Notes on Hope: When hope feels too dangerous.
Photo by: Julia Joppien
Earlier this year, Amanda Gorman[1], wrote in the New York Times a “Hymn for the Hurting.” This was her response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas where 19 children between the ages of 9 and 11 and two teachers, were murdered in their classrooms and 18 others were injured. All inflicted by wounds created by a gun.
Ms. Gorman wrote:
Everything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed and strange,
Minds made muddied and mute.
We carry tragedy, terrifying and true.
And yet none of it is new;
We knew it as home,
As horror,
As heritage.
Even our children
Cannot be children,
Cannot be.Everything hurts.
It’s a hard time to be alive,
And even harder to stay that way.
We’re burdened to live out these days,
While at the same time, blessed to outlive them.This alarm is how we know
We must be altered —
That we must differ or die,
That we must triumph or try.
Thus while hate cannot be terminated,
It can be transformed
Into a love that lets us live.May we not just grieve, but give:
May we not just ache, but act;
May our signed right to bear arms
Never blind our sight from shared harm;
May we choose our children over chaos.
May another innocent never be lost.Maybe everything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed & strange.
But only when everything hurts
May everything change.
Everything hurts.
Do you feel that? Do you feel that deep groan, that sigh trapped deep within who presses and pushes to escape; wanting to cry out for this long awaited hope of relief?
I do.
I’ve become quite familiar with this suppressed hope. I’m not quite ready to let it loose.
I’m not quite ready to allow myself to believe that hope sits there upon the horizon. Right now, to hope, simply feels too dangerous. And yet in the midst of this cultural moment of pain, somehow Ms. Gorman is able to locate a sliver of light in the dark, and vocalize a hope that can guide us forward into possibility and change.
I wish that I could borrow her hope and allow my own suppressed hope to remain hidden away and protected from reality. But I fear that to do so would only unlock the door that imprisons my own hope and release it into the wild, only to be shot down as it begins to take flight.
We are surrounded by the news and reality of death. Whether it’s a grocery store in Buffalo, a Walmart in Virginia, a nightclub in Colorado Springs, a high school in Seattle, a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, an elementary school in Texas, or within your own family or relational sphere...[2]
A bit closer to home:
I’ll never forget the day I picked up Elliot from school and asked her the same routine of questions I always do:
“What was something funny that happened today?
What was something you learned today?
What was something that made you mad?
Was there a time when you felt scared?”
“Yes papa. I was scared when we had to play this game. We had to shut off the lights and lock the door. We all had to go inside the closet, shut the door, and be as quiet as we could.”
5-years old. Her first active shooter drill.
She has been doing this drill once a month since kindergarten, or 10 times per school year. Meaning she’s already experienced this drill over 50 times since she started school [3].
And I could go on about this:
I could share of my own experience with gun violence/threats
Or talk about the active shooter policy and soft-lockdown we’ve been in at work for the better part of a year
Or how on average 1 child is shot every hour in the United States
Or in the past 10 years 30,000 kids and teens have been killed by wounds created by guns (more than on-duty police officers and active military personnel combed.)
Or how in 2020, wounds created by guns became the leading cause of death in kids and teens. [4]
We live in a country of death masquerading as a land of life.
This is not okay. And yet, there’s more…
Unfortunately, this is only one of the deep hurts that make hope feel too dangerous.
What troubles you? How does this environment of death intersect with your story? What causes you to lock hope deep within your being?
It can be so hard to hope right now. It can be so hard to see the bend in the moral arc of the universe. . . is it even there?
Waiting for hope in the dark
This season of Advent comes at such an interesting time in the United States, especially here in the Pacific Northwest where we become all too familiar with the darkness, our ever-present companion. During this time of the year we descend further and further into the shadows of the universe as our days grow shorter and the light above recedes, masked by the clouds of rain that pour from above. And yet, we’re encouraged to rest in a hope that sits just beyond the horizon where the tides of change are coming, cresting with possibility and the knowledge that God has come near and rescue is here.
This is a season brimming with amazement, excitement, and joy; filled with a deep hope for restoration and reconciliation to come. And yet, it has not arrived. And so we wait.
As the years pass on and our calloused familiarity with death becomes ever more present, it becomes harder to find that hope. The callouses formed by our individual and collective pain and grief forms layer upon layer of protection over the tenderness of our hope, creating increasingly difficult conditions for us to be ready for hope. As I survey the land, paying attention to what is happening all around, it feels as if the horizon of hope is shrinking into the distance, and I’m not identifying with Advent hope in the same way as I have in the past.
