Hope

When a Christian talks about hope, what do they mean? Is it a wish? Is it like holding your breath as a “Hail Mary” pass flies to the hands of a wide receiver?

To Emily Dickinson, hope is “the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” For the apostle Paul, Christian hope is rooted in God’s action in Christ. God has saved us and our response to that salvation is something rising up in us called “hope.”   In Romans 8 we read, “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

When a Christian talks about hope, it’s not just an ethereal wish. It’s grounded in God’s saving action in Christ.  Christian hope is a lot like the Christian notion of mystery. My systematics professor told us that Christian mystery is not just a throwing up of hands. He reminded us that the mystery of faith is not “I don’t know, I don’t  know, I don’t know.” It’s “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”  

Christian hope is wild and untamed and audacious hope, like Dickinson’s wild bird of the soul. It stands in the gap of government shutdowns and a collective lack of options to whisper words about angels and Easter and a love that is stronger than death.  It allows for mustard seeds turning into great shrubs. However, it’s not a cotton candy hope.  It’s a hope that’s firmly grounded in God’s promises in Christ. It is invisible and mysterious, and at the same time, strong enough to risk everything for. That’s why we can stand at a graveside and proclaim the “sure and certain hope” of the resurrection.   It is a wild leap of faith into God’s often unseen, but still sure and certain, embrace.

“My hope (all wild and audacious, all unruly and unlikely) is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness…On Christ the solid rock I stand (sometimes my legs quiver, but I stand), all other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.”

Clouds of Dust and Clouds of Glory

I'm thinking this morning, still, of dust and ashes.  I don't dust all that much around the house, which I'm sure is a glaring fault. I am sure that other people dust regularly, even the parts of the house that are hidden, like behind the curios and knickknacks or along the baseboards. I read somewhere that the dust of our home contains our skin cells, which makes me look at Pigpen, the Charlie Brown character, more sympathetically.

Last night at the Ash Wednesday service, we spoke of being dust and returning to dust. I suppose in light of the skin cell business we might say that is literally true.  But I can't shake the fact that stars are made from dust, and more importantly, if humanity is dust, we are surely some beloved dust. Precious enough to be animated by the Divine breath. Important enough for God to die for. 

Wordsworth wrote:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,	60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come	65
From God, who is our home:

 As this bit of dust reaches skyward in Lenten disciplines, may we all remember that we are children of dust, and also, children of God. If we are in fact trailing clouds of dust, for all who are born have started the clock to that dusty mortal return, perhaps, too, we are trailing clouds of glory, from God, who knew us and loved us from before we were born, and who knows and loves and carries us through this and every season. Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Ashes

My first experience of Ash Wednesday came when I was in middle school, and we had just moved to Rhode Island from Florida.  One day, folks came to school with a funny-looking smudge on their foreheads. I was embarrassed for them until my Social Studies teacher took me aside and said, "It's Ash Wednesday."  Oh, good, well that makes sense. My theory of Completely Unbelievable Coincidence involving #2 Pencils and Charcoal was a lot harder to believe.

As we prepare to gather again to contemplate repentance and bear the cross on our forheads, I'm grateful for this ancient practice, which reminds me that I am mortal, and that I am in need of a savior, and that salvation was wrought on the cross, and unleashed on Easter morning.

I wear many hats in life, and at times, many "masks" too.  It's good to be able to shed those masks in favor of a mark of who I really am, and who we really are.  We are children of the King, marked in baptism as Christ's own, forever.  From newborn babies to elderly saints of the church, let us all put on ashes, and remember that we are dust (beloved and breath-animated dust). Let us repent and believe the gospel, that Jesus tells us who we are and what we inhabit these dust bunny bodies for:  "To bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Saturday Morning

Reconnecting with this blog I have let lay fallow for TOO long....and inspired by a poem I read yesterday, I offer the following:

Saturday mornings are for not making up the bed, and for drinking hot black coffee as slowly as I want. Saturday mornings are for carving out a sand fort to keep out the ocean called "I have to give a sermon tomorrow." Saturday mornings are for children with their hair standing up and sleep still in their eyes.  They are for having the news on in the background but not listening to the words they are saying. Saturday mornings are for riding a bike in the cold because the sun is out, and for warming bare feet in the sunny spot on the carpet. Saturday mornings are for washing and drying but not for ironing. Saturday mornings are for cinnamon rolls and flannel, but not the tailored flannel suit. Saturday mornings go by too quickly, pushed with a momentum that comes from Somewhere Else, somewhere Not My Idea, leaving me wistful for it before the sun even sets, leaving me curled up on a hidden sofa, scraping the bowl of Saturday Morning like Mama's chocolate cake batter, and holding on to the taste as long as I can.