08.20.2017         Preaching Text: “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.” (Romans 11:32)

Years ago I heard a story that probably isn’t true, but should be.

Supposedly there was a planned KKK rally in 1974 on the Boston Common in response to the court mandated desegregation of the Boston public school system by means of forced busing.

As the story goes, the public lined up along the proposed route the city had granted to the white supremacist group. But instead of responding with violence and outrage, the protestors simply laughed at the ridiculous conga line of misguided pinheads.

Again, I don’t know if this actually happened – I wasn’t there – but I hope it did. Either way, this strikes me as precisely the right sort of reaction to what was, even at that time, an outdated relic of our nation’s past.

By the time the 1970s had rolled around, this once-powerful group with roots going back to the Civil War was hard-pressed to garner much of a following anywhere in America. This publicity stunt, in other words, was just that, a publicity stunt.

Today, almost nobody supports the Klan or any other neo-Nazi group, regardless of what the media or our politicians tell us. The statistics prove it.

This is not to ignore their hateful philosophy nor to deny the fact of slavery and its dehumanization of a whole race of people. But it must put in perspective. I simply do not believe there are vast swaths of our nation who hold to these views. Yet this is precisely what we’re being led to believe.

What troubles me perhaps more than anything is the way our culture is becoming a kind of tribal society prone to self-righteousness, “othering,” and, all too often, violence. Allow me to explain.

In the August 10th edition of the Washington Post, two days before the shocking events in Charlottesville, VA, there was an article featuring a photograph of a young couple who, we are told, self-identify as “anarchists.” The photo had all the markings of a glamour shot right out of the Style Section.

The woman is wearing a black bandana around her neck (that easily could be put over her face to mask her identity), while the man, wearing designer sunglasses, is casually brandishing a baseball bat on his shoulder.

The caption reads: “By day they are graphic designers, nonprofit workers and students. But outside their 9-to-5 jobs, they call themselves anarchists – bucking the system, shunning the government and sometimes even rioting and smashing windows to make a point.” Well isn’t that special?

They are part of the so-called Antifa group, short for “anti-fascist.”

This is the same group that, during the inauguration this past January, used wooden poles and pieces of concrete to break storefronts and smash newspaper boxes, this according to the indictment filed in D.C. Superior Court. More than 200 people were arrested and six police officers injured. City officials tallied the damage from the rioting at about $100,000.

The group also is generally believed to be responsible for the destruction and violence that occurred not long ago in Berkeley, Oakland, and even at my mother’s alma mater, Middlebury College, to name but a few.

And it was this same group that showed up at the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville. Like the white supremacist group, eyewitnesses reported that the Antifa came with masks, baseball bats, firearms, shields, helmets, and fire spray cans. Though I heartily share their opposition to the white supremacists and their rhetoric, the intent of the Antifa was clearly not peaceful.

If the Post story is any indication, our culture is in danger of ‘mainstreaming’ violence, of endorsing mob-rule, as if such a thing should ever be deemed acceptable. As a Christian, I find this simply appalling.

In the aftermath of Charlottesville, a pastoral letter was sent out from the national leadership of the U.C.C. penned by the Connecticut Conference Minister, Kent Siladi, a friend and genuinely nice guy. I was truly saddened that the letter seemed to approve, tacitly if not overtly, the tactics of the Antifa.

“We confess,” the letter begins, “that the events in Charlottesville are systemic and communal expressions of white privilege and racism that continue to pervade our nation’s spiritual ethos.” It then goes on to identify various areas within American culture where such injustice presumably resides.

The statement then concludes, “Our local UCC churches must be true solidarity partners with those who march in the streets.” The letter goes on to urge the church to “resist, agitate, inform, and comfort.”

After reading this I thought again about the Joseph story we heard this morning. Many years after his brothers, with utter callousness and disregard, had sold him into slavery, Joseph confronts them.

What he does next simply astounds. Rather than seeking revenge and retribution, which he had every right to demand, he forgives them!

“[So] do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here…,” Joseph tells his stunned brothers. “[It] was not you who sent me here, but God…”

So I ask: does this story make any sense at all? What about Charlottesville?

That there was unconscionable cruelty during the years of slavery is indisputable, or should be. And that there was legal racism enshrined in the Jim Crow laws for the next hundred years after the Civil War is also indisputable.

To be honest, I don’t know what could ever possibly be done to erase or make up for that sort of injustice. Will taking down Confederate statues accomplish this? It might help a little, but would it be enough?

