Hope Now?

I am grateful to God for giving me the stewardship theme “Giving Hope” some weeks ago. I had no idea how helpful and pertinent it would be for this historical moment.

Because I’ll be very honest with you all — I don’t feel very hopeful at this moment. I’ve got to preach the third and final sermon on Giving Hope this Sunday, but I am trembling at the thought.  How can I inspire all of you when I feel so lousy? How can I dare to preach on the idea of hope when I am frankly struggling to muster some up?

Please understand that I am not trying to be political in the sense of favoring a party or ideology; rather, I am expressing my very legitimate concern for the welfare of immigrants, refugees, Muslims, people of color, and women in this country. The inflammatory rhetoric voiced by our president-elect in the lead-up to this election should be disavowed and rejected by every person of faith, particularly those who follow Jesus.

Can I honestly say that I have an “expectation of God’s good future” (my definition of Biblical hope) as I look at the next four years?

Not at this particular moment.

But that’s the funny thing about hope. Hope works best in the darkest times, in the morning afters. In that little poem by Emily Dickinson, hope — the thing with feathers — sings on, wordlessly, without stopping, “and sweetest in the gale is heard.” In other words, when the wind is at its worst, the song of hope is cherished most.

I can’t hear it right now, but I will. I know that I will.

If anything, I must buckle down and re-commit myself to giving hope. I may not have much hope myself, but there are things that I can do to help others begin to expect a good future. I will continue to do everything I can to extend hospitality to strangers, at least until that wall is built and refugees are banned from entering the country. I will continue to read to children and lead mission trips and teach Bible lessons and lead worship.

And I will keep preaching.

It reminds me of a classic story about John Wesley, founder of Methodism. Before John’s famous conversion moment at Aldersgate, he struggled with his faith, and wondered if he should stop preaching since he didn’t have faith himself. He asked a missionary friend, Peter Böhler, if he should stop preaching. Peter said, “By no means!”

John asked, “But what can I preach?”

Peter answered, “Preach faith till you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith.”

I’m going to steal this quote and alter it slightly …

I plan to preach hope until I have it; and then, because I have it, I will preach hope.

See you Sunday morning.

Looking for a Judgment-Free Zone

Over the weekend, I spent some time with pastoral colleagues at the Dallas Comedy House. The founder of DCH, Amanda Austin, taught a workshop on how to use the principles of comedy in preaching.

All of that was interesting, but what got my attention was her explanation about why she started the comedy club in the first place. She told us that she had simply fallen in love withcomedy, wanted others to fall in love with it, too, and then wanted to help others get up on stage to do it.

What I found fascinating was that Amanda realizes that she doesn’t simply run a comedy club; she understands that her main business is NOT primarily about bringing in audiences on Friday and Saturday nights, and getting them to buy lots of drinks.

No, her business model is very different. Instead, she has created a community of people who are learning how to do comedy in a variety of ways — improv, stand-up, sketch, podcasting, etc. She explained that she has worked hard to make DCH a judgment-free zone so that people will feel free to express themselves and open up to the creative spirit.

One of my colleagues suddenly perked up and said, “You’ve created a church, basically! At least what a church ought to be like!”

Amanda said, “I’ve never thought about it like that, but … yeah, I guess you’re right!”

Ever since, I’ve been musing on the similarities between running a church and a comedy club. What if I viewed my central job to be, not running worship services on Sunday morning, but helping people fall in love with Jesus? That’s why I became a pastor in the first place — I love this guy named Jesus. As much as possible, I want to be like him, because he knew how to love and do justice in the midst of a frighteningly evil world. He is everything the Scriptures say he is — bread, life, water, resurrection!

I want you to love him, too. And I want you to also live like him. Maybe I should spend more time helping you all do that, rather than trying to get butts in seats and checks in plates on Sunday morning. Maybe I can find ways to spend more time teaching and praying with you, rather than leading committees and doing paperwork.

All I want is for all of you to catch the spirit of Jesus, to get excited about who he is, to get Christ inside of you (see last week’s column), and to live the kingdom life. When those things start to happen in you and me, then the church becomes a very different kind of place. The church becomes a liberating, life-giving, happy kind of place.

And it becomes a judgment-free zone, just like the Dallas Comedy House.

That’s my biggest hope for the church. Most churches struggle with this judgment thing. It’s so easy to slip into a self-righteous, holier-than-thou attitude in church settings. We all do it, because human nature is prone to putting others down in an effort to feel better about oneself.

But the number one lesson we learn from Jesus is that we should be very, very careful about casting judgments. Need I remind you what he said about this very subject? “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:1-4)

Next time you catch yourself ready to criticize, complain, or make fun of one of your fellow church members, decide to go judgment-free. Let it drop. Let it slide. Give him the benefit of the doubt; realize that whatever it is that has got you all worked up probably doesn’t matter in the long run.

And get back to following that guy named Jesus. That’s where the action is!

Back to Hope

People keep saying that we are in uncharted waters, that we live in a political era that is unprecedented, that these are dangerous times.

I don’t know about all that; if we knew our history a little better, we might realize that there have been contentious elections before, even some tinged with the threat of violence. America has faced a civil war, world wars, a great depression, not to mention racist and xenophobic tendencies. Presidents have been assassinated, and riots have rocked our cities in the past.

Every generation gets sucked into the lie that their generation is the harbinger of the Apocalypse, that the end of the world is right around the corner, or that the next election determines the future of everything that exists and has ever been and ever will be.

I’m skeptical of all the doom-saying, the dire predictions, the gloom. However, I also can’t help but notice that things are “darker.” There is a mean streak that runs through our country. Something is out-of-kilter.

And then there’s us — the Church. People who love Jesus and claim his name. People who call themselves “Christian.”

Something seems a little out-of-kilter with us, too. We seem to reflect the same mean streak; we appear to have the same fault lines running through us. We are just as torn, ragged, depressed.

This is not a good sign, brothers and sisters. Because at the core of our faith and religious claims, there exists a divine thing called “hope.” To be a Christian means to have a hope deep down inside us which sustains and drives us. We don’t succumb to despair that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, because we know it isn’t. We know — I mean, we truly know with all our mind and strength — that the world belongs to God, and that God is working to bring shalom to this earth.

I’m reminded of Paul’s pointed question to the Corinthians as he observed their loss of hope and faith: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” (II Cor. 13:5)

Jesus Christ IN you? That sounds kind of weird, a little mystical and supernatural. Did Paul mean to say that?

Yes, I think so. It’s not the first time he makes this reference. In Galatians 2:20, Paul claims, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” In Ephesians 3:17, Paul says that he is praying “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” And in Colossians 1:27, Paul speaks of a mystery which he has been commissioned to proclaim; he describes the mystery itself as “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

This means the point of being a Christian is NOT that we must try harder at being like Jesus, or that we have to adhere to a rigid code of ethics and behavior; rather, the Christian life is one of being filled by Christ’s own presence. We have Jesus within us, closer to us than our breath, closer than our thoughts and prayers. We have God’s own power within, coursing through our veins.

And so in these difficult times, when lies and deception run rampant through all parts of our culture, and there is a thinly-veiled suspicion of violent anger, the people who are called by Jesus’ name will also act and look like Jesus.

So let me echo Paul’s question to all of you:

Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?