Finding Our Hope (w/ The Brilliance)

Preached at Eagle Harbor Congregational Church on the first Sunday of Advent December 1, 2024

There was an article in Scientific American this weekend from a researcher in South Carolina who had studied what mindsets can help us bounce back from adversity. She compared two successful approaches: mindfulness and hopefulness.

Mindfulness is a meditative practice of paying attention. When you are washing dishes, you are washing dishes, noticing without judgment the temperature of the water on your skin, the smell of the soap, the sound of the sponge as it squeaks against the plate.

I have taken classes in mindfulness and I have been taught how to eat a strawberry, noticing the taste and texture and scent, registering every sense. Practicing mindfulness helps with stress, it lowers our blood pressure, improves our health and wellbeing. It keeps us calm in times of anxiety and fear. I have personally found all of this to be true.

But the scientists leading the study discovered, in times of real trauma, in times of ecological devastation and war and hunger—in times of apocalypse—mindfulness was not enough. In fact, during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers discovered that for many people, the world around us was too painful to witness. And it actually proved harmful for their study subjects to practice mindfulness. To witness death and suffering with a posture of non judgment and acceptance can actually lead to deep despair.

Hopefulness, on the other hand, is empowering. To practice not just witnessing and accepting, but actively imagining a better future, has the ability to increase our resilience during traumatic events. During the pandemic, these researchers found that musicians and artists who practiced active hopefulness saw opportunities and got creative. They reached out to one another and leaned on community. This is how hopefulness connects us to one another. It frees us to believe, to have faith, to rise up and look around and look toward the future.

In our scripture reading today from Luke (Luke 21:25-36) we are shown an apocalyptic vision that probably resonates with you, to a certain extent, it certainly resonates for me. Apocalyptic visions are all too familiar these days: “nations in dismay, perplexed by the roaring of the seas and the waves… pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent.”

Sounds about right. Our country, our world, our planet forever seems to be teetering on a precipice, on so many fronts. If I had a magic wand I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I feel powerless to what is happening outside my particular sphere of influence. Too often, I feel hopeless.

But I am told, not just by the researchers but by our scripture text today, that hopefulness is a practice. This is a new idea for me. As I said, I’ve taken mindfulness classes, but I’ve never taken a class in hopefulness. As we enter the advent season during a time of apocalyptic visions, we are told in our scripture to prepare ourselves. And what’s more we’ve been given instructions. To watch with anticipation, to look forward and believe, to not just witness to the now but to nurture it. To nurture the now, knowing in our bones that no matter how bad it looks, God is still at work making this place beautiful.

So we enter advent, we begin this journey, believing that it ends in the holiest of holies. That in the end, hope and joy and peace and love come together and give birth to the most precious and most vulnerable promise, a perfect little baby. And we are meant to position ourselves as the womb. We are being asked to prepare the way. We are making of ourselves a sanctuary to house the holy.

Theologian Henri Nouwen writes, “a waiting person is someone who is present to the moment and who believes that this moment is the moment.” So we aren’t waiting and witnessing to devastation, though it exists. At advent we are waiting and keeping watch for Christ. We are waiting and witnessing to the love that exists within and among the devastation. Actively looking for it. Seeking out ways to nurture its presence. Assisting the holy as it brings about the promise of love in the world.

It’s not easy, we know all too well, to practice hope. To have real hope we have to know what’s going on around us. We can’t bury our heads in the sand, even if that feels easier. Hope cannot exist in ignorance. We have to pay attention, keep our eyes and our hearts open, our heads up. Because the Christ we are looking for this advent is out there amongst the jerks.

All the entitled jerks who are driving around out there. And I can be one of those jerks, too, I’m not saying I’m immune. But it is certainly easy in the chaos of the holiday season to get into the mindset that I’m just trying to go about my life and everyone else is getting in my way. And of course the joke is they’re thinking the same thing about me. There’s just a lot of us annoying humans around these days and it’s getting a little crowded.

But guess where Christ is. Guess where love lives. Guess where we are called to witness to it. Yup. Out there with the jerks. Those other imperfect humans, many of whom have no clue how loved and precious and sacred they are.

This is how we practice hope. This is how we prepare the way. We empty ourselves first of any notions of us versus them. Because the holy includes everyone. All are welcome at the table. We empty ourselves of anger and resentment and hate. We empty ourselves of the idea that everyone is a jerk but me. And in the emptiness we make space for God to fill us back up. We wait. And believe in the promises of hope and joy and peace and love. And we look for Christ. Who is somehow both here and everywhere and yet to come.

Because Christ is not just being born into the world to save the world. Christ is being born in us. In each of us. And when advent is over and as Howard Thurman says, the real work of Christmas begins, it will be up to us to keep the newly born Christ alive. So how can we prepare ourselves? How can we make ourselves ready?

Belgian psychotherapist Esther Perel writes that first, we acknowledge the light & the dark. “‍Hope, she says,” is not blind optimism nor is it blissful ignorance.” Hope comes from acknowledging that the darkness and the light are intertwined, and often inseparable. She uses the climate crisis as an example. If you find yourself reading climate catastrophe headlines and feeling despair, go outside and “be present with all that is worth saving.” Acknowledge the truth of our predicament and then remember why it matters.

Next, recall what it is we have survived. Not just our own personal stories of adversity, but our families and our communities as well. Share those stories with one another, stories of resilience that have been passed down through the generations. I have a photocopy of the record of my great-grandmother as she came through Ellis Island in 1917. It makes me hopeful just to look at it. It reminds me of a statement often shared by members of indigenous communities. “I am my ancestor’s wildest dreams.”

And then all of those gifts we have been given, from our earth, from our ancestors, from the holy, from chance and circumstance, we use those gifts to help others. You have been blessed by grace, something that is precious, it is yours and it is a gift. We all probably all have several, we are so blessed in this community. But we each have something that is our gift to share. Cultivating hope, preparing the way of love in the world, means sharing it. Our ancestors gave freely of themselves, believing in the hope of the future. And there is someone out there who needs the blessing that only you can give.

This is how love triumphs as we wait in hope for the promises of Advent to come true. Because when we look for the holy, when we nurture hope, when we cultivate our connections and see everyone—even strangers—as sacred, we are dreaming the world we seek into being. And the world we seek is seeking us. The hope we seek, the love we seek. The holy that we are looking for is looking for us.

Beginner’s mind. It is a Buddhist term and they use it in mindfulness classes as well. Empty of all preconceived ideas, all biases, experiencing something without any notion of how it is “supposed” to be. The beginner’s mind releases itself from the attachment to outcomes. It notices without judgment and is open to a variety of perspectives. And in hopefulness we take beginner’s mind and we focus it on the Holy. We empower ourselves by looking not just without judgment but with love. With awe and wonder. With faith in God, faith in giving of ourselves, faith that all of this is worth saving. And the firm belief that we are not alone.

And when we feel that spark of hope, when that new life is stirring within us, we wait and know that this moment is the moment. And it is worth waiting for. It is worth believing in. It is worth the risk of appearing foolish. It is worth bearing the pain. It is worth dealing with all those jerks out there. It is worth the agony of forgiveness. Because we know love will be born again. That is the promise of advent.

And together, here in this sanctuary, we can find hopeful comfort in the waiting. Not just during advent, but always and for as long as it takes.

May it be so.