When I read the
text for this week, I couldn’t help but laugh at the passages I keep getting to
preach on. My first sermon was about getting drunk. Then I took on the much
simpler topic of wealth. Now, here we are talking about a super easy theme-hope
in the midst of exile. It’s not that I don’t like the theme of hope. I think it’s
one of the most important and uplifting concepts in the Christian faith. What I
find funny is that I am not exactly a person who has the gift of patience.
There is not a single bone in my body that likes to wait. I walk fast, even
when I have nowhere to be. I get nervous and start twitching in traffic, even
when I'm on the bus and have no way to control it. I don’t like to wait. And as
soon as we see the word hope, we immediately see that the word hope is
intricately connected to waiting. So much so that in Portuguese it is the same
word for both concepts: “Esperar.” Esperar in the sense of wishing or longing for
something to happen and also “esperar” in the sense of waiting for something,
like a bus to arrive. And while we are on the subject of busses, I just have to
say this whole waiting for the bus thing is still a huge challenge for me.
Suffice to say, waiting for the bus has on several occasions given me the
opportunity to practice my patience. Sometimes for up to 2 hours.
Regardless of how
we practice our patience, this topic of hope is extremely important to us as we
enter the period of Advent. It appears that we are nearing the end of the year,
but in the Christian calendar, Advent is the beginning of the year. It's where
we start over. And where do we start? With hope. We start by waiting for a
savior, a messiah, the coming of the kingdom of God. And for people who already
know the end of the story, know that Jesus will be born, sometimes the tendency
is to skip this waiting period to get to Christmas as soon as possible. We sing
Christmas carols as soon as Thanksgiving ends. We see all the decorations and
ornaments on the streets announcing that Christmas has arrived, along with every
sale imaginable to maximize our savings. We want to be off work now to be able
to enjoy a delicious dinner at home with family, and everything else that reminds
us of Christmastime, which actually is actually very culturally relevant. Being
from the U.S., I will never get used to Christmas in the heat. Christmas for me
is abut snow, hot chocolate and fires. I'll never forget the first time I spent
a Christmas here and it shocked me to see a guy arriving at the beach with a
Santa Claus hat and speedo, beer in hand, yelling, "Merry Christmas!"
I thought I had officially seen it all.
However, even with
all the excitement that comes with Christmas, we can’t forget everything that we
have to learn in the meantime, in this waiting period. But aren’t we typically like this, even when
it’s not Christmas? Always wanting to skip the more unpleasant things in our
lives to get to the joy, the happiness, the good stuff? We do everything to
prevent pain and suffering, conflict and tension and yearn for reconciliation
and ease. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. It's good to yearn for
peace, justice and reconciliation, but we need to understand that sometimes in
order to get there you can’t skip this waiting time. Sometimes these things
take time to become realities.
And here, we encounter
the Israelites and the words of Jeremiah. To understand the words of the
prophet, it is important to understand some of the context of the Israelites at
the time the words were written. In this period, they were either already in
exile or were facing an impending exile. The Babylonians would destroy the
city, ransack the temple, capture the majority of the people and lead them away
to exile, leaving only a small remnant behind in Jerusalem. These people did
not have much reason for hope. Families devastated, far from home, no place to
worship God in the midst of a strange people, and oppressed. And if we read the
rest of this chapter in Jeremiah, we will see that this devastation and exile
is actually punishment for their disobedience and wickedness. Sometimes, when
reading this, our tendency would be to feel satisfied that justice was served. We think, "well, it’s their own fault. They
deserve what they get. You reap what you sow." But I can’t help but wonder,
isn’t it true that we all find ourselves in exile at times, and it really
doesn’t matter how we got there? Maybe it is by our own fault-we made a mistake.
