{"id":4420,"date":"2025-01-05T18:35:14","date_gmt":"2025-01-05T18:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/2025\/01\/05\/grounded-hope-based-on-luke-139-55\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T17:57:50","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T21:57:50","slug":"grounded-hope-based-on-luke-139-55","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/2025\/01\/05\/grounded-hope-based-on-luke-139-55\/","title":{"rendered":"Grounded Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cGrounded Hope\u201d based on Luke 1:39-55 <\/b><\/h1>\n
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Somehow I messed up the order of the Advent Candles this year. They’re supposed to be Hope, Peace, Joy, then Love, but we did Peace, Love, Joy, and now hope. Truthfully I copied from a prior year, which likely copied from some lovely liturgy of yet another year, and didn’t notice until Louis asked me why on early we were doing Love on week 2. By that point it was too late to change so we left it.<\/p>\n

So perhaps I’m just justifying things here, but I also have been thinking that it feels right this year to end on hope. I’m not disparaging love! It is, after all, \u201cthe greatest of these things.\u201d It is just that this year, hope seems like the hardest one to come by.<\/p>\n

To speak plainly, there are already a whole lot of problems in our country and our world, and we’re facing a future with a government who will do intentional harm to the vulnerable. Usually when we think about hope, we think about hope for building the kindom, for making things a little bit better, piece by piece. But right now, we’re facing everything getting worse, and it isn’t even entirely clear what we hope for.<\/p>\n

I’m a big fan of Dr. Emily Nagoski, a writer and pod-caster who thinks deeply and writes clearly. Dr. Nagoskisends out a regular email newsletter that I get, and this July she sent out one on hope. Emily struggles with depression, and she shared that while she’s delighted when other people can resonate with Emily Dickinson’s poem \u201chope is the thing with feathers\u201d where nothing can hurt hope, she can’t actually access that hope.<\/p>\n

Here is an excerpt from that email:<\/p>\n

Moral philosopher and author of \u201c<\/b>How We Hope<\/a><\/b>\u201d<\/b> Adrienne Martin developed an \u201cincorporation model\u201d that formulates hope as \u201ca desire for an outcome and the belief that the outcome is possible but not certain\u201d and you use your assessment of its possibility as justification for feelings, thoughts, and plans.<\/p>\n

Got that? Hope is justifying your feelings, thoughts, and plans based on your assessment that a desired outcome is possible.\u201d1<\/a><\/b><\/h2>\n

This definition of hope, where the desired outcome is \u201cpossible but not certain\u201d may be why hope see so hard right now. I’d like to hope for an end to hopelessness, but that is a whole lot less likely then \u201cpossible but not certain.\u201d I’d like to hope for an end to hunger, but that, too, is a whole lot less likely than possible but not certain.<\/p>\n

For Dr. Nagoski, living with chronic depression, assessing what was possible with an optimistic viewpoint became so hard that from her perspective hope died. But, she says, that’s not the whole story:<\/p>\n

Hope is a sustaining energy, it keeps us working through trials when we\u2019re being challenged, but it is contingent on that assessment of the probability of that desirable outcome.<\/p>\n

But there is a noncontingent sustaining energy, which cannot be interfered with by any assessment, no matter how dire, of the probability of a desired outcome.<\/p>\n

That noncontingent sustaining energy is an unimaginable hope<\/i>.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s it called, when you have no reason to believe a wanted future may come to pass and yet you continue to work toward it just as if you did believe you could make a difference? What\u2019s the name for that emotion, when you walk toward the world you want, knowing that each next step might be off a cliff?<\/p>\n

Adrienne Martin calls it faith.2<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Now, to be clear, Dr. Nagoski is an atheist, so her faith may look different than ours, but I found this reflection so startlingly helpful. Because what we are doing now, when we hope for good care for those with disabilities, when we hope for compassionate responses to immigration, when we hope for changes of heart around medical options for trans kids in red states \u2013 that’s the stuff of \u201cwhen you have no reason to believe a wanted future may come to pass and yet you continue to work toward it just as if you did believe you could make a difference\u201d That’s the stuff of, \u201cwhen you walk toward the world you want, knowing that each next step might be off a cliff?\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, as people of faith, maybe we still get to call this hope, but more like \u201cfaith-hope\u201d or \u201cGod-hope\u201d or \u201cwe’d have no hope in this without trusting God\u201d or just \u201chope grounded in love\u201d or \u201cgrounded hope\u201d? Or some other nuance. But it isn’t practical, pragmatic, having assessed the likelihood and deemed it possible sort of hoping we’re doing now, when we try to build the kindom of God on earth in this day and age. What we’re doing is continuing to love because the world needs love, is practicing peace because only peace begets peace, is seeking joy because joy is resistance, and continuing to work towards building the kindom of God because God has done crazier things than bring justice out of THIS HOT MESS. That is, we hope.<\/p>\n

