Words & Wishes: Share Your Hope
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
During this time of transition as I prepare to move to a new ministry setting, the
reality is that most of my thoughts and energy are focused here. There’s the practical
element—cleaning out files, passing along information, wrapping up projects, handing
off responsibilities.
But there’s something else, something at a deeper level—words I want to say,
wishes I want to share. So for the next few Sundays, I’d like to give shape to some of the
words and wishes I want to leave with you.
Today those words and wishes have to do with hope. As I reflected on what I
wanted to say about hope, I recalled an essay from the This I Believe radio series. It
begins: “I believe in the power of hope.”
The essayist explains that he gained this belief from working with Karl
Menninger, an American pioneer in psychiatry. He says Menninger always put hope first
in his clinical work, in his creation of programs for children, in his community activism,
and in his writing. The essayist recalls the most powerful lesson he learned from
Menninger about hope.
Shortly before his death in 1990, Menninger was giving a lecture to about thirtyfive of the country’s most preeminent psychiatrists. He waited for all of them to be seated
around a huge oak table, and then took his chair.
“The lesson for today is about hope,” Menninger told them. “Now, I want to ask
you a question. How many of you in your practice back home are treating hopeless
cases?”
At first there was silence, but then after several minutes one women braved raising
her hand. Slowly, other hands began to go up. Soon thirty hands were raised around the
table.
Menninger leaned back in his chair and stared at them. He then bellowed, “If
they’re hopeless, why in the world are you treating them?”
All hands dropped.
“How many of you are treating mildly hopeful clients?” Menninger asked. Every
person’s hand flew into the air.
I’m afraid that sometimes when we look at the broken world around us, we may be
tempted to think that we’re trying to treat a hopeless case. Perhaps it’s a temptation that’s
confronted congregations for centuries.
Our scripture reading today provides us with a small portion of the correspondence
that Paul exchanged with the church in Corinth. There are several factors that complicate
our having a clear understanding of this text.
First, it’s difficult to interpret letters such as this one because of the large amount
of information we don’t have. We don’t know the full extent of what’s been exchanged
between the two parties. We often come into the conversation late. And we only have
access to one side of that conversation.
The tone of this letter, which comes through in our reading, gives us a clue that
Paul was upset—even defensive. He was addressing the nature of his ministry—which
seems to have be under suspicion by the Corinthian church. But we don’t know much
more than that.
Another complicating factor is that Paul’s argument here can sound anti-Semitic—
especially when these verses are read apart from the larger context of Paul’s writings.
And, unfortunately, some Christians have interpreted such New Testament passages in
just that way over the years. But another possible way to read this text is that Paul was
arguing that God’s new covenant—offered through Jesus—is a continuation of God’s
revelation in human history. A revelation that began with God’s covenant with the
children of Israel and now is unfolding in a new way.
Despite the questions we may have about this epistle reading, one verse seems to
point to the possibility that the church in Corinth needed encouragement when it came to
hope. Paul writes to them: “Therefore, since it is by God's mercy that we are engaged in
this ministry, we do not lose heart.” We don’t lose heart. We’re engaged in a ministry of
hope.
Perhaps we need that same encouragement as we consider what it means to be the
church today—especially during times of transition, during periods of uncertainty. What
does it mean to engage in sharing hope as a community of faith?
For one thing, I think it means we share hope in a radically inclusive way. In spite
of any arguments I may have with Paul, over and over he points to a way of faith that
makes room for people whom the religious status quo of his day would never have
imagined including.
In today’s reading, Paul says that “all of us” are being transformed by the “glory
of the Lord.” Just as we’re called to share hope, I believe we’re also called to expand our
notion of who’s to be included in that sharing. The hope we have isn’t ours to hoard or to
dole out to those we deem deserving.
The inclusive nature of the sharing we’re called to do grows out of the reality that
our hope doesn’t originate with us. Paul argues that we can be engaged in such a ministry
because of the freedom, transformation, and mercy available to us through God. Hope,
therefore, is a matter of faith.
One of the people I admire most is a man named Speed Leas. For more than four
decades Speed has worked with congregations in conflict—often deep and painful
conflict. What makes that even more amazing is that Speed has never enjoyed being in a
conflict—his own or someone else’s. So what’s motivated his lifetime of work with
conflicted congregations?
“I’m curious,” Speed told me. “I want to understand why people fight. I don’t
think you can figure that out unless you stand in the midst of it.”
