"Hope" in Quotes
I’ve heard it said that you can tell a good sermon when your mind takes what it’s hearing and begins to jump off in new directions. A good sermon lets the hearer make their own connections and build upon what is spoken as a starting off point.
I heard one of those sermons last week. It was our first chapel back the Bishop Wenner School of Theology. I haven’t been in the classroom since last March. That’s when COVID shut things down. Our students haven’t been all together on campus since then. The classrooms have been empty. No chapel services have been held. And I’ll tell you, it was a relief and an immense joy to step back into my life as lecturer in our community that I’ve so loved these last three years.
Another joy of last week is that my colleague missionary, Rev. Natallia Manyeza, stepped into her new role as chaplain and lecturer in peace, human rights, and gender studies. Rev. Manyeza has been a friend since she arrived from Zimbabwe with her husband Dr. Manyeza about six months after I arrived. She’s a Proverbs 31 woman if I ever knew one, in the best way and without all the baggage that passage carries. She’s also a principled leader who wears her integrity quiet yet strong.
Last week she preached our first chapel service. It was one of those good sermons. This is a video of her beginning her sermon by invoking the presence of the Holy Spirit.
She was preaching on the passage in Jeremiah 29. “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord.” They are plans for our good. They are plans that reject evil. Plans to give us a future and a hope.
While she was preaching, she spoke a line that I haven’t gotten out of my head since. I can’t tell you the exact line, because immediately I was spinning it in 1000 directs and making it my own. But she said something along the lines of “Sometimes we show up with “hope” in quotes.”
Sometimes we show up with “hope” in quotes.
I’m big on hope. It’s something that grounds me. Something that spurs me on. Even when the signs are clearly on the side of despair and the world beats a drum that pounds “Just give up” as it vibrates around you. I like to say that what it means to be an Easter people is that we dig in our heels and refuse to despair. I especially enjoy preaching that wearing my red Steve Madden stilettos. Hope is that thing that keeps you walking, keeps you visioning, keeps you resisting evil at every turn.
But I have to admit, there have been days that I’ve showed up to my life with a word of “hope” in quotes. I’ve shown up as a person of “hope” with a quiet question mark that betrays my despair. I’ve seen the web of corruption in our world and I’ve wondered if there is power big enough and true enough to overcome it. I’ve seen the systems of racism in my country and I’ve wondered if we will ever get to the other side. I’ve looked at my own future and cautioned myself not to hope too much for things that may just not come to pass.
I think it’s time we take the quotes off of hope. Hope is not a word that should be neutered. It’s not a word that should be whitewashed. It’s not a word that should be taken half-heartedly. Hope is a full-throated cry. It is wild and relentless and stubborn and bold. Hope is loud.
Time to take the shackles off.
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed;
perplexed, but not driven to despair;
persecuted, but not forsaken;
struck down, but not destroyed…
So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature
is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.
For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an
eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we
look not at what can been seen but at what cannot be seen;
for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.