The Measure of Hope

Some experts in the field of behavioral science believe that there is something about our earliest memory that defines us, and holds the key to figuring out how our personality was formed, or explains secrets about the formation of our psyche. There are others who think that with the exception of memories formed from strong emotional events, whether positive or negative, our earliest memories are simply formed when our brains are physically able to form them. They believe that it is simply biology that determines which memories constitute our earliest memories.

Whatever the case, one of my earliest memories comes from when I was about three or four years old. My same-aged friend Debbie Kelly and I had left our little cul-de-sac, walked through our neighborhood, crossed a busy road, and gone to the little mom-and-pop grocery store we were familiar with. We grabbed what we wanted and proudly placed our items on the counter by the door, where we were told we needed money to buy them. We hadn’t thought of that. We re-crossed the same busy road, and were back in our neighborhood before my mother found us. As soon as I saw her car approaching us, I began to hope, in earnest, that she wouldn’t see us or at the very least that I wouldn’t be in too much trouble.  

I have other early memories, too. I remember that not long after that incident we moved away from that house and neighborhood and my friend, Debbie. Leaving the familiar, I hoped I would make new friends in my new home. I remember my first day of kindergarten, and what it felt like to hope that my teacher would be nice and would like me and that I would get to play in that cool play kitchen over in the corner.

When I look back over my life, I realize that while I have many memories, those that really stick out in my mind all seem to be connected to hope. Hope that we would get the kitten I wanted for Christmas; hope that my grandmother would get better and not die (her real healing was beyond my understanding); hope that I would get into the high school, and then the college that I wanted; hope for a future that I imagined, hope for love and belonging, hope for favorable test results; hope for decisions I’ve made and for so many things, both large and small, for myself, my family and friends, and for the world. When we look back at our memories, I think we will find that most of them are connected to hope as well.

The true, deep-seated kind of hope that Paul refers to here is more than the kind of lists of wishes and desires as I just described, however. Rather, it is belief, deep-seated knowledge or conviction.

That kind of hope is a crucial element within our being and is considered essential to our survival. People without hope often fail to thrive, but people who have hope can do remarkable things and face adversity differently.  We know, for instance, that people who have hope who are confronted with a dreaded diagnosis, imprisonment, deep personal loss, or some other challenge, do better than those who lack hope and are filled instead with feelings of despair.

In times of adversity, hope gives us strength. In times of uncertainty, hope gives us courage. In times of sadness hope leads us to know with certainty that better days lie ahead. Yet there are those who subscribe to the idea that hope obeys Aristotle’s “doctrine of the mean”: one should hope neither too much nor too little.

So I wonder how you, in your life today, would define hope. How do you approach hope? What do you even hope for? Do you dare to have hope? What might you be afraid to hope for?

In today’s second reading, from Paul’s epistle to the Romans, Paul not only talks about hope, but he locates and reasons how and why we, as children of God and followers of Jesus Christ, can and should dare to hope. In verse 14 of the reading we heard today, Paul says that those who are led by God’s Spirit are marked as God’s family. We are God’s heirs – heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Through this inheritance we are freed in Christ to hope. Because of this inheritance we wait, patiently according to this text, carried by hope, for the ultimate freedom that is ours by through the love of God and the victory of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

But what do these words mean to us today? What do they mean when we hear dire predictions about our economy, for instance, or the state of our medical system, or unemployment statistics? How do these words of hope strike our hearts when our memories are stirred to remember abuse we have endured or inflicted? Where does hope lead us when we contemplate the divisions in families, or between religious groups, or when our political landscape is increasingly polarized, or when we acknowledge that discrimination and prejudice continue to afflict the hearts, minds and actions of individuals and collective groups?

In the past few weeks, events in the world around us have given us reason to pause, and wonder if all hope is in vain. We are increasingly bombarded with news, images and reports that are heartbreaking, devastating, frightening, and seemingly confound hope. When we hear of war, broken systems that cause the victimization of the most vulnerable among us, when we acknowledge the loss of innocence by multitudes of children around the world, including those in our own country who lack adequate protection, when planes are shot out of the sky and bombs reign down upon a land known as “Holy”, when concern over nuclear arms capability and development and when international conflicts continue to afflict so much of the world, we wonder if our prayers and hope for peace and justice have gone unheard.

I don’t know about you, but as I have watched the news in horror this week, I have struggled with the concept of hope. I have struggled with these words of Paul’s that urge us on to patience. I am tired of being patient. Hope seems fragile when confronted with the evil, hatred, violence, and disregard for human life, dignity, and justice. How do we make sense of the contradiction of faith and hope with our lived reality?

Addressing this scripture, Mary Hinkle Shore wrote–

In Paul's writings, "flesh" almost always signifies a power, along with sin, that resists the Spirit of God and that must be vanquished if human beings--body and all--are to be free from what Paul calls "the bondage of decay" and obtain "the glorious freedom of God's children" (Romans 8:21, NET). That glorious freedom is not freedom from the material world, but freedom within a restored creation. It is the freedom of an embodied life that reflects, as it had at the first, the image and glory of God (cf. Genesis 1:27).