Not quite ready for hope
I am well aware of how dark this sounds, but stick with me for a moment… not because it’ll resolve with a nice bow, but because I think there’s something here to consider.
I’m taken by this story of Jesus’ followers who gathered together after Jesus was put to death by the state [5]. They sat together in an upper room filled with grief and uncertainty, sorrow and confusion, pain and tension. Everything they had believed to be true about the world, everything they had placed their hope in had been nailed to two pieces of wood and killed. Nothing was ever going to be the same.
They sat together in their pain and mourning, following a modified form of shiva, listening to one another and processing what had happened, wondering aloud how they could have gotten it all so unbelievably wrong. They talked together of their experiences, shared the stories of time with Jesus and little side conversations with him, shifting through the complexities of their emotions with laughter and tears and rage.
They wrestled with questions: What were they going to do next? What did the future hold for them? How would they rebuild their reputations and return to their previous lives? I can imagine questions towards James and John, “Are you two going to go back to your father and rejoin the family business? Do you think he’ll take you back?” Or of Matthew, “Please tell us you’re not going to collect taxes again for the empire, are you?”
Did they wonder if this would be the last time most of them would ever see each other again? Sure, here in this space they’d make plans for next years Passover, hoping everyone could make it, but knowing that only a couple would actually show up—the pain would simply be too much.
Here’s what I find so interesting about this story. Even though they had heard from the women that the tomb was empty, and that Peter had seen the empty tomb and burial linens with his own eyes. Even though they had heard that Jesus had risen, they didn’t believe. They couldn’t believe. It was all too much. [6]
I don’t think they were ready for hope.
Living in the tension
I live in this same tension. This tension where I long for the resurrection to be true, that the kingdom of God has come near, that the tide is shifting and turning, that the moral arc of the universe is bending towards justice, that evil is vanquished and love will reign supreme. But my eyes tell me a different story.
And so I inhabit this space of the already but not yet. This place were I long to believe but struggle to see.
Here in the upper room, the disciples knew this tension intimately as they grieved, mourned, and talked. And every time they kindled a spark of hope, their eyes exposed a different reality. This tension is hard. It’s a space where we become keenly aware that things are not as they are supposed to be. It’s a place where we struggle to see, and wonder where Jesus is in all of it.
I’ve sat with this story a lot over the years. I’ve searched to see more clearly this hope that the disciples had lost and found, when recently these four words jumped off the page at me, washing over me like the balm of Gilead:
“Peace be with you.”
And yet, upon seeing these words as if for the first time, I was startled and troubled, just like the disciples. These words were spoken to them in that moment of pain by Jesus, who stood before them [7]. “Why are you troubled? And why do doubts rise in your mind?,” he asks them.
He asks us the same questions: Why are you troubled? Why do doubts rise in your mind?
For me? It’s hard to believe in the promise of the resurrection when there is so much pain, when the cries for justice go ignored, and the same stories of suffering play on repeat.
“Peace, be with you,” he says.
For me? It’s hard to believe in the resurrection when love is absent from one another, when patience is perpetually weaponized by white Christian moderates, and guns are more revered than the lives of children; when power is favored over truth and Christian Nationalism becomes the predominant flavor of the White Church. It’s hard to believe in the resurrection when (insert anti-Christ behavior and actions held and committed by the church here).
“Peace be with you,” he says.
In the midst of our pain, our suffering, our questions, our doubts, our fears, Jesus blesses us with peace. The theologian Walter Brueggemann reminds us that peace “is rooted in the theology of hope, in the powerful buoyant conviction that the world can and will be transformed and renewed, that life can and will be changed and newness can and will come.” [8] Jesus’ greeting to the disciples, and to us, affirms that no matter what, through it all, he is present. He is here. He invites us in, to touch him, to see him, to know him and his presence. Which is ultimately the hope and gift of Christmas, the blessed arrival of hope.
The Table of Hope
This is perhaps my favorite part of the story of Jesus’ arrival with the disciples. He asks them for something to eat. A lot of theologians and commentators have written that this is a moment to prove to the disciples that he really is flesh and blood—that this is a statement against Gnosticism. And that’s certainly a fine explanation. However, there’s so much more to it than this.