His understanding of why people fight has evolved over the years. Initially he
focused on the problem-solving dimension of conflict. Later he saw the need also to pay
attention to conflict’s systemic dimension. Then Speed began to recognize another
dimension related to conflict—one he describes as a faith dimension.
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“When people fight,” he said, “there is a sense of hopelessness at the center of
their scrabbling to fix the situation. The more hopelessness there is, the crazier the
fighting becomes. But if there is hope—even when there is death—and people can see the
possibility of something renewing or redemptive, they can better deal with the conflict.”
Hope can ground us, provide us with a center, anchor us. As a dimension of our
faith, it can help us believe that even in the worst of circumstances we don’t have to lose
heart. Hope doesn’t mean we have to pretend that bad things don’t happen or deny the
pain we experience. Hope holds out the possibility of renewal or redemption that may
come in surprising ways. It comes as the result of our faith in something greater than our
own ability to hold all of the pieces together or to control every outcome.
Vaclav Havel—the playwright and dissident who became the first elected
president of the Czech Republic—described hope as “a dimension of the soul . . . an
orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is
immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. . . . It is not
the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes
sense regardless of how it turns out.”
As I thought about Havel’s definition of hope, I remembered a story from that
same part of the world.
The story takes place during a time of civil war in a large Eastern European city.
Demagogues lit bonfires of hatred between citizens, who belonged to different religions
and ethnic groups. No one was exempt or safe. Old and young, strong and weak, partisan
and innocent—all were victims. Many were maimed. Many killed. Those who didn’t die
lived like animals in the ruins of the city.
Except one man. A cellist. He came to a certain street corner every day. Dressed in
formal black evening clothes, sitting in a fire-charred chair, he played his cello. Knowing
he might be shot or beaten, he still played. Day after day he came to play the most
beautiful music he knew. Day after day, for twenty-two days.
His music was stronger than hate. His hope, stronger than fear.
And in time other musicians were captured by his spirit, and they took their places
in the street beside him. These acts of hope and courage were contagious. Anyone who
could play an instrument or sing found a place at a street intersection somewhere in the
city and made music.
In time the fighting stopped. The music and the city and the people lived on.
You may be thinking that this story is a lovely fable or an inspiring parable. After
all, the real world just doesn’t work that way.
Vedran Smailovic doesn’t agree.
His photograph appeared in the New York Times Magazine in the summer of 1992.
Middle-aged, longish hair, great bushy mustache. He’s dressed in formal evening clothes.
Sitting in a café chair in the middle of a street. In front of a bakery where mortar fire
struck a breadline, killing twenty-two people. He’s playing his cello. As a member of the
Sarajevo Opera Orchestra, there was little he could do about hate and war. It had been
going on in Sarajevo for centuries. Even so, every day for twenty-two days he braved
sniper and artillery fire to play.
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Was he crazy? Maybe. Was his gesture futile? Yes, in a conventional sense. But
what can a cellist do? What madness to go out alone in the streets with a cello and a bow.
But what can a cellist do?
All he knows how to do. Speaking softly, one note at a time, sharing a message of
hope.
Most everyone in Sarajevo knew what a cellist can do—for the place where
Vedran played became an informal shrine, a place of honor. Croats, Serbs, Muslims,
Christians alike placed flowers where he played, commemorating the hope that must
never die—that someday, somehow, the best of humanity would overcome the worst, not
through unexpected miracles but through the expected acts of the many.
Sarajevo is not the only place where Vedran became known. An artist in Seattle
saw his picture and read his story. What could an artist do?
She organized twenty-two cellists to play in twenty-two public places in Seattle
for twenty-two days. And on the final day, all twenty-two played together in one place in
front of a store window displaying burned-out bread pans, twenty-two loaves of bread,
and twenty-two roses.
People came. Newspaper reporters and television cameras were there. The story
and the pictures were fed into the news networks of the world. Others began to play in
other cities. In Washington, D.C., twenty-two cellists played the day a new president of
the United States was sworn into office.
Millions of people saw Vedran’s story in The New York Times. Millions saw and
heard the continuing story picked up by the media. Millions became aware of the
message of hope he shared.
And now you know his story. My wish is that it will inspire you to share your
hope. Amen.
Kathryn Palen
August 31, 2014
Central Baptist Church
Jamestown, RI
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