In [our text today], Paul points to that freedom and describes what it is like to hope for such a thing here and now. A cluster of words from the realm of family helps Paul describe the freedom that believers have in Christ and the relationships in which they now find themselves: sons, Abba, Father, children, adoption, heirs, joint heirs. The vocabulary describes relationships within a family and a household.

            We are, all of us, sisters and brothers in Christ. We are inheritors of the grace and mercy God bestows on us, and led by the Spirit, we are called to lives of hope. We have hope because through Christ, God has acted to bring about a new age, a new creation, a new world that is struggling yet through the pangs of birth, but will bring to fruition the new heaven and new earth where war will cease, where God’s judgment will be final, and where all the sons and daughters of the one true God will live in eternity.

But that leads us to the struggles of today. Through prayer and lives modeled after Jesus that reflect the hope that we have as the children of God we walk the Way of Christ, one step at a time. The Spirit of God is the power that frees all of us and the entire creation, to live out the new identity that we were given through Baptism as joint heirs with Christ, who suffer living between the memory of what is and was, and the hope of what will one day be.

Shore writes,

The idea is not that anyone (including Christ) earns glory by suffering; rather, as Paul seeks to describe what it means to be a joint heir with Christ, he notes that the joint heir's life is characterized by the same pattern that shaped Christ's life. To be connected to Christ is to know humiliation and exaltation. To be a joint heir with Christ is share in Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection.

          The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that God continues to work in, through and around us, building new memory, confirming hope, and through the work of Jesus and the ongoing presence of the Spirit, renewing the entire creation. Jesus reinforces our hope in today’s gospel reading where he tells a parable about the co-existence of good and evil in the world. Jesus acknowledges the ongoing tension, but promises that God’s judgment will remove all evildoers and causes of sin at the end of human history.

Until then, we see renewal and new creation break through every now and then – through the work of advocates for the downtrodden and peacekeepers, or when we participate in God’s abundant acts of grace through contributions of time, talent, money, energy and prayer. When we are inspired through acts of healing and mercy in our relationships, or in our daily interactions with one another; in our daily offerings of prayer and worship; in our sharing Christ’s love, forgiveness and compassion with our neighbor.

Regardless of what our earliest memory may be, may our strongest memory be that which inspires our greatest hope – that God has claimed us, blessed us, sealed us each with the Holy Spirit and marked us with the cross of Christ. God has called us to greater things than we can ever have dreamed or hoped for – and that because of this, we have nothing to fear. Amen.

Forget Me Not

 Luke 23:33-43 ~ Christ the King 

I read a story recently about a woman named Jill who has the first diagnosed case of hyperthymestic syndrome. This is the continuous, automatic, autobiographical recall of every single day of her life since she was 14 years old. She is now nearly 50. For some reason yet unknown, her brain has been cataloguing each and every day for more than thirty years now, storing information that can be recalled either by date or by event. November 14, 1981, she’ll tell you was a Saturday, her dad's 45th birthday, and that night she was initiated into a group that she was joining at school. July 18, 1984 was a Wednesday: a quiet summer day, when she picked up the book Helter Skelter and read it for the second time.

Ask her about a particular event and she can tell you not only the date on which it occurred, but also the day of the week it happened to be. The end of the FBI siege on the Branch Davidian compound: Monday, April 19, 1993. The final episode of MASH: Monday, February 28, 1983 a rainy day in L.A.; the next day while she was driving her car, the windshield wipers stopped working.

She says her memories are like scenes from home movies, constantly playing in her head, relentlessly flashing forward and backward through the years. The emotion of them isn't dialed down as she recalls them, either; they are exceptionally vivid. It's as though she’s actually living through the events again, she says. I wonder how such remembering in fact shapes Jill’s life and her actions.

Memory and remembering, are both blessing and curse. There are days when I could wish for a memory like Jill’s. Instead I’m stuck with a memory that is contrary. It often fails to recall details I’d like to or need to recall, while at the same time refusing to allow me to shake the memory of some things I long to forget.

For example, I have been known to miss a meeting or an appointment because I misremembered or plumb forgot where I needed to be or when I needed to be there. Earlier this week I drove an hour to a meeting only to arrive to find the building empty. I had forgotten that the meeting had been moved to another venue, in another town altogether. And the busier I am with “life” the more likely I am to let things slip the bounds of my memory.

I find that the older I get the more I struggle to remember things that I used to know like the back of my hand. Yet I vividly remember some things I’d much rather forget. Like mistakes I’ve made, things I’ve done wrong, people I’ve hurt, injury I’ve received from other people, losses I’ve suffered. Some embarrassments stay with me and memories of traumatic events still elicit many of the same emotions as they initially did. Is it the same for you?

Memory can soften over time, which is sometimes a good thing, and yet for those for whom it slowly leaks out and disappears, and for their loved ones, grief of the loss of memory is profound. 

