Numbness. Rage. Courage. Panic. Determination. Weariness. Hope. Despair.
This election cycle, we have all contained multitudes, 
stopping at least briefly at every point on the feelings wheel. With most of the results in and races called, perhaps the nauseating spinning feelings wheel has slowed a bit and more closely resembles a pendulum swing with some feeling despair and others feeling hope.
Admittedly, whoever decided that stewardship season should fall in the midst of these current events was a yahoo, and whoever knew that and picked A Future with Hope as the theme knowing full-well that these overlapped needs a new secretary. (Church: The yahoo is me, and I am also the secretary.)
Feeble attempt at levity aside, I’ve come to appreciate having to wrestle through the week’s complicated emotional and spiritual terrain toward some gospel Good News and a word of reassurance along with a call to deepened stewardship practices. I don’t want to rush the slow work of God in and among us and hustle us on too quickly when so many are still in the depths of despair, but I confess that despair makes me nervous.
Researcher and storyteller, Brené Brown shared this on Friday:
Despair is a claustrophobic feeling. It’s the emotion that says, “Nothing will ever change.” It’s different than anger or sadness or grief. Despair is twinged with hopelessness.
I’d like to invite us to hold any despairing parts of ourselves with tenderness and care as we look for God’s promise to and guidance for us today. If you are feeling overwhelmed or deeply fatigued by despair, you might consider holding yourself with care. Literally. Some gentle pressure from something like a self-hug can offer a sense of groundedness and safety even when everything else feels uncertain. Feel free to stay in that posture or return to it as needed.
In her reflection, Brown continues,
The research shows that hope is a powerful antidote to despair. What’s interesting, however, is that hope is not an emotion (C.R. Snyder). Hope is a cognitive-behavioral process. It’s about having a goal, a pathway to achieve that goal, and a sense of agency or “I can do this.”
In other words, hope not something we feel, hope is something we do. Hope is how we live.
Right now, [she says] the thing that is helping me the most is micro-dosing hope. I have no access to big hope right now, however, I am asking myself how I can support the people around me. The people on my team, in my community. How can I make sure that, in the maelstrom of my emotions, I stay committed to courage, kindness, and caring for others regardless of the choices made by others? Doing the smallest next right thing is hard AF, but sometimes it’s all we’ve got.”—Brené Brown
This micro-dose of embodied hope—supporting the people around us; staying committed to courage, kindness, and caring for others; doing the smallest next right thing—that is exactly the kind of call that we heard last week from the Ten Commandments. Remember, they ask us “How do we live in community with each other, especially in uncharted territory?”
But how can we possibly live in community with one another when, at times like this, there seems like too little love and too much hate, too little understanding and too much noise, too little common good and too much greed? American writer and civil rights activist, James Baldwin, says this:
There may not be as much humanity in the world as one would like to see, but there is some. There’s more than one might think…Love has never been a popular movement. And no one’s ever wanted, really, to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course, you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you’ve got to remember is what you’re looking at is also you. Everyone you’re looking at is also you. You could be that person.
–Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris (1970 film)
If there were ever a time for our congregation and the capital C ecumenical Church to re-define ourselves by what matters most, to be a community that places loyalty to God and care for the other at the center of our lives, it is now. If there were ever a time to be compelled by Jesus greatest commandments—You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind; You shall love your neighbor as yourself—it is now. “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets,” Jesus says in Matthew’s gospel. “On these two commandments hang A Future with Hope,” Jesus says to us today.
What we hear from this week’s Scripture reading is a continuation of that love of God and neighbor with a bit more clarity on what this might look like. As you heard before the text was read, Deuteronomy was written centuries after the time of Moses, but it depicts him addressing the Israelite community at the end of their time of wilderness wandering. These final, very specific, words of instruction for them paint a clearer picture of how they might live out the spirit of the commandments, and it offers us some illustrations of how we might love our neighbor; how we might enact and embody micro-doses of hope in the face of despair.
19 Whenever you are reaping the harvest of your field and you leave some grain in the field, don’t go back and get it. Let it go to the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows so that the Lord your God blesses you in all that you do.
20 Similarly, when you beat the olives off your olive trees, don’t go back over them twice. Let the leftovers go to the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows. 21 Again, when you pick the grapes of your vineyard, don’t pick them over twice. Let the leftovers go to the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows.
22 Remember how you were a slave in Egypt. That’s why I am commanding you to do this thing.
What we hear in this text isn’t a metaphor or some analogy; rather it is a clear and concrete call for people of faith to preserve and use a portion what we have for those who need it most; we are to be intentional about saving some of our resources for those who don’t have enough. If we who have more than we need share our resources, there will be enough. The transforming, life-saving power of community is how everyone’s needs get met! That will be more critical than ever going forward.
Remember, the call to treat others – all others – with respect, dignity, and compassion is a direct extension of the very being and nature of God. That is why the Ten Commandments begin with “I am the Lord your God” and end with “your neighbor.”
We are reminded by this text that building the beloved community is not an individual task. Neither is the work of hope in the face of despair. God’s promise of enough is only true together, when we deepen our stewardship practices and when our resources are shared! Our emotional resources, our spiritual resources, and our physical resources. THAT is how we move a bit closer toward A Future with Hope for the immigrants, the orphans, the widows. The sick, the elderly, the unhoused. The single mothers, the LGBTQ+ folks, the poor. All are due some of our collective resources; all are due our collective solidarity and support.
When we have more than we need and community members and nonprofit partners don’t have enough, the call to us for realigning our stewardship of those resources is clear. We aren’t called to feel hope, but to embody hope. We aren’t called to feel love, but to embody love. Both are TANGIBLE, active, and even messy. It is showing up. Protecting one another. Offering what we have for those that don’t. That is where we encounter again God’s promise of enough.
One of the wilderness commandments I shared last week was “You shall read poetry or listen to music to encounter God each day.” On Wednesday, a dear friend and colleague reminded me of this piece written by Mary Oliver in her collection, Winter Hours:
Today’s Post
“In the winter I am writing about, there was much darkness. Darkness of nature, darkness of event, darkness of the spirit. The sprawling darkness of not knowing.
We speak of the light of reason. I would speak here of the darkness of the world, and the light of ________. But I don’t know what to call it. Maybe hope. Maybe faith, but not a shaped faith—only, say, a gesture, or a continuum of gestures. But probably it is closer to hope, that is more active, and far messier than faith must be. Faith, as I imagine it, is tensile, and cool, and has no need of words. Hope, I know, is a fighter and a screamer.”
Friends, may you be met in your moment of despair with someone else’s hope, and when you have a bit of hope to share, may you lend it to someone who is despairing. No matter who is President, no matter which party controls the House or the state legislature, as people of faith and followers of Jesus, we must still be the very few people whose love and passion hold the world together as Baldwin says.
And together, we must be hope’s fighters and screamers, light in a dark world. May we remember that we can only do this with our collective resources and in community—when someone needs to rest their voice or when their light is a bit dim, others are already alongside arm-in-arm, and we’ll keep on keepin’ on together. In that, there is God’s promise of enough. In that, there is A Future with Hope. May it be so. This day and each day. Amen.