A few months ago, I spoke about an article we had read in the Forum. It was a brilliant diagnosis of the roots of the current culture of ‘victimology.’ The author argues that one of the effects of our increasingly secular society is that we’ve lost touch with the traditional religious means of obtaining forgiveness. In short, we no longer know what to do with our ever-burgeoning guilt.

Because our technological and scientific advancements have helped us to eliminate much suffering in the world, suffering our ancestors could never have avoided, we are tempted to think we can solve every human problem.

This, of course, is impossible. Which only compounds our guilt. If you combine the basic human desire for a clear conscience with the absence of any real means of obtaining it, what does one do with the mass of unresolved guilt that weighs heavily upon the human soul?

Thus, overwhelmed with guilt and without the means to eradicate it, we project it onto others. In our quest for justice, we ourselves are relieved of personal responsibility. Our conscience is clear. All injustice becomes the sole fault of others who are robbing us of the perfect world we rightly deserve.

In the concluding line from our reading in Romans today, Paul counters this way of thinking: “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience,” he writes, “so that he may be merciful to all.”

None of us, in other words, is perfect. We all sin. And unless we admit the fact of our personal sin, God can’t show us the mercy we need and readily desire.

One of the hidden dangers of victimology (or benefits, depending on your point of view) is that it leads to self-righteousness.

Such self-righteousness (or false purity) causes us to “other” different people and groups. In this we fail to see what we have in common – sin. And because we think ourselves superior, it is much easier to denigrate and even demonize the ‘other.’ At worst this can lead to violence, where other people are seen as subhuman, evil, even expendable.

This past Wednesday, Mark Heyer, father of the young woman savagely run down by the white supremacist in Charlottesville, spoke at her memorial service.

Commenting on the man who had murdered his 32-year-old daughter, Heather, he said this: “I just think about what the Lord said on the cross,” he declared. “Forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

He then went on to say that all sides need to learn how to forgive each other. “I think,” Heyer said, “[that] what the Lord would want us to do is to stop – just love one another.”

Not even Joseph, Paul, or Jesus could have said it more meaningfully. Amen.

08.13.2017       Preaching Text: “So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus.” (Matthew 14:29b)

To be perfectly honest, I have mixed feelings about this morning’s gospel story about Jesus walking on water. And it doesn’t really have anything to do with the miracle part which, as we know, is a challenge to our rationalist tendencies.

It has more to do with the part about Peter walking on water. The implication is clear: if Peter had had sufficient faith, he wouldn’t have sunk.

The larger point seems to be that if we have enough faith, we can accomplish just about anything.

This is where I have a problem. Oh, it’s not that I don’t think faith “can move mountains” or that faith is not the absolute foundation of the Christian life. It’s just the idea that faith can achieve anything seems to be the takeaway. Which is not, as I say, to dismiss the importance of faith notwithstanding.

Back in my early teens I attempted to learn water skiing. So I went out onto the Long Island Sound in a friend’s boat. At the time I wore thick glasses, before, that is, the era of contact lenses. Skiing without being able to see was daunting. But I was determined.

One of the things I quickly learned was not to focus on the water rushing by. Just look straight ahead. Don’t focus on what you’re actually doing, which is skimming precariously on concrete-like water at impossibly high speeds!

Once you start focusing on what you’re doing and what’s going on around you, you falter, like Peter. Focus instead on what’s up ahead and ignore your fears. And presto, you’re home free (without need for the emergency room).

The fact is, we’re often more focused on the spinning wheels inside our heads and what’s going on around us to overcome our fears so as to accomplish things.

I need only recall the first time I preached. The second time was even worse, given that the offending event took place in my home church! I was absolutely terrified, imagining in my mind all sorts of catastrophic possibilities.

Of course, I failed to consider the fact that the vast majority of the congregation couldn’t have cared less about most of what I was thinking and fearing. Not only that, they were pulling for me, knowing that I was new at this and had grown up in their midst.

What I’ve learned since is to stay focused on the “now,” not letting the potentially debilitating static in your head discourage or overwhelm you. The idea is to remain calm, positive, trusting that God will take care of you. Have faith, in other words. Be positive.

But I’ve also come to learn that everything depends on what it is you’re being positive about, what you’re putting your trust in.

Years ago I visited a nursing home where a woman was in the process of dying. Directly in front of her, on the wall opposite, was a poster which apparently was supposed to be inspirational. It featured one of those New Age-y photographs of waterfalls, rainbows, etc.

But it wasn’t picture that concerned me. It was the caption that accompanied if. I forget its exact wording, mercifully, but it said something about imagining life’s possibilities so that you can make anything happen.

Under the circumstances, the wording seemed a cruel joke. It presumed to offer expectations that were simply unrealizable. I found it heartbreaking. Creating false hope is not the same thing as having faith.

Years ago, while I was serving as a hospital chaplain, I experienced something that’ll always stay with me. I’ve shared it with you before, so I’ll keep it brief.

It involved a young woman, 20 or 21, who had been admitted with a drug overdose. Her mother was absolutely distraught. And desperate.

She called an old friend of hers who was part of a Christian fundamentalist group. They came up to New Haven and essentially took over the daughter’s hospital room.

They advised the mother that if she wanted her daughter to live there were certain things she’d have to do, including, but not limited to, reconciling with her ex-husband. The most significant demand, however, and the most egregious, was telling the mother that if her faith were strong enough, the daughter would live.

The disconsolate, frantic mother attempted everything they had instructed her to do. But, alas, within days her daughter lost her fight and died.

What followed was an unqualified disgrace. The mother’s “friends” said the daughter had died because the mother simply didn’t have enough faith! This was cruel beyond measure, and unforgivable. The mother was crushed.

What the mother’s “friends” failed to understand is that faith is not based on our expectations, but on what God wills for our lives. We are not God, nor do we direct His actions.

Back when I wrote my first pastoral profile in preparation for seeking a call in the U.C.C., I remember tackling this matter head-on. The response to my profile was resounding, i.e. a plethora of rejection letters! I sometimes wonder if this subject was at least partly to blame.

I had written that in God’s economy we don’t always get to decide, or get what we want. Our faith lives are often directed more properly toward finding God’s consolation in the midst of life’s inevitable losses and failures.

Faith, in other words, doesn’t guarantee a “positive outcome,” as we define such things. Rather, it often means finding meaning and purpose when nothing in our life-circumstances would seem to recommend it.

Unlike “positive thinking,” faith is not about imagining a successful outcome as the means of coaxing it into being.

Instead it’s about trusting in the person of Jesus Christ.

Jesus, you see, is our guide, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. We follow him, now knowing where he will take us. Faith is not about relying on our own insights, or desires, or expectations. It’s about faithfully following obediently the leader whom we trust implicitly, no matter where that might take us.

Faith, in the final analysis, is a relational term. It’s not about a set of abstract beliefs, or expectations, or ideas. It’s about trusting that God will do for us what he said he would do, through the person of Jesus Christ.

It’s been said that God answers all prayers. But sometimes that answer is “no,” no to our personal beliefs, expectations, and ideas. Faith means trusting that God will bring about our promised good, in God’s way, and in God’s time.

It even means following God when to do so seems altogether implausible at best, even if that means walking on water. Amen.

From Heel to Healer

08.06.2017         Some years ago a child was born, a beautiful baby girl. The name her young parents chose for her was Valerie. At the time, her parents could not possibly have known what her birth ultimately would portend.

One day, when she was roughly six months old, Valerie got sick. Her parents learned that Valerie’s body temperature had risen to dangerously high levels. As it turned out, their little baby girl had suffered profound, irreversible brain damage, leaving her severely handicapped both cognitively and physically. She would never speak, they were told, and would require constant 24-hour care.

Then late one night, just shy of her 18^th birthday, after a series of stokes and grand mal seizures, Valerie lay in a New London, CT hospital room surrounded by her grieving, heart-broken parents and heaved her last breath.

In thinking over Valerie’s short, but noteworthy life, and in preparation for her memorial service, I found myself musing over an unlikely story from Hebrew scripture. At first blush the story, about Jacob, the unruly, self-centered, and scheming grandson of Abraham (the one God had chosen to bring godliness back into the world) would seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with Valerie’s life.

For one thing, Valerie was anything but unruly and scheming. She in fact was unselfconsciously good-hearted, affectionate, and loving.

The Jacob story begins as he lays down to sleep in anticipation of a highly eventful day to come, the long-overdue showdown with his estranged brother, Esau (the same brother whose birthright he had stolen from their father Isaac many years before).

During the night, an unidentified man, generally assumed to be God (or one of God’s angels) comes to Jacob and engages him in, of all things, a physical wrestling match. The struggle lasts all night and ends in a kind of stalemate, with Jacob wresting from the stranger a blessing. In the process, however, Jacob is left partially crippled.

