Rev. Kelley Becker: Hope is light in the darkness, and we can be messengers of it
My grandmother used to talk often about how fast time goes. As a child, waiting for my birthday or summer vacation, time did not seem to go by fast. In fact, there were times it seemed like it just dragged by. I can remember counting and recounting the number of days before school was out for the summer, hoping by counting again I would get a different, smaller number. The older I get, the more I appreciate and understand my grandmother’s sentiment. I wonder daily, where has the time gone? How can my children be grown? How can I really be a grandparent when I barely feel like a grown-up? Time really does fly. And we don’t get any of it back.
In the Christian tradition in which I serve, we keep time using what is called the liturgical year. Advent is the first season in the liturgical year. It begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day, Dec 25. Last Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent, and the theme for Advent 1 is always HOPE. When I sat down to write the sermon, instead of feeling hopeful, I dwelled on all the things currently making me feel anything but hopeful. I knew that if I was dwelling on them and if I was feeling less than hopeful, probably members of my congregation were, too.
Where was the hope at the Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, when one of the supervisors killed six people and himself? Where was the hope in Colorado Springs when five people were killed at an LGBTQ+ friendly night club? Where is the hope for the people of Ukraine living in a war zone, without power in the winter? Where is the hope for the students and faculty on the campus of the University of Idaho? Where is the hope for the families of the students who were killed while they slept in their beds? Where is the hope for the people of China who are living through a sadistic lockdown from a poorly managed pandemic? Where is the hope for the people of Iran as they protest their authoritarian government? I could go on and on, and I haven’t even touched on the things closer to home.
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Where is the hope for the ones in chronic pain? Where is the hope for the ones grieving their life partner? Where is the hope for the couple who desperately want a child? Where is the hope for members of the LGBTQ+ community who say they are more afraid now than they have ever been? Where is the hope for the child getting bullied at school? Where is the hope for all the families who can’t pay their utilities or the seniors who must choose between food and medicine?
You are probably guessing that, since I am a minister, I will say the hope is found in God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit. That would be really convenient, wouldn’t it? If hope was found elsewhere, then human beings would bear no responsibility for bringing hope to their neighbors. Hope for the world, dear ones, is found in you and in me.
One way of thinking about hope is that it is the belief that the way things are today is not the way they will always be. Hope tells us that the headlines of today do not have to be the headlines of tomorrow. People can and do change. Circumstances can and do change. For Christians, our hope rests in the belief that ultimately God is loving and compassionate and that we can change the world by following the ways of Jesus. We can’t change God, but we can change ourselves and the world by being more like Jesus. Our actions and our words can become hope to our neighbors.
There is something that keeps us from being hopeful though. It is fear. In her book, "Fearless Living," Rhonda Britton writes, “Fear is the gatekeeper of your comfort zone.” Fear keeps us from stepping out of our own comfort and into the places that make us uncomfortable … places like our friend’s grief, a family member’s addiction, a co-worker’s struggle to make ends meet, relationships that need repair. If we want things to be different, we must move past our fear — past our comfort zones — to offer more hope even though everywhere we look, there seems to be something to fear. Because the truth is, the ones who especially need to hear a message of hope are the ones who are right outside of our comfort zone, the ones whose lives are messy and inconvenient.
Hope is listening to a grieving son’s stories about his mom, even when those stories make us sad. Hope is slipping $100 into a desk drawer, and when it’s discovered, acting like you don’t have any idea how it got there. Hope is leaving the door open for forgiveness, restitution and reconciliation. Hope is looking in the mirror and saying, “You are enough. You are not your trauma.” Each one of us has the capacity to be hope. We must be careful and not mistake hope for some nebulous idea we just talk about at church. We cannot treat hope like it’s nothing more than a wish. Hope is light in the darkness, even if it is just a tiny glimmer way off in the distance.
I recognize that we cannot fix the world in one week during Advent, but what we can do is offer ourselves as ordinary messengers of the extraordinary hope we have that people change and the world can and will change. In the words of poet Amanda Gorman, “There is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.” Be brave. Be hope. We are better together.
Rev. Kelley Becker is senior minister at Disciples Christian Church in Bartlesville.
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This article originally appeared on Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise: Rev. Kelley Becker: We are God's messengers of hope
