Hope amidst the ashes - Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Lamentations 3: 19 - 26. Luke 17: 5 - 10

A story is told dating back to the nineteenth century. The army of the German Kaiser were burning Jewish villages in what is now Poland. After one such village had been destroyed a passer by was amazed to see that an old man had pounded some boards together in order to open up for business. Looking at the old man he asked;

“What are you selling among these ruins?”

With a smile the old man replied;

“I am selling hope. You can sell water in a dry desert so the place to sell hope is on the ash heap of destruction.”

The old man had a point. Today we often talk about hope in a comfortable way. When things go well and there is not a cloud in the sky, we talk of hope. Yet surely, the time when hope is truly valuable is in the dark times such as experienced by people such as a persecuted old man seeing only destruction around him.

Too often we talk of Christian hope as if it were about unending blue skies. And yet, we need to remember that old gospel truth that glory comes accompanied by a cross. People of faith as well as those without faith have down the years experienced the sheer unfairness of life. Any gospel appeal that ignores this is totally false. As Fred Pratt Green puts it in one his hymns;

“Father hear the prayer we offer,
Not for ease that prayer shall be
But for strength that we may ever
Live our lives courageously.”

So to be of use in a world threatened by nuclear weaponry, terrorism, environmental catastrophe and the AIDS pandemic amongst other things, hope has to be for the bad times, for the ash piles of destruction.

A somewhat surprising vision of hope comes from the book of Lamentations, a book that contains poetry from a time of devastation. Its background is the destruction of Jerusalem with its Temple, as well as the surrounding areas. The go getters who might have rebuilt something good on the ashes of the city, had been taken off to exile in Babylon. Left behind were the people held to be least useful by the Babylonians, people who were indeed despised by their fellow countrymen in exile. In Lamentations, we hear these voices from the devastation in Jerusalem. And these voices are heartbreaking to listen to, for they express the pain of people who have lost all that they hold dear and who know that they are not up to the challenge of putting things right. And in their pain, they convey at times a deep sense of feeling rejected by God. For in their sufferings, they see God’s wrath being visited upon them. In the verses before our reading, we find these words concerning God;

“He has made my teeth grind on gravel,
And made me cower in ashes;
My soul is bereft of peace;
I have forgotten what happiness is;
So I say, ‘Gone is my glory,
And all I had hoped for from the Lord.’”

But this is not the final word. For whilst the pain of the disaster has infected the very being of the poets, just like that Polish Jew these poets living in the poverty and lawlessness of the destroyed Jerusalem dare to hope. Hear the hope in these words;

“But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.”

What does the poet call to mind? Well, he is versed in the story of his people, a story of God’s goodness that has been passed down to him. And so, amidst the ashes of the city, he affirms a basis for hope in words that have resounded down the centuries;

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
His mercies never come to an end;
They are new every morning;
Great is your faithfulness.”

Hope amidst the ashes! Hope that is rooted in something greater than the physical realities of Jerusalem. Hope that is based in the loving faithfulness of God that has been the experience of a people called into Covenant relationship with God. And that hope is greater than the dreadful reality of the destruction of all the things once held precious.
This idea that hope in God is greater than physical realities is powerfully demonstrated when the poet goes on to add;

“The Lord is my portion says my soul,
Therefore I will hope in him.”

For a long time I never understood the significance of this phrase. It made little sense to me. But its background is that when the Promised Land had been divided among the tribes of Israel, the portion granted to the priests and levites was God rather than the land. Now that the land has been devastated, the poet has been able like those priests and levites to place the whole of his hope in God’s goodness, a place of hope that is much more reliable than any land. For whilst land can be taken away or destroyed, God’s goodness is for all time and is much more powerful.
Jesus also has a message of hope. Living through a time when society was brutish, he talks of the people of God being a place where hope is located. This is very relevant for our service of Confirmation. It is not that there is some great power in the institution of the church. No way! But the path of faith which today is being embraced by those who are to be confirmed, does offer a way of hope even amidst the ashes. Jesus speaks of those who have faith the size of the barely visible mustard seed, being able to command a mulberry tree with its massive root system to uproot itself and adds on to that the even greater improbability of it rooting itself in the sea. Surely this is a grotesque expectation and taken literally it is nonsense. But the message that Jesus is seeking to communicate is that faith opens up boundless and even crazy new possibilities. But we find these possibilities in partnership with God. A parable about slavery will remind us that these new possibilities are not so much entitlements but gifts of a generous God.

We need hope for all too often our reality is in the ashes. In searching for that hope, I recommend you whether being confirmed this morning or not to set your eyes on the God who has been revealed as faithful and loving in the history of Israel and also especially in the life of Jesus Christ. He offers us a hope even amidst the ashes of life. And it becomes our responsibility to embrace the hope that comes from God. For hope, is at the very centre of what is a gospel of hope. It is even that which in the words of William Wordsworth is;

“the paramount duty that Heaven lays for its own honour on man’s suffering heart.”

Hope - that which is at the heart of the gospel. Hope - that is our greatest need even, especially amongst the ashes.

This sermon was preached at a Confirmation Service at Bideford Methodist Church on Sunday October 7th 2007