We messed up. We did something that we knew we shouldn’t have done and we did
it anyway. We feel far away from God and far away from the people we love. All
of us need God's grace. But sometimes it isn’t even our fault and we find
ourselves exiled. Lack of jobs and money in native lands cause families to find
themselves walking the dangerous road in search of a better life for their
children. Political fights between governments separate families. Here in São
Paulo, a wave of violence is attacking the city as the police and the PCC are
at war once again with each other and people are scared to leave their homes. Sometimes
exile is not even physical. We also see people being exiled and even killed
because of the color of skin, their appearance, their religion, sexuality,
gender, where they live, or even because of political convictions. I imagine
that they also feel far from God, especially if it was in the very name of God that
they were excluded or killed. We cannot forget all the people living in exile
in our world today.
The
reason or motivation behind the exile isn’t the point- whether it was our fault
or not-what matters, both for the Israelites and for the exiles of today is the
word of hope that Jeremiah brought to them. The Lord looked at the whole
situation, wrought with desolation and abandonment
and said: (verse 12) " Thus says the Lord of
hosts: In this place that is waste, without human beings or animals, and in all
its towns there shall again be pasture for shepherds resting their flocks.” God looked beyond the devastation and saw that the story is not over yet; that
these people would still see the day of restoration. "The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will
fulfill the promise I made.” And my hope is that God continues to
look at the world today with those eyes. That God's promise keeps true and
faithful. That God can look beyond any situation of devastation, fear, despair,
grief, loneliness and comfort us with that promise that a new day, a new life, a
new hope will come. Maybe today if the word of the Lord came to those being
exiled, it would sound something like this…
Behold, the days will come, says
the LORD, that:
*Mothers, black, white, Latina, will not suffer the death of
their children.
*Immigrants will not die at the border, fighting for a
better life.
*Women will not be abused by their partners and find
themselves asking the question, "what did I do wrong?"
*The term "hoodlum" will not exist and we will all
be brothers and sisters.
*We will sit at the table of the homeless and they will
offer us their bread.
*The earth will be valued, cared for, and supported.
* Gays and Lesbians and Transgendered people can walk the
streets without fear of being assaulted and can feel free to share the love
that God created them with.
* Prisons are a place of restoration and not punishment.
*Reconciliation between races, social classes, and religions
will be a reality and not just an idea.
*The grace of the Lord shall be poured out upon all women
and men in such a way that no one can doubt their worth as a human being made
in the image and likeness of God.
One
day all this will happen, and in that day it will be a manifestation of God's
kingdom. That is God's promise. But for now, in the middle of the situation of
our world today, this hope seems ridiculous. If you told anyone on the street
that this was the hope you cling to, they would find it absurd and maybe even
laugh in your face. They would call you naive and idealistic. But as Paul tells
the church at Corinth, "The foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of
humans." Sometimes I think hope has to be a little crazy. There's nothing
reasonable about hope. But, then again, there is also nothing reasonable about
God becoming human, about God choosing to enter our journey with us, about God
deciding to be "Emmanuel" or God with us. And it is this Emmanuel, this
Jesus, which Jeremiah points us to. Jesus is the hope in Jeremiah’s words, " a
righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and
righteousness in the land." We need to look to Jesus to see
how he brought this righteousness to the earth. How he embodied the justice of
the Kingdom of God in his words, in his actions, and in his whole being. He
shows us what it means to have hope, how can we walk with this faith and hope
even when it seems crazy. And we, as bearers of that hope and followers of
Jesus, are called to be part of creating justice on earth. We not only wait
with hope but we act with hope
because we see the little lights, the in-breakings, the small signs of what God
is already doing in the world and inviting us to be a part of. That's what
keeps us alive and vibrant even in the most difficult moments of our exiles.
This is what allows us to keep our eyes open, looking beyond the horizon of our
reality. Searching and looking for a savior, a messiah, seeking reconciliation,
justice, restoration, even when they take a while to arrive. We continue
because we have hope. We continue because after all, some things are worth
waiting for.
May the grace of God sustain us and
keep us hoping today and always. Amen.
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