Beyond our Imaginations….Lies Hope

By Rev. Marcia Moret Sietstra

Spirit of Peace UCC; April 15, 2007

John 20: 19-31

Let us pray:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together, be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock, our redeemer, and friend.  Amen.

There is a minister at a large, progressive church in Minneapolis named Jim Gertmenian, whose sermons I enjoy reading occasionally.  He is an articulate, intelligent, deep thinker, who writes well and who speaks with honesty about life and faith, about things we can know and things he admits are simply a mystery.  This week, as I read a recent sermon of his, I was a little surprised that, in it, he wrote about a period of depression that he went through last summer.   I don’t know why I was surprised, since depression is so very common.  He talked about how hard it was to feel hopeful when he was in the darkness of depression, how day after day he wanted to feel hopeful but couldn’t.  Nearly every one can identify with him, I’m sure, because in every life there are times when hope is hard to come by, and seems just out of reach.  Eventually the darkness lifted and this minister was able to wake up each day feeling hopeful again.     

Besides reading that sermon, a couple of other things happened this week that got me thinking about hope.  I was leaving the new HyVee megastore on Monday, and as I drove toward the grocery pick-up lane, I saw a woman who was once my daughter’s Sunday School teacher, decades ago.  I see her from time to time, and we always have a lovely chat, as we fondly catch up.  She must be over 80 years old now.  About 5-6 years ago, her husband died, and I knew it would be very hard for her to get used to living alone, because he was a very dominant person in their relationship, and she was accustomed to being “taken care of.”  Well, when I saw her Monday, she was walking hand-in-hand with a widower she met last year.  Holding hands as they crossed the parking lot, laughing and chatting away, she had a look of pure joy and relaxation with him—the look of young lovers walking in the park.  It was fun to watch them for a moment, and I thought to myself how little she could have imagined this kind of happiness when her husband died.  When a spouse dies, it is difficult to hope for that which lies beyond our imagination.

Another thing happened this week that got me thinking about hope.  I was on the NPR website, reading transcripts of Krista Tippet’s show, “Speaking of Faith,” which I highly recommend to you.  On this program, Krista Tippet interviewed two South Africans who have been involved in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.  For those of you who may not know it, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a daring experiment begun in the late 1990’s after the fall of the white supremacist government of South Africa.  Instead of holding Nuremberg-type trials for the leaders who suppressed, tortured and murdered resisters during the decades of apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission provides a different kind of justice.  It gives political criminals a chance to repent of their crimes, and offers the possibility of forgiveness and amnesty in exchange for a full and honest confession in the presence of those whom they have wounded.  Why? Not because the seriousness of their crimes is minimized, but because a new generation of South African leaders understood that their society needed healing much more than it needed revenge.

In what is often described as a miracle, South Africa transitioned from a cruel, rigid, apartheid system in which black people were beaten into submission, to a democracy with freely elected black leaders.  Truth telling has begun to build a foundation for reconciliation between black and white citizens, between the newly freed and their oppressors.  They still confront practical and moral risks, but South Africa has succeeded in laying a moral foundation for the future, under conditions that usually lead to new cycles of violence. 

Krista Tippet summarized her interview with a white theologian named Charles Villa-Vicencio and a black woman psychologist named Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela.  Both work with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  Krista said this about them:  I have a vivid memory of experiencing these two individuals in person, together, after I had spoken with them separately.  That they should know each other and travel together would have been unimaginable for the larger part of both of their lives.  Pumla told me that, until close to the end of apartheid, she would not have wanted a white person as a friend.  But this white South African man and this black South African woman positively glowed in each other’s presence.  Their mutual admiration was tangible and infectious.  And they took such delight in the wondrous fact…that South African history had given them each other as friends.  Charles Villa-Vicencio and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela remind us of the widest angle of a sacred vision:  the notion that human life and human history always contain possibilities that transcend our imaginations and the facts at our disposal.¹ [Repeat]

I think Krista Tippet was talking about hope in that sentence…hope is trusting that human life contains possibilities that transcend our imaginations.  Over and over in life, we see possibilities that we did not dream were possible.  A minister survives a depression and darkness that he saw no way out of at the time.  An old woman loses her husband, but in time discovers a new lover in the space where her first love once walked.  South Africa, a nation consumed by violence, becomes a model of peace and reconciliation for the whole world to see, and forgiveness fills the space where revenge normally sets.  These are signs that encourage hope, because they lie beyond what we dare hope for so much of the time.   