Remembrance is important in all kinds of ways and there is ample evidence that something about remembrance is at the core of faith. Remembering, in fact, is noted throughout the gospel of Luke. At the very beginning of the gospel in both Mary’s song and Zechariah’s, God remembering God’s promise of mercy and of salvation are embraced – not only does God remember God’s promises, but God acts on those promises.  Later, in the parables of Jesus, Abraham tells the rich man who hoarded his riches to remember how he had lived. Following the crucifixion, when the women carried spices to the tomb and found it empty, two men in dazzling clothes stood before them and told them to remember how, when Jesus was with them in Galilee he had foretold not only his death but also told them that he would rise from the dead. The women indeed remembered and they ran to tell the disciples what had happened. Remembrance involves first seeing the picture and then acting out an appropriate response.

In our gospel text for today, we hear these words from one of the criminals, the second one to speak: “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.” With those words this man, who confesses that he himself belongs up there hanging to death on a cross for he has done things in his life, has in fact earned his place there, at the same time, confesses that Jesus is Lord. He confesses that the ultimate kingdom is one in which Jesus reigns. Yet Jesus is hanging on a cross just like him, suffering just like him.

The criminal isn’t asking Jesus to remember that he was a bad man, or even to remember him as a person at all. He wants Jesus to remember his confession. He wants Jesus to remember his faith, as late in the day as it may have come. Still, sinner that I am, remember, Jesus, I believed. Jesus, as you come into your kingdom, as you come into your reign, remember me. I doubt very much that the criminal really understood what it was he was asking. But he recognized that Jesus had the power not only to remember him in paradise, but to act on that memory.

Isn’t it what we all want?

We celebrate Christ the King Sunday today, the last Sunday of the “church year” and on the surface we might question why, on a Sunday that is supposed to point to the kingship of Christ, we would read this gospel account. Look around – we celebrate this day as a festival Sunday! Yet in our gospel for this day, no one except this lone criminal seems to get it, no one else seems to understand that Jesus has any power. After all he is hanging on a cross! This gospel doesn’t mention kingship, it is a Good Friday reading – it speaks to death! That certainly doesn’t illustrate “power” in any credible way, does it?

In Luke’s gospel, as Jesus hangs there, what is happening around him? The people stand and watch; the leaders scoff at him; the soldiers mock him; the first criminal derides him. Like Satan once did in the wilderness, they all seem to be saying “save yourself” if you can. Indeed, if any of those witnesses had any inkling that some of what they had heard about Jesus was at all true, they are standing around most likely waiting for the show to begin. Because surely, if Jesus is the Son of God, if Jesus has come to reign, then he is not about to actually suffer the pain and humiliation and scandal of dying like a criminal alongside criminals on this device of torture. Because that is not godly. That is not evidence of power, but just the opposite.

And yet, this king, this Messiah, has done nothing according to any human script, has he? His birth in a stable was about as humble as it can get. He stirred up trouble wherever he went, he ate with tax collectors and sinners, he preached about a God who loves the whole world and not just a few chosen people, he healed the sick and embraced the poor, (on the Sabbath, yet) and proclaimed resurrection of the dead would come through him, to all who would believe.

Christ does indeed reign as king, in an entirely new realm and new world order, initiated through his death on the cross and his rising again. We know that through his death on the cross Jesus indeed had the last word, because that death could not hold him, the grave could not hold him, the stone was rolled back and with it the veil of death was torn in two and new life began.

In this text we observe that as Jesus hung on the cross, in his agony, he did two things: He forgave, and He offered salvation. Jesus looked this man in the eye. He regarded him and accepted him for who he was, he remembered God’s promises to him, and he acted on that memory and gave him a second chance. Jesus assured him his place in Paradise. Because that is how the realm of Jesus works.

In the realm of the kingdom of God, in the power and authority of Christ the King, there is new life, hope and grace. Above all, in the realm of Christ our King, there is the kind of love that never gets tired of giving second chances.

In the kingdom of God there is remembrance for each of us. Jesus himself told us it is true. As Jesus looks us in the eye, and loves us, accepts us, and forgives us, he embodies God’s promise of redemption for each and every one of us, no matter what. The ultimate judgment of the world happens at the Cross, where Jesus, through his suffering and death has earned our salvation. At the cross, Jesus gave each of us new life.

Remembrance is important, and it is formative. As people of faith, and as the Body of Christ, we remember that Christ is King, who bought for us an eternal kingdom through his dying and rising again.

Each time we gather in this place, we remember all that God has done for us and we remember the stories of our faith that never fail to have import for today. As we gather at the table we remember the deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt and we remember our own deliverance from sin through the power of the cross. At the Last Supper, Jesus told his disciples that whenever we partake of the precious body and blood of our savior, we do this in remembrance of him. And that remembrance shapes our faith and provokes us to action on behalf of the kingdom of God.  

What might our lives look like if they were always living out the prayer, “Jesus remember me”? What would our lives look like if we began each day acknowledging Christ as reigning over our lives and then praying that prayer? How would each day be shaped if we intentionally remembered Christ’s power and grace, and then acted on it?

Let us pray, Remember us in your kingdom. Amen.