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“Yearning for Hope” based on Job 24:1-11, 22-25
Today we re-start the Christian Year, the liturgical cycle of waiting, celebrating, growing, waiting, celebrating, growing. We are now back in waiting. I think I fall deeper in love with Advent every year. The more commercialist Christmas pushes red and white, the more I find myself retreating the Advent colors of purple and pink. The more commercialism pushes secular carols, the more I find myself retreating into the quiet of the sanctuary and the integrity of Advent Hymns. The more commercialism pushes sales and deals the more attention I give to Alternative Christmas.
While secular Christmas has its bright, cheery, feel-good energy all around us, Christian Advent calls us to slow down, reflect, savor. Today we lit the candle of hope, one small light in an ever expanding darkness, one small light that will prove to be enough.
Now, I’m not against secular Christmas, I rather like it, but it feels disconnected from the one Christian one. This fall we did a Bible Study on the Christmas Stories in the Gospels, and we compared and contrasted them with our Christmas memories, our Christmas delights, and even the meaning we make from Christmas. (There is a poster in the back inviting you to do the same.) For most of us, Luke’s story of Christmas fit our faith the best, and made the most sense of it all. We also discovered that reading Luke 1 and 2 together made Luke 2 a whole lot more delightful. Luke centers on women, and on the disenfranchised, and the good news to all people. It fits who we seek to be as a church.
But for now, we’re still waiting, right? We’re waiting, and the description of the world being terribly wrong from the Bible’s most depressive abused character (Job) is doing its job of settling us into waiting. The description Job offers is of the world as it is and we YEARN with all our beings for the KINDOM of God where those descriptions no longer apply.
This Christian Year, the Worship Committee has taken seriously a request from the Intersectional Justice Committee to focus together on the book “We Cry Justice” put out by the Poor People’s Campaign. It is a book in 52 parts, meant to be read devotionally, and no matter how many times our Book Club tried, it didn’t become a readable book. It is a devotional book, so they asked if we could incorporate it into worship, and Worship Committee and I thought that was a wonderful idea. We have completed our year with “A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church,” which was a gift from God via Dr. Wil Gafney, and there is space for a different focus.
The Poor People’s Campaign is a group of amazing activists who decided it was time to pick up the mantle from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr who was himself leading a Poor People’s Campaign at the time of his death. We have been lightly involved with the modern campaign for years, and we have KNOWN that it is one of the ways God is at work in the world, and yet we haven’t quite given it our attention, until now. The book “We Cry Justice” is intentional Biblical interpretation with an eye towards the injustices of the world towards people in poverty. When I wrote them asking for permission to use prayers and quotations in worship they got back to us immediately granting it!
So this year as we settle to wait, our waiting is really defined by our waiting for JUSTICE for the vulnerable and those living in poverty. This fits the life this church particularly well, when I think about what we focus on in mission, while it hasn’t even been a decision exactly, the goals seem to be to lighten the burdens of those living in poverty. We see in our neighbors, our fellow members and worshippers, those dear to us, and quite ourselves the struggles of trying to live in a world that values the creation of capital over the well-being of the vulnerable.
I don’t know about you, but it breaks my heart.
Over and over again.
Actually, I kind of do know about you. I know that this is a community of faith whose belief in God and God’s dreams for the world include knowing that what is just and right in the world is for people to have access to food that is nutritious, delicious and plentiful; to housing that is safe, mold-free, and affordable; and to healthcare that is caring, effective, and doesn’t require declaring bankruptcy. That we are people who believe that God’s desires in the world are for people to live full abundant lives, and we know what is impairing that.
I expect that what I just said was so ridiculously obvious that you don’t know why I’m bothering wasting my breath on it. Thank you for that, because, dear ones, what is clear and obvious here isn’t in the world at large. Our society as a whole is at peace with people being hungry or we would expand SNAP benefits to cover the WHOLE month, expand access to SNAP benefits to everyone who really needs it, and … oh, let’s talk about reality, we wouldn’t have had our federal government cut $22 million from funding for regional food banks that are the last-gap measure between those who are struggling and hunger. (THIS is why we have to go to the store for meat, because the Food Bank can’t afford to get it anymore.) Our society as a whole is at peace with homelessness, or we’d prioritize safe, accessible housing in our budgets and our legislation. Our society as a whole is at peace with people not have access to healthcare, or not being able to afford to access healthcare, or going bankrupt from accessing healthcare or – wait for it – we’d have a different way of providing and funding healthcare.
And when I’m out in the world, listening, a shocking number of people think that those living in poverty should just try harder, or suffer a little because they deserve it, or …. well, basically the assumption is that poverty is the fault of the individual and poverty is the punishment someone deserves for not “succeeding” in capitalism.
Thank God, we see people as beloved children of God worthy of good things and abundant life, and not worthy of being punished because the game is rigged and they can’t win.
Thank God we know a God who is defined by universal love, grace, and mercy. It turns out that matters a lot in what we think justice looks like.
So, here we are on this first Sunday of Advent with one candle-flicker of light in our sanctuary reminding us to hold on to hope. And we have that while we heard words from Job that tell us how the world really is. In “We Cry Justice” Aaron Scott reflects on this Job reading saying:
I see countless tents, tarps, and shacks lining freeway underpasses – up one day, then disappearing the next, removed by cities desperate to keep up appearances instead of keeping up with justice and mercy. I see signs turning parking lots and stoplights across the country into hostile territory: “No Loitering,” “No Illegal Shopping Carts, “No Panhandling.”
And last week while our social worker Sylvester worked to find housing for God’s beloveds who had shown up last week, he confirmed counties in the capital region are buying people bus passes to other counties to avoid the cost of housing them.
The world as it is.
But, dear ones, we aren’t waiting for more of the same. We are waiting for God’s Kindom on earth. And this year, I have noticed something terribly obvious. We aren’t just waiting with our ancestors in faith who also yearned for justice and God’s dreams. I believe we are waiting with God’s own self, God who yearns to see us make different choices and offer better care for God’s vulnerable beloveds.
A challenge of faith today is to look at all the brokenness, all the injustice, all the heartaches, and hold hope. And yet, dear ones, there is plenty. There is hope because God seeks justice. There is hope because this is a community of faith that sees the injustice around us and calls it “immoral.” There is hope because there is a whole Poor People’s Campaign out there working on it! There is hope because God and we, and others along with us, will never concede that this is good enough. There is hope because at the deepest core of reality, there is goodness (God’s goodness) and it is going to break through eventually.
There is hope in this darkness. And the yearning for hope, the yearning for better, the yearning for the kindom is some of the hope itself. Thanks be to God. Amen
December 3, 2023
Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers