomever we voted for, whether we voted with the majority of Americans overall or whether we voted with the majority of people in Arlington, we can all agree that this is the most consequential election of our lifetimes to date. When people are having a hard time agreeing on much of anything right now, we can all generally agree about that, whichever political perspective we are speaking from, that this election signals a major shift in direction. There will be a lot of changes and yet we do not know for sure what initiatives will come to fruition. There is so much uncertainty right now and human beings do not deal very well with uncertainty. So it is especially important for us to be reminded of how we are called to live as Christians during this time. And our reading from Hebrews today has a lot of wisdom to offer us.
“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10: 23-25
The writer of Hebrews sees a problem. A lot of people in their congregation are beginning to think that Jesus’ death and resurrection doesn’t make any difference in the world. They look around and see that not much has changed post-Easter. Sin is still a thing. Evil is persistent. Corrupt power structures remain in tact. This community of early Christians is also being persecuted for their faith. The world they live in does not support them, in fact actively thwarts them, in living as the Gospel calls them to live. They are tired, worn out, discouraged and beginning to lose hope. And losing hope is the absolute worst thing that can happen to a follower of Jesus. So the writer of Hebrews,, the pastor of this congregation, offers them a sermon on the nature of Christian hope and encouragement to hold onto hope at all costs and to keep coming to church. Hope is everything. It drives us forward. It helps us to persevere when nothing around us is giving us a reason to be hopeful. Christian hope is not the same as a blind, sunny optimism. It is not dependent upon our external circumstances. It is a gift from God, rooted, grounded and grown in the soil of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The writer of Hebrews describes Jesus as “our great high priest”. He is the one who perfected the ritual sacrifices of the temple offered to atone for sin. By entering into the messiness of human existence, and giving himself over to be killed at the hands of a corrupt and evil system propagated by the civil and religious authorities of his day, Jesus judged that system to be null and void. He is the great high priest who ends the need for temple sacrifice once and for all because he IS the sacrifice. The sacrifice OF love, FOR love. Not because God wanted his own Son to be a sacrifice, but because the evil powers of this world demanded that sacrifice, and by offering it, Jesus freed us from it. The death dealing ways of this world no longer have dominion over us. He is risen. Jesus liberated us and we stand WITH him, loved, forgiven, and precious in God’s sight. And therein lies our hope. It is a hope that does not come from this world. It is a hope that lives in our heart and sings in our spirit, even in the darkest of times. Good Friday and Easter Day inaugurated a new era of liberation. And yet we live in this liminal time between Jesus’ resurrection and the final realization of God’s perfection of the world on the last day, that day that is approaching, but we do not know when it will come. So we wait- eagerly, expectantly. And until that day, we strive to live as Jesus lived, loving God, loving each other, witnessing to our faith, and coming together as the church to be strengthened and encouraged in our work for justice and peace in this world. And God is with us, empowering us through the gift of hope.
In the immortal words of poet Emily Dickenson,
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
Hope is what will keep our spirits alive, whatever the future holds. Hope is what will help us to keep our hearts open. Hope will enable us to be gracious to others, even and especially when we disagree with them. It helps us to believe that things can change as we work to find even the smallest patch of common ground to stand on. We have to find ways to connect with people who think differently than we do and who have different life experiences from us. We must continue to work for justice and peace for all people, rising each morning to greet the day and asking God to renew our hope, the source of which is within us and beyond us. Our lives are rooted in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and in expectation of the day that he will finally come again to bring all things to perfection, to make all things right. Coming together in worship every Sunday, the very act of gathering in Jesus’ name, is such a powerful thing. When we gather, we remind each other of what God has called us to and our time together reinvigorates us for our ministry in the world. And week in and week out, we hold out the vision of a new heaven and a new earth that will finally, one day, be realized.
“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together…but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10: 23-25