In the first testament (the first half of the Christian Scriptures) a covenant, a binding relational agreement where two or more people come together in partnership working to achieve the same goal, was typically entered into over a meal. Here, Jesus and his disciples break bread and share a covenant meal. “May I have something to eat?” He asks. May I sit here with you, share a meal with you, share in your pain? May I listen to your grief and fears? May I hold them with you?
And as they let it out, to release their grief and pain, they begin to see that hope is seated at their table.
I so desperately want to sit at their table right now. I long to see and feel and know that this spark of hope, no matter how faint it has become, no matter how many calloused layers cover its tenderness, it is still real, still possible. To know that Jesus really has gone down into the depths of creation and come up brining the whole redeemed nature on his shoulders. That Christ has risen and that we too shall rise.
I long to see the world made right, here and now; to be made whole, here and now; to be redeemed, renewed, and restored, here and now. No matter how beaten and bruised my hope has become over the years, no matter how deep beneath the callouses I hide it away, it still flickers—even if faintly—with the hope of renewal that Jesus spoke and promised.
I want to be at that covenant table of hope where together the work of the people of God is to create a kingdom of liberation: of freeing the prisoner and the oppressed, of eradicating racism and its systems of whiteness and hatred, of putting evil asunder and the world to right. To create a kingdom of love: of loving the immigrant and the outcast and the refugee, the outsider and the oppressed. A kingdom of loving each other and one another and ourselves. A kingdom of tenderly knowing that you too are created in His image, that you too are an image bearer of God.
I want to be at that covenant table of hope where together the work of the people of God is to create a kingdom of joy, a joy that brims with hope and overflows with exuberance. A joy that rests deep within the core of your being because you know, you just know that you’re held by God, that you’re loved by God. I want to create a kingdom of peace and peacemakers—not a milquetoast peace, a peace where there’s simply an absence of visible conflict, but a peace where justice is present. A peace that passes all understanding, and exemplifies peace as wholeness where we may can come together in unity, in love, in mercy, grace, and possibility.
It’s so much, and yet somehow it barely scratches the surface of what God hopes for us…
I need to hear this more often…
I don’t know about you, but I need to hear this story more often than I do. I need to be reminded again and again and again that in a world (and church) that seeks to destroy this hope, this is the covenant Jesus made with us. No matter how high the troubles pile, no matter how deep the callouses grow, no matter how much the light is dimmed, I need to hear this story, be reminded of this story, sit with this story, and know this story.
This is the kingdom of hope that feels crushed away deep within my being. It is a kingdom of love, and joy, peace and patience, kindness and goodness, gentleness and generosity, faithfulness and self-control. It is a kingdom where the meek inherit the earth, and the pure in heart are blessed. It’s a kingdom where creation groans no more and God dwells with his people. A kingdom where there are no more tears, no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain. A kingdom where the lame can walk and the blind can see; where viruses, and diseases, and evil are no more.
I need this story. I think we need this story. This is the covenant of hope birthed on Christmas, made possible through the resurrection, and entered into at the table.
Maybe everything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed and strange.
But only when everything hurts
May everything change.
Thank you Ms. Gorman. I can see it a little more clearly now.
Can you? Can you see it?
Just there on the horizon?
It’s hope… hope is on the horizon.
Amen. Let it be so.
Footnotes:
[1] Amanda Gorman was the youngest inaugural poet in the history of the United States, and the first to be named National Youth Poet Laureate.
[2] There have been 625 mass shootings in the United States in 2022 as of December 10th. There were “only” 269 in 2014. This is a 132% increase in less than 8 years. You can find updated numbers here: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org
[3] Parent’s aren’t notified when these drills happen. Most of the time we have no idea they happen. It’s easy to forget or miss that this is what we are putting our children through on a monthly basis.
[4] The Brady Campaign, a non-partisan group started by Ronald Regan’s press secretary has a robust list of gun violence statistics: https://www.bradyunited.org/key-statistics
[5] I’ve been intentionally working to identify more with Jesus’ followers this past year. Seeing things from their perspective, putting myself in their shoes and trying to simply understand them better. It’s been an interesting exercise for sure.
[6] Sometimes when reading Scripture and the condensed nature of the stories, I don’t think we allow for the passage of time and the reality of what is happening to set in… I think this is a good case and point of moving too quickly through the passage.
[7] Probably walking through the unlocked door if they were practicing shiva.