I wonder what the poor widow will eat, for if she has given
all she has, there is none left for food. I wonder where the poor widow will
sleep, for if she has given all she has, she has accumulated nothing for rent.
I wonder how far she must travel to feel safe enough to rest, for I don’t see
the scribes, with their long robes, providing her a space to call home. So, I
wonder who will help her on the road. She has given everything she had, and in
so doing, become a beggar, and beggars can’t be choosers. In giving everything
she has she has given up having choices and I can’t imagine, because I have
never been without. These are the places my head takes me when I hear her
story. I go to practicalities, and necessities. I question what is next. I dislike
her frivolousness, her naivety, her delirious hope. But then, I imagine the
freedom of such an encompassing hope, and I look around, and this hope is my
inspiration.
This week, “When seven year old Jack Swanson heard that
the Islamic Center of Pflugerville, in Texas, had been vandalized, he decided to
donate all of his savings – $20 dollars – to the mosque. Vandals had torn pages
of the Qur’an, covered it in feces and left it outside the entrance of the
mosque. Jack’s mother told ABC News that her son had counted all of his pennies
that he had been saving up and exchanged them to a $20 note to give to the
mosque. Faisal Na’eem a member of the Mosque’s management told ABC
News that members of the Mosque were delighted by Jack’s generosity and
that it had brought him hope, “Jack’s 20 dollars are worth twenty million
dollars to us because it’s the thought that counts…This gives me hope… it’s not
one versus the other. Our kids are going to grow up together… If we have more
kind-hearted kids like (Jack) in the world, I have hope for our future.”
In the end the mosque gifts Jack with an iPad, the very
thing for which he had been saving, but I don’t think the physicality of each
gift is the point, it is the hope that accompanies them, the hope in a future
worth giving everything you have. This was this week, but certainly not the
first time people have been called to a frivolousness of hope.
Dan Mcknight, “In 1934 a young pastor watched in sadness as
his democratic, educated, and Christian country discarded more and more of its
core values. Fear-mongering politicians lured patriotic citizens to throw out
their Bibles and worship at the altar of National Security instead, and to
behave terribly toward foreigners, minorities, the disabled and the mentally
ill. Three weeks after Adolf Hitler was proclaimed Der Führer, nine months
after the 'Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring' took
effect, that young pastor preached a sermon to his flag-waving, nationalist
colleagues about how Christians in a crisis should behave.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote,
"There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For
peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture, and can never be safe.
Peace is the opposite of security... To look for guarantees is to want to
protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment,
wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying down the destiny of the
nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish
purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when
the way leads to the cross."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1934 [Renate Bethge's Dietrich
Bonhoeffer: A Brief Life]
The way that led to the cross was not one of fighting, it
was not one of hoarding, it was not one that kept a single penny. It was that
which was delirious with hope, frivolous with expectation, and held a naivety
that overcame the world. We as Christians are a people of hope, not of fear,
and I like to imagine, what it would be like, even if just for a moment, we
entertained a picture of life rooted in hope. Life based not in practicalities,
but in the necessity of hope.
To imagine it is to imagine the kingdom of God.
It might look like four women in 1884 beginning a Presbyterian Church in the middle
of mining camp, frontier town, Baker
City, Oregon. It
might look like two church fires later the same congregation still continuing.
It might look like that congregation today, taking youth under its wing,
nurturing its Luke Rembolds that they might someday nurture its Jake
McClaughrys of this congregation or others. It might look like a church who
puts as much, or more effort, into otherwise unaccepted kids, as it does those
who are bound for high achievement. Because they value hope as much and more
than success. It might look like a congregation who watched Nathan Defrees grow
and now celebrates with a bustle of excitement he and his wife’s first child.
It might look like writing on the Stewardship letters to college kids, “We
wanted you to feel included, but hope you think about giving where you are.”
That the stamps and paper, are worth the cost of the possibility, of helping
young adults learn to pay it forward, and to pay those blessing back to God,
with whatever single penny they have. That they are worth our hope. It may look
like the volunteers at Open Door, serving breakfast to middle schoolers because
they believe people should be fed body and soul no matter if those volunteers,
much less the church, receives anything in return. It may look like a lot of
planning for the Backpack Program which sends food home with kids for the
weekend because to give to them is to give out of our abundance, when we could
have easily had lack as they. I imagine too that a life based in hope isn’t
based on an endowment, or perpetuity, much less tomorrow,
it is based our giving today. That we give out of our hope, that we give toward
the church, and the community, and the world we can imagine to be God’s
kingdom.
I like to imagine that we are Jesus watching the poor widow,
unafraid of what she will eat, unafraid of where she will sleep, unafraid of
her safety, or the kindness of strangers, but instead already living into the
kingdom of God. I pray we watch and one another, and see her frivolousness of
hope, and its inspiration thereunto. I pray as Christians we can been seen as
deliriously hopeful. I imagine a place with the generosity of children and the
way they are able to break down the walls that divide us with their hopeful
simplicity. I imagine a place with naivety of peace valued as the strength of
nations. I imagine a church who gives not as those with abundance and fear for
their own tomorrow, but instead gives out of their
abundance of hope - for a community whose children are fed and accepted, for a
country with youth who know how to paying it forward, for adults who value
giving their time and talents to others as central to their identity, an
identity of hope. It is to be Christian. To hope is to see the kingdom of God.