Recently my colleague at First Congregational Church, Kathy Timpany, wrote an excellent article about hope.  She told about a man who came in off the street, whose appearance and weeping told her how very difficult his life had become.   For him, hope was the hardest thing in the world to find.  She told him that God was with him no matter what happened, and encouraged him to trust that he would be given the strength that he needed.  She said later that she wished she could have given him a little toy Weeble.   Remember Weebles?   Those little egg-shaped people kids used to play with.  If you knock them down from one side, they pop back up.  If you knock them down from the other side, they stand back up.  If you hold them down for a long time, they stand back up when you let go. Weebles wobble but they won’t fall down.  “This is the power of hope,” theologian Jurgen Moltmann said, “to stand up after defeat.”

As I read the post-Easter stories in every gospel this week, I realized the disciples were like weebles that were seriously wobbly with fear and confusion after Jesus’ death.  In our text today, Thomas dares not believe that Jesus’ spirit could be with them, because the facts suggest that Jesus is as dead as a doornail, and Thomas does not want to let wishful thinking get in the way of the facts.  I’d be thinking the same thing if I was Thomas.  I imagine fear is also contending with hope for all the disciples.

Yet, in the Easter story, it is hope that proves valid.  Jesus invites Thomas into the holy mystery of his presence, not in the way Thomas or the other disciples expected him to be present, but in some transformed way—perhaps in spirit. There is so much metaphor in these stories that I would not even presume to guess what form Jesus took, or just how hope was restored to these wobbly disciples, but in the end, they got back up, and went out to powerfully preach and teach in Jesus’ name, about the God who they believed transforms life in amazing ways. 

Have you ever wondered why the early church chose to celebrate Easter in the spring?  It’s not because that’s when Jesus died; it’s because in spring we are surrounded by signs of new life, encouraging us to hope.  The cold and snow of winter’s ice over the decaying plants gives way to new life sprouting everywhere.  Dead-looking bulbs sprout tender green shoots that transform into gorgeous flowers.  Spring reminds us that the fragile life around us is constantly changing, and awakens us to the incredible ways God transforms life in ways we could never imagine.  This is the rhythm of nature…this is the nature of God… and a reason to always have hope.

There is another thing that happened to me this week that got me thinking so much about hope.  I spent time with Mindy Unterbrunner’s family—with her husband Eric, and her parents Dick and Becky Frerichs and her sisters Tanya and Amber.  Mindy, as many of you know, underwent brain surgery 3 weeks ago last night, to fix an arterial venal malformation.  It has been a particularly difficult week for Mindy’s family, who had hoped Mindy would be more fully awake by now.  Of course it is hard not to worry when the stress and fatigue of days has turned into weeks.   And yet, this family is holding up very well, in spite of the fact that some days are less encouraging than others. In circumstances like these, hope is what a family clings to. 

But this week, I found fear nagging at my hopefulness, and I imagine they did too. 

One is reminded of the Psalmists who searched for hope.  They write:  Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord, and Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?   The last two days, I have meditated on how one builds up hope, when fear begins to creep in.  What we don’t want to do is encourage false hope, which is an avoidance of reality.  That’s an important distinction:  hope is not mindless optimism in spite of the facts, but it is a choice to trust in God’s creativity.  Hope is, in some ways, a middle ground between fear and naïve optimism, a “strong-heartedness.”  True hope is built on faith in a good and loving God who cares for Mindy and all of us, a God who has shown us to be a God we can trust. 

In a case like Mindy’s, where we crave hope in the midst of serious brain injury and the worry of an uncertain future, hope may come in the form of a community that rallies around her, supporting her family with prayers, cards, fundraisers, and other signs of encouragement.  One of the blessed things that we can do for each other, as part of a community, is when any one of us risks losing hope, the rest of us can hope for her.  And if there is a day when any one of us can’t see the way ahead, the rest of us can see for him.  There is a comfort in knowing that we are all in this together, that we all belong, and that we are all safe in the arms of God, no matter what happens.²

In the days and weeks ahead, I want Dick and Becky and the other family members to know that we will hold them up with our hope on the days when they find it hard to stay hopeful, and we will lift them up with our prayers, on the days when their hearts are full of worry.  And that the Holy Spirit will intercede for Mindy, with sighs too deep for words, when she does not have the words to pray herself.  It is the same spirit Jesus breathed on his disciples when he said, “Peace be with you.”

So as we enter the season of Easter, may our eyes be wide open to see the signs of hope in the world—in joy where there was depression in a minister’s life, in new love that replaced loneliness in a widow’s life, in peace where there was once horror across South Africa, in the new green growth of springtime, and especially today in the hope for health and vitality in a young woman who is held in the arms of God in every moment.  Let’s sing of the Easter resurrection story and know once again that it is a metaphor for all of life, which is always filled with possibilities that lie beyond our imaginations.  Amen.