From now on, Jacob would be a changed man. Partially handicapped, he emerges from this divine encounter with new powers, powers that seem to come only to those familiar with weakness. Touched by God’s mysterious and inscrutable power, Jacob experiences a strange kind of grace. It is for Jacob, as one writer put it, “a magnificent defeat.”

When Valerie was only a few months old, she, too, experienced a kind of magnificent defeat, which left her handicapped but also richly blessed. For Valerie was touched by God in ways we “able” people are not, her life a powerful testament to God’s uncanny and unlikely presence in the midst of human “weakness.”

In her short time among us, she touched all who met her with a gentle, angelic spirit and joyous, loving heart.

Her father characterized Valerie as a child who was never in a bad mood, who almost never got angry, who accepted life as it came, who never complained, despite her suffering. Through it all, she remained unfailingly brave and courageous, never missing an opportunity to smile and laugh. As her mother wrote in Valerie’s obituary, because she was not able to speak, she communicated instead through laughter.

It may seem ironic that Valerie enjoyed life. But she did. She loved adventure…of any kind. A few year earlier, when at Disney World, she had gone on, and absolutely loved, the Star Wars ride, which, I’m told, is not for the faint of heart.

She loved to be outside, taking walks, going to the beach, being out-and-about. She loved Block Island and, particularly, the boat trip to get there, fascinated as she was by the mere sight of water.

She also loved music, its vibrations, its rhythms – the simple joy of it all. It made her happy, and was a big part of her life. On occasion, when she got to go to live concerts, she was ecstatic.

Valerie’s loves were pure and unalloyed. She wasn’t interested, like Jacob, in control, power, status, or advantage. She didn’t worry about possessions or the grand gesture. She sought simplicity. She thrived in the midst of loving relationships and the joy present in and through everyday events, the ones we often miss altogether.

Four-and-a-half years ago, my mother had a horrific car accident that almost killed her. Among other things, she suffered a spinal cord injury that left her with permanent nerve damage.

After months of punishing physical therapy, and through sheer determination, she eventually learned how to walk again, but always with assistance and for only a short period of time. For the rest of her life her hands remained gnarled and her fingers rendered virtually useless.

Most significantly, she faced a serious spiritual crisis. As one who’d always been fiercely independent, she now lived at the mercy of others. She spent month after month wondering why God had done this to her.

But with the help of the chaplain at the nursing facility where she lived, she emerged from her living hell to find God again, this time in a far more powerful and meaningful way.

She learned to let go of things that previously had seemed so important. In fact, after a year she made a miraculous decision. She decided to stop fighting her malady and stopped wishing she could just die.

Instead, she announced that her “old life” was gone, and that it was never coming back. She also announced that she was now OK with her new life. It wasn’t that bad, she decided.

Back in January of this year, after the second of a series of strokes that eventually took her life, Linda, my sister Martha, and I were talking to the chaplain. He talked about all the ways my mother had grown during the years since her accident.

But there’s one thing he said that I’ll always remember, something I shared at her memorial service back in late June.

When the chaplain first started praying with her, he said, her prayers were always centered on herself, naturally enough under the circumstances. But over the years the nature of her prayer life changed. Now when she prayed, he said, she prayed for the well-being of others.

In the end, the paradox of her “magnificent defeat” and its aftermath was spiritual rebirth. It changed her life for the better and prepared her to meet her Maker.

Jacob, after his fateful encounter with God, never again walked with the same vigor or strength. But his magnificent defeat changed him from a grasping, self-centered rascal to a man humble and courageous enough to face his estranged brother with an earnest offer of peace. Amen.

 

07.30.2017         Preaching Text: “If God is for us, who is against us?” (Romans 8:31b)

If you pay close attention watching or reading the news, you’ll likely hear this phrase (or something like it): “Today’s monthly jobless numbers report rose (or declined) unexpectedly.”

Time and again the word unexpectedly accompanies such media reports on the economy (as well as other aspects of daily life). You’d think, logically, that since the numbers consistently prove surprising the media would stop trusting in such provably erroneous prognostications!

The reason the media don’t, however, is the same reason so many of us don’t either. It’s because we’ve been sold on the idea that the “experts” can successfully manage the present and anticipate the future.

But is this realistic? Just take the economy as a case in point. How is someone sitting in a book-lined office supposed to know what’s going to happen within any highly complex economic system?

Think of all the businesses just here in Harwich, each with its own unique set of internal and external challenges and opportunities. There are so many factors to consider, far too numerous to count, much less properly assess.

