Genesis 15:1-6 • Psalm 33:12-22 • Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 • Luke 12:32-40
There is a story that’s told about three people who climb to the top of a mountain, seeking escape from an enormous flood. The waters are raging and rising rapidly, and they are struggling to go up higher and higher. Soon it becomes clear they are not going to make it—the waters are coming up too fast. One person says, “We are going to need a miracle to survive this!” Another calls for the three of them to repent and confess their sins to prepare for imminent death. The third, however, says that what she thinks they are going to need to do is to learn how to live under water.
Many of us have been learning how to live—maybe not under water—but how to live with water that brought damage to our basements and homes. Excessive rain dumped more than eight inches of water on the Oak Park area in a matter of a few hours about two weeks ago. Water heater lights went out, boxes of treasured belongings were damaged, and appliances once counted upon to clean clothes and keep food cold now sit on curbs waiting to be thrown out. As much as we would wish we did not have to deal with this water’s damage, and as our first response may have been to pray for a miracle to take away what happened, we are counter-intuitively learning how to live with the power of waters that rose more quickly than we could have ever prepared for.
Our confusion at the notion of “learning to live under floodwaters” echoes our confusion in what we hear Jesus say to the disciples as he seeks to give them words of assurance that actually seem to produce more anxiety than comfort. “Do not be afraid, little flock…” sounds quite nice and reassuring. But then Jesus says something that does the opposite of comfort us: “Sell your possessions, and give what you have to the poor.” I don’t know about you but going and selling everything I own sounds about as fear-inducing a thing as I can imagine! How could having no possessions or savings decrease our fears about survival, about having shelter, having enough food and clothing, let alone having enough invested for retirement? But at the same time, have not these waters filling up our basements reminded us of the temporal nature of what we own, and that there is something more essential, more valuable in lives than our stuff, than what we can see?
It’s important for us to note that what comes between these two commands not to fear and to give away what we have makes both of them possible. Jesus gives us a promise: “…for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom…” God’s intentions for us are to give to us as a parent would want to give to their child the gift of the kind of world they wish them to grow up in. Jesus promises that although the “right now” may not look like the kingdom, what is “not yet” seen will become reality soon. It is God’s good pleasure to give us a glimpse of what God’s reign over and against all that gives us cause for despair looks like. When Jesus says “Do not fear, little flock”, he knows that hope in the kingdom of God can drive out any fear, any despair. Jesus knows that what we need is an image to hold on to that is not yet seen, but that our mind’s eye can see. The hope of the coming kingdom lies beyond the reality we see around us, and Jesus knows what we need is a vision of that kingdom—to see what is around us with different eyes—so that we can learn to live underwater.
This past week I had the honor and privilege of traveling with a group from our church to Iowa to see the hope of people who are putting Jesus’ words “Do not be afraid” into action, and betting on hope winning out over fear. Our group traveled to Cedar Rapids, Iowa where in 2008 a flood came that went beyond even the five hundred year flood plain, destroying homes and businesses, and causing one of the top five worst natural disasters in America’s history. As the community seeks to take shape again after the flood, what has often happened has been that someone is blessed enough to have their home repaired, with their own funds, or through volunteers—but when they move back in, they are the only person living on their block. The Methodists saw this and began a program called “Block by Block”, a program our group volunteered with, where a whole block agrees to sign a covenant where homeowners promise to let the church come in and fix up the homes of owners who are still there, and to also fix or demolish the abandoned homes, and sell the refurbished properties at an affordable rate; and then the profits from that sale go into investing into the next block. What happens is that not just single homes are getting rebuilt, but the whole community is being brought back.
How is this kind of community-building possible? Fear says that it would be impossible for all the neighbors to reach agreement and sign a covenant, but that’s exactly what has happened in more than twenty blocks that have signed on. Fear says each homeowner should care more about themselves than their neighbors, but the residents are saying they are building meaningful relationships with people on their block they had never talked to before. Fear says it would take too much work and too much time and too many volunteers to make such a program happen, but hundreds of volunteers have come, and there is more than enough money to keep the program running for at least two more years. How is it possible? Because of hope in God’s good pleasure to give not private ownership of possessions, but a community—a place where the dreams called the kingdom of God can be made reality.
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” What is it we fear, coming here this morning? Is it fear about job cuts; fear about our Earth being beyond repair from global warming; fear of the kind of future in store for our children? Jesus gets at the root of our fears by flooding us not with some kind of promise of material well-being, with purses of treasures that will wear out. Jesus gets at the root of our fears by flooding us with the love of God’s hope that is bigger than our biggest fears. The promise of the kingdom is not the promise of the absence of fear, but that fear will not keep God from bringing the kingdom to us. The eyes that keep the kingdom in view are the eyes that have faith to leave anxiety behind, eyes that have a faith that frees us to be generous, eyes that have faith in a future not secured by our own achievements but only by God.
Some might say that hope in God’s kingdom is simply being optimistic. But there is a key difference between optimism and hope: optimism originates with us; hope originates with God. Optimism is the choice to choose to look away from what’s negative or fearful, to “keep our eyes to the sunshine so we cannot see the shadows” (Helen Keller); but hope is God’s gift to us to see suffering and despair, violence and injustice, and to see the opportunity for new life where the kingdom of God is just waiting to be built. We could say today that Jesus turns us not into optimists, or believers in the “power of positive thinking”, but rather Jesus turns us into people of hope, who trust in “the power of hopeful imagination” , an imagination that equips us with all we need in this time and this place to watch, prepare for and seek the promised kingdom.
As God’s people, we stand at the intersection of all that gives us fear and all the promises of God that give us hope. This is an intersection that Jesus meets us at on the cross. Jesus embraces us with the words, “Do not fear”, so that we can be free to hope in the future God has promised for us, and have the courage to look around at the waves and floods of despair in the world, and still see hope that God’s kingdom can come through us, we who can still learn how to live underwater, we who have been drenched with the forgiving waters that make us inheritors of God’s good promises, we who with the eyes of faith can see the openings all around us in which this city of God is waiting to be built not by someone else, but by us. Amen!
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