July 8, 2007
(Sixth Sunday
after Pentecost; Proper 9)
Wishing and Hoping
by The Rev. Joe Behen, Clergy Assistant
2 Kings 5:1-14
•
Psalm 30
•
Galatians 6:(1-6), 7-16
•
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
(From The
Lectionary Page)
The
The word "hope" is one of many words whose meaning for us
in this time and place means, I think, something less than what it
meant in the Greco-Roman world of first Century
The Greek word for hope, however, means something more.
It means to look forward to something, with the implication of
confidence about this something coming to pass. This
confidence, then, makes hope to be fundamentally related to faith.
Our hope in Christ fundamentally changes who we are in a dramatic
way. And without this hope, we cannot become the followers
that Christ wants to make of us. The late William Sloane
Coffin once remarked that, “Hope criticizes what is, whereas
hopelessness rationalizes it. Hope,” he said, “resists, while
hopelessness adapts.” We can be certain that Christ’s message
is not one of rationalizing and adapting to the world as we
encounter it.
In sending out his disciples ahead of him, Jesus tells the
seventy to avoid things that would compromise the reception of the
message they bear. They are to avoid moving from place to
place, they are to stop and speak to no one aside from their
mission, as this would delay the reception of the message in place
of small talk, something unrelated to the message they bear.
In other words, their lives are to be about the message they bear.
They can’t just think it, and they can’t just say it – they must
live this mission.
“Eat what is set before you, cure the sick who are there,
and say to them, ‘The Kingdom of God has come near to you.’”
This mission of the seventy, then, involves two actions and one
proclamation. The actions are pretty straight forward: they
are to eat what they are given and to cure the sick. In other
words, they are to be hospitable and to care for others. Both
of these directives then are primarily about relationship –
relationship with all the people we encounter in our lives.
But these relationships must exist in cooperation with our mission.
These relationships are a part of our mission. Our life at
work, at home, and everywhere else has to reflect our mission as
followers of Christ. What we proclaim with our lives must
resemble what we proclaim on Sunday mornings to be a fundamental
life conviction: that the
God’s kingdom must indeed be very near to us. It is
not simply, as
In “The Lord of the Rings,” J. R. R. Tolkien quite
creatively teases out the life changing and self- defining character
that is produced by hope. Both Saruman and Gandalf are shown
to have extraordinary powers over nature, powers not unlike what we
in the first world countries have today through technology.
But these two characters use their power in very different ways.
Over time, the way in which they use their power has made them to be
very different from each other, different to the point of being
polar opposites. Gandalf, the apparent inferior, uses his
power for the good of creation and of all the beings that are part
of it. Saruman, however, uses his power to dominate creation
for his own well-being. Tolkien shows the ultimate source of
their difference to be about hope. Saruman has lost hope that
good will prevail, and eventually his entire life is shaped by this
despair. He doesn’t think of himself as being evil, but as
having simply adapted to the realities of life. Self
preservation and self comfort are his highest purposes, and his
entire identity eventually forms around these purposes.
Gandalf, however, hopes in the ultimate power of good over evil.
By the time of the mission of the fellowship, this conviction has
produced a life that appears to most, as one of complete and
reckless self-abandon for what he describes in an almost Pauline
way, as “a fool’s hope.” You see, his hope lies beyond what is
seen, and his life is formed by it.
I believe that this was the experience of the seventy in
Luke’s gospel. As their hope began to take the shape of
Christ’s convictions, they themselves were changed. Only when
their hope is in God’s kingdom and it’s immediate and
difference-making presence, can they shape their lives around this
reality – in other words, only then could they live this hope.
And living this hope makes a difference. Satan falls like
lightning in response to the convicted living of the disciples.
Everything is different when you know that it matters. As soon
as we convince ourselves that God is indifferent to some part of our
life, we have created fertile ground for the growth of
rationalization and ultimately for despair. But when we are
convicted that what we think, what we desire, and what we do with
the next hours of our lives, and how we interact with those we will
come in contact with today – when we are convicted that all of these
things are part of who we are as God's children, they will change
us, and they change our relationship with God. In the end,
however, they matter simply because the