And to a significant degree, what I hear in Luke is pretty similar. Mary and Elizabeth, the too young and the too old, pregnant and shocked and processing, and speaking hope in the faithful God in the midst of the world that was a hot mess.<\/p>\n

The Roman Empire at that time had highly concentrated wealth and power, most people felt vulnerable in their positions, so tried to press harder on those below them to stabilized themselves, the masses of people were struggling in life threatening poverty, and the government was trying to control the religious narrative to make itself look good. I know it is all hard to imagine, but do your best. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

This young, vulnerable, faithful Mary speaks her faith, her grounded hope, to Elizabeth. She speaks of God’s mercy \u2013 God’s compassion shown to those God could instead choose to punish. She speaks of God’s strength \u2013 God’s capacity to make things happen.<\/p>\n

And then she talks about what God does with God’s mercy and compassion. Which is, inverses the fortunes of the world. For many people at that time, especially those who were not a part of the Jewish faith (but probably many who were too), it was assumed that those who had power and money had it because they were favored by the gods and \u201cgood.\u201d And those who didn’t’ have things were being punished. Right? That way it looks like the world is fair, if everyone gets what they deserve. (You realize people think this now too, right? Sigh.)<\/p>\n

The book of Job, I would say, is one of the ways the Bible fights back against that idea, because even in the Bible there is this tendency to want to justify things by saying all is as God would have it be, so don’t mess with the status quo. But, luckily, there are also A LOT of narratives that say God isn’t’ happy until justice comes, and that’s the tradition Mary is drawing on here.<\/p>\n

Mary speaks of God lifting up the lowly, bringing down the powerful, filling the hungry, sending the rich away empty, scattering the proud, and fulfilling God’s own promises. To have that happen would overthrow the empire, and install in it’s place God’s own kindom on earth. She is talking about leveling, about making it so everyone can eat, and no one lords over anyone. She is talking about building the kindom on earth.<\/p>\n

It makes sense, of course, that these words would be in Mary’s mouth to make sense of Jesus. The early Christian community saw all of this happen in Jesus’s life, and they used Mary’s words as a narrative device to tell people what to pay attention to in his story. (Also, I contend, it makes sense to think of Mary as one who had such faith and was able to teach it to Jesus.)<\/p>\n

I think that from the perspective of Mary and Elizabeth, the Roman Empire was immutable. It couldn’t be changed, couldn’t be toppled, couldn’t’ be bested. This was probably even MORE true by the time the gospels were written and the destruction of Jerusalem occurred with mass causalities. Moving from that system to justice as God wills it would have looked….<\/p>\n

Well, it wasn’t \u201cpossible but not certain.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was much more \u201cwhen you have no reason to believe a wanted future may come to pass and yet you continue to work toward it just as if you did believe you could make a difference?\u201d In fact, I would go so far as to say that one of the primary points of Jesus’s teaching was that we have to work towards the future we want, the kindom of God on earth, as if it is possible because unless we work together on it \u2013 IT WILL NOT BE POSSIBLE. Jesus brought the people together and showed them that together they had enough where as apart they did not. Jesus taught them they had power, not the kind of violent power over of the Empire, but the amazing power of connection and love that can change things to make life BETTER.<\/p>\n

Beloveds of God, the likelihoods are not in our favor right now. Very little that improves the lives of the vulnerable is going to happen on the federal level in the short run.<\/p>\n

Oh well.<\/p>\n

God is still God, God is a God of mercy who brings down the mighty and lifts up the lowly and we’re working with God on that kindom building project. Our hope is grounded, faithful, and impractical. We do what needs doing even if it isn’t likely to bring the outcomes we want. We do it anyway, because we are the people who follow Mary’s son. Amen<\/p>\n

1<\/a> “An Alternative to Hope Or, The Secret Medicine for When the Thing With Feathers Stop Singing\u201d an email from Emily Nagoski on Jul 9, 2024.<\/p>\n

2<\/a> ibid<\/p>\n

Rev. Sara E. Baron\u00a0
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady\u00a0
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305\u00a0
Pronouns: she\/her\/hers\u00a0
http:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/\u00a0<\/a>
https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/FUMCSchenectady<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cGrounded Hope\u201d based on Luke 1:39-55 Somehow I messed up the order of the Advent Candles this year. They’re supposed … Continue reading Grounded Hope<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[34,38,28,39,33,86,1265,405,140,56],"class_list":["post-4420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons","tag-fumc-schenectady","tag-progressive-christianity","tag-rev-sara-e-baron","tag-thinking-church","tag-umc","tag-advent","tag-first-umc-schenectady","tag-hope","tag-kindom","tag-schenectady"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4420"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4647,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4420\/revisions\/4647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}