Then apply these same unknowns to the vast economy of the entire United States. Once you’ve wrapped your minds around that, consider what’s going on worldwide. Think of all the infinite variables and contingencies therein.

Then take into account the countless human events that seemingly come out of nowhere – wars, conflicts, as well as social movements that bring about peace and prosperity – all unexpectedly.

And yet, as I say, we’ve been assured that the complexities and challenges of life can indeed be managed and outcomes predicted. By whom? By the experts, that’s who. We really have come to think that life can be directed and secured by human agency. Yet why should this be so?

As I’ve said many times, the source of this kind of thinking is rooted, ironically, in the various successes of the Enlightenment, a Western enterprise which believed that with the right application of science and reason human beings could finally root out the perennial problems of human existence.

Applying these principles to the raw stuff of life, what once befuddled our benighted ancestors could now be solved. When once humanity looked to the gods or God for direction and help, we now look to enlightened thinkers to demystify the primal fears, anxieties, and failings of the past. Given enough time these experts will surely fix all that ails us.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this way of approaching life is that it leaves very little room for God. When faced with life’s difficulties, we now tend to look for human solutions, not divine ones.

In today’s readings we read just the opposite. And that’s because the main actor throughout the entirety of the Bible is God. It’s a simple fact, though often one lost on us moderns.

A few weeks back, Linda and I had a Sunday off and attended another church. During the sermon, the pastor spoke about the story of Hagar, the same story we’d discussed in our Bible Study earlier that same week.

As the story goes, Sarah, Abraham’s wife, demands that Hagar, the slave woman who bore Abraham a son, be banished, a request Abraham performs reluctantly.

As I say, in Bible Study we had discussed this rather bizarre story. At that time I offered an explanation for what seems a senseless story, at least as far as it relates to our Christian faith. I mean, what does this domestic dispute have to do with the Good News?

The answer is that the subtext of the story is God’s earlier promise to Abraham. There God tells Abraham that he will make a great nation out of Abraham’s progeny (the Promise). And that great nation shall lead the way in effecting God’s plan for salvation: the reuniting of the entire world back to its Creator, a situation made necessary, as we know, by the Fall.

The genetic line therefore becomes important, moving as it does from Abraham to King David all the way to Jesus himself. To us this seems a minor point, if not irrelevant altogether. But to the biblical writers it meant everything.

After all, their task was to take Israel’s ancient stories and place them within a certain theological context. And that theological context had to do with explaining how God had been at work in all these seemingly meaningless events. Everything, in other words, had to be tied to what God had been doing in these seemingly random life-events.

The preacher at the church we attended focused instead on Sarah’s jealousy and Hagar’s persistence, the psychology angle. Both of these are relevant, too be sure, and worth reflecting upon, yet perhaps not critical to the story’s basic meaning. As I say, the main point is to show that the lineage from Abraham remained intact. For if not, the whole basis of Israel’s faith would be lost, and God’s Promise would prove to be false.

The focus of the sermon we heard, however, never touched on this (and, admittedly, not all sermons necessarily should!). Instead the bulk of the discussion focused on Hagar and her persistence in the midst of adversity.

Now I’d be the last person to argue that persistence is unimportant, or that it can’t be a virtue. Certainly for those struggling with personal challenges and adversity (as we all do from time to time), it can be a lifesaver.

Then again, persistence is not a biblical category. It all depends on what we’re being persistent about!

Being persistent (stubborn?) in pursuit of something that goes against what’s best for us, or humanity, or, most importantly, God’s will, is hardly a virtue. Hitler was persistent after all.

The larger point, again, and the entire point of the biblical witness, is that God is in control. Reducing scripture to psychology, or sociology, or politics, or success, or self-improvement may have a value, but the main event is always God and what God is doing.

In Paul’s lovely exhortation at the end of Romans 8, he is reminding us that nothing in this life can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Yet in our headlong (persistent?) insistence on human expertise and this-worldly solutions, we can easily lose sight of the transcendent power of God at work in our midst.

My future is not in my hands, in other words. And thank God. Rather, God has a plan for my life and yours. And it’s not dependent on any human agency or human design. When life comes at us, Paul beckons us to look up to the heavens for help and guidance. Our future, he is saying, as well as our past and present, is entirely in God’s hands.

In the end, life amidst God’s plan, God’s Promise, is always unpredictable, and thus what happens to us is almost entirely unexpected. Amen.

07.23.2017     Preaching Text: “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” (Romans 8:25)

One unique hazard of contemporary life in the West has to do with high expectations. No other civilization has dealt with this before, really.

Which is to say that throughout history societies accepted the hardships of life. The reason? They didn’t think they had a choice. Life was random and often difficult, its outcome beyond their control.

But today, after centuries of scientific advances, we’re tempted, often with some justification, to think we can control events and outcomes.

One need only cite modernity’s countless medical achievements. My mother’s older brother died from strep throat at the age of 12 simply because antibiotics hadn’t as yet been discovered. Today such a malady is anything but life-threatening.

On many fronts these modern advancements have altered our worldview. Consider hunger and malnutrition. In the West today obesity is far more prevalent than people not getting enough to eat.

Even the poorest in America frequently have amenities unheard of in years past, and not that long ago. It’s been suggested, in fact, that the average American today lives a more “luxurious” life, in terms of labor-saving devices as well as food, shelter, and medical care, than the richest kings of old.

And it is within our reach to extend these advancements to the far reaches of the world, helping to alleviate suffering while creating wealth and opportunity. So much so that we are tempted to think, as I said a few weeks ago, that any and all suffering anywhere is our fault, given that, in many circumstances, we could have made a difference.

This and other factors have convinced us that the vicissitudes faced by our forebears, both ancient and more recent, no longer apply to us. With the right application of expertise and know-how we can conquer life’s age-old challenges and create a perfect world here on earth.

So again, a unique hazard of contemporary life is this belief that perfection is not only attainable but is in fact our due! Anything less is simply unacceptable.

One side-effect of this is that anything less than perfection is seen not only as failure but unjust. It offends us. We may even assume it is others who have ruined what otherwise ought to be a utopian world.

That said, today’s readings from Romans and Matthew may strike us as a bit odd. In Jesus’ parable we are told that it is our lot to live amongst the weeds. As Jesus tells it, the perfect world God created of good seed has been invaded by bad seed – the weeds.

The particular weed to which Jesus refers is a common one called the darnel. The darnel weed when it first sprouts looks almost identical to a young wheat plant.

By the time it has grown to full length, however, the darnel can no longer safely be pulled up. The reason is that its roots get tangled up with the roots of the wheat plant. If one were to pull up the darnel weed, it would rip up the wheat plant as well.

Jesus advice? Let the two plants grow together side-by-side until harvest time. At that point the two plants will be separated safely.

Here Jesus is saying, for one thing, that evil exists. It’s a fact of life. We cannot avoid it. Yet his larger point is that when the harvest comes, when he comes again, the separation of evil from good shall result.

As I say, this presents a problem for modern utopian idealism. It means there are limits to what we humans can do. It also means we are destined to live in a world that we ourselves cannot perfect. Only God can fix the brokenness we are destined to co-exist alongside.

We can interpret this two different ways. We can despair of our limited powers. We can protest Jesus’ seemingly defeatist message and how it calls into question our rightful ability to fix the brokenness of our world. It may even lead us to conclude that Jesus is simply wrong in this matter, given all the evidence we see as to how we can make a positive difference.

But the other way of interpreting Jesus’ message is to see it as one of immense hope. No matter how dim life may appear, no matter how much the world’s brokenness may challenge us or hurt us, God will intervene and evil will be defeated…completely.

This is, perhaps ironically, a freeing message. Among other things, it advises that we need not despair of life’s many imperfections. Additionally, it sets us free to pursue our Christian calling to love and serve our world knowing that perfection is simply beyond our control.

Consider Israel’s Babylonian captivity. Far from their ancestral home, with no hope of imminent return, they must carve out an existence in a foreign land, surrounded by the godless paganism of Babylonian culture.

In Jeremiah 29, Jahweh instructs those in exile: “Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters…[Seek] the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

He then offers the one important caveat – that they not fall prey to the dreams and deceptions of those among them, the Babylonians (the weeds?).

The larger point is that we Christians are properly strangers in a strange land. This world is not our true home. We are citizens of heaven, God’s children. And while we are required to live in this world and seek its welfare, we are never to be deceived by its false dreams of, among other things, perfection born of human control.

Knowing this offers us the very best possible consolation: the truth that God will indeed right all wrongs – the wheat and the weeds shall be sorted.

In the meantime, as Paul commends, we are able to be joyfully hopeful, fully aware that “hope that is seen is not hope.” We hope instead “for what we do not see,” and “wait for it with patience.” Amen.