A sermon by Senior Minister John B. McCall, June 15, 2008
Matthew 5:1-5
I missed you last Sunday.
I’m sure every one of you was here, but I wasn’t. I was away for the weekend and spent Saturday in Holden, Massachusetts, in my mother’s girlhood church, for her memorial service and the burial of her ashes. Barbara Warren McCall was a pioneering clergywoman in the United Church of Christ. She was a strong advocate for the full inclusion of women in denominational life, as the first coordinator of the Task Force for Women in Church and Society in the 1970’s. She did all of this after my father’s painfully young death when she was just 52. She knew that hope happens.
Our grieving over her death last October was eased substantially because we had long prayed she might be released from her slow decline over 12 years in the nursing home in California. We didn’t hope for her recovery but for her release. And that prayer was answered.
So, the gathering for the memorial service provided a wonderful opportunity for a family reunion: her two younger brothers and most of their children and grandchildren, and my three siblings – all of us together to look backwards, look foreword, and simply to be together in the moment.
Among the many activities were the obligatory family pictures, configured in many different ways: branch by branch, generation by generation and then one long line of 50 of us arranged by our age – from Uncle Hank, nearly ninety, down through the years to the youngest, just about a year old.
I found myself imagining what life has been like for my two uncles – baptized and raised in that same church where we held my mother’s service. Think of the differences between the world into which he was born and the world as it is today. And I took to heart the comment of one of my old uncles who said “if I were just starting out as a young man in today’s world I don’t know what I’d do. I’m just as happy I’m near the end as near the beginning of life.”
Yes, the world today is substantially different into which my mother was born, or the world into which Jesus was born… on the outside, at least. But I believe the inner life, the life of the spirit, is just the same now, then and forever. For the substance of faith and hope have nothing to do with external realities and everything to do with internal convictions.
It is neither easier nor harder to live hopefully today than it has been at any other time in the world’s history. Ancient humans hoped the saber-toothed tiger would go the other way; that the meager crops would bring a harvest and that the fire wouldn’t go out before the cold weather had passed.
Today we hope we can afford to heat our homes and put food on the table, and put gas in the car.
Regardless of our circumstances, regardless of when we live during the great human story, our souls are the same. Every one of us carries darkness and light, sadness and joy, despair and hope in our souls. Every one of us experiences the agony of defeat and the thrill of victory. Every one of us experiences loneliness and love at some points in our lives.
No, it’s not externals that cause us to look at our lives with hope or despair… it’s what come from the inside. That’s what struck me about the line from Jean Kerr – the American author of Goldilocks and other books, who died in 2003: “Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.”
Whatever you’re bearing, it will pass. Our deep fear is that when we face life’s toughest challenges we’ll get hurt, wounded, overwhelmed, or defeated. Hope says “no” to that fear. It tells the truth that life is difficult. No matter how much or little you have, life is always threatening to take it away.
Scripture and experience both point us toward hope:
First, admit the truth that life is difficult. That’s not a design flaw or cosmic error. That’s the way it is. Accept it and then get on with your life. Period.
Second, recognize that we grow stronger in the hard times and turn flabby in the easy times. None of us is born with physical, spiritual or emotional maturity. We gain it over time, little by little. So look back and trace the path, marks the moments when you grew through adversity.
Third, recognize that God is actually closer to you in the hard times as in the easy – perhaps closer. Madeleine L’Engle, the popular devotional writer, wrote:
I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when the good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.
Fourth, count your blessings. No matter how hard the moment may be, you and I are more blessed than the great multitude of the world’s people. The pain we may suffer for a while is the pain that much of the world suffers all the time.
And, fifth – most important of all, practice your hope; patiently teach yourself that hope means we can trust God now, and will trust God in the future because we have been able to trust God in the past.
God’s love pours into us through the wounded places, the vulnerable places, the broken places. When you’ve got it all together and all dressed up, God can’t get through your armor.
When you figure you can’t hold onto to your rope a minute longer, that’s where God can find an opening.
Some of you have surely come today feeling you’re carrying all you can bear. Life has handed you a dead rat and you can’t get over the hurt or anger or defeat that have grabbed you. Dear friend – don’t give in to despair. Continue to hope.
Some of you have made poor choices and are struggling with the consequences. Your families are falling apart, your sense of security has evaporated; your plans for the future have died; your health and well-being have slipped through your fingers. Dear friend – don’t give in to despair. Continue to hope.
Some of you are tied in knots over things that seem fearsome – you’re knotted with anxiety about what might happen… or might not. And you know the truth that your worry only multiplies the real issues. Dear friend – don’t give in to despair. Continue to hope.
Some of you are at a cross-road, trying to sort out what’s right in your life and what decisions will lead you to a deeper joy and contentment. Dear friend – don’t give in to despair. Continue to hope.
Hope happens. Life doesn’t always give us happy endings; not always Hollywood love stories, but surely in the deeper, truer things. For the hope we grasp is the confidence that God is present; God is at work; God knows and sees and passionately cares for us.
And hope assures us there is life beyond this life in which our burdens are lifted, our sins forgiven, our wounds are healed.
As the Apostle said so well suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
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Father’s Day 2008 – Pastor’s Prayer – written by John B. McCall
With tender hearts we gather today, O God, and thank you for your steadfast love. Especially we thank you for fathers:
• for those who taught us with patient wisdom, and those who seemed never to get it quite right.
• For those who showed a quiet inner strength and those who couldn’t keep it together.
• For those whose outer style represented their inner dignity and for those who wore knee socks and sandals with their shorts.
We thank you for those who were raised to believe that real men never show their feelings and for those who discovered that men have feelings too and tears are just as masculine as a stiff upper lip.
We thank you for every father who gets down to his children’s level so they can grow up to his…
• For every dad who remembers the best gift he can give his children is to love their mother; and every dad who wants to hug his children but can’t be that vulnerable…
• For every dad who sits in the stands, and cheers until he’s hoarse, and coaches Little League because he loves kids even if he hates baseball;
• For every dad who frames the crayon drawings of his two year old, and who patiently endures it when his teenager acts as though he’s the stupidest man on earth
• We lift up prayers for every man who wants to be a father and isn’t; for every man who learned to be a good dad though he didn’t have a good teacher…
• And for each father who experiences the deep pain of separation from his children. Today we pray to understand, or at least for the grace to love our own dads in particular – those who deserve only praise and those whom we must struggle to forgive; those who sit beside us and those whose hand we can no longer shake or caress.
Generous and patient God, some of us speak of you as Father – because we know you to be wise, and strong, patient and tenacious in your love. We know our dads can’t all be like that, but surely, today, we acknowledge who they are and what we wish they had been; we recognize that some are superb and some played out their own particular pain in our lives.
So with all the other prayers we offer, grant us a deeper sense of inner peace and we come to you in silence…