Where Does Hope Come From?

Rev. Aaron Houghton
Nov 29, 2016
8 min read

It used to be that I’d go to the church library right after Sunday School, on the way the sanctuary, and grab all the Dr. Seuss books that I could find. This is how I would manage sitting quietly through worship most Sundays, reading Dr. Seuss and doodling illustrations all over the bulletin. It’s no wonder, then, that in reading this Psalm about “weeping” and “reaping” I couldn’t help but imagine how it might sound if Dr. Seuss had been in the place of this psalmist. And yes, I also drew illustrations.

A long time ago when the Lord’s mighty mights

restored the lost hope of the Israelites,

there was gladness and laughter, not one was forlorn,

and they shouted and played the parumpalump horn.

Even in nations who’d doubted the Lord

were praises for God’s mighty deeds overheard.

Yes, all of the Lord’s mighty deeds made us glad

so we sang and rejoiced for the great things we had.

But now our emotions are swarming like bees,

and we’re stung by lost hope, so we’re begging you: “Please,

O please, pretty please, O great Lord who does,

restore our condition to the way that it was.”

There used to be water for woozle wheat fields,

but recently droughts have diminished our yields

All the seed sowing sowers are weeping and sad,

but soon they will harvest all reaping and glad!

From weeping and sad to reaping and glad,

now we hope and we hope for that day to be had!

But the hope that we hoped for seems so far away.

From where will the hope that we hope come, today?

With all that’s going on in the world, in our lives, in our thoughts, there’s a swarm of emotions inside each of us. There’s a swarm of emotions inside the Bible, too—particularly in the book of Psalms. There is something to be said in the fact that the book of Psalms expresses some pretty raw, ugly, and disturbing thoughts and feelings. I find it fascinating how time and again throughout the Psalms, cries of heartbroken lament, rants of bloodthirsty rage, questions of “where are you, God?” and “how long must we wait, God?” are followed with hymns of praise. There’s no hint of God changing the psalmists’ circumstances or offering any words of wisdom, and yet, somehow, when authentically placed before God, the swarm of emotions gets channeled into praise.

And this is where I hope we can learn from the Psalms. And I don’t use the word “hope” lightly. For it is hope that enables the psalmists to imagine joy where they see sorrow, to hope for courage where they see fear, to hope for bounty where they see scarcity, to hope for healing where they see suffering.

Hope is what enables us to believe in something contrary to what we know and experience. Hope is what enables us to envision a flourishing future from the midst of a broken world. And if we can recognize our own emotions within the Psalms, then maybe the Psalms contain hope for us, too. Therefore, the question I want us to have on our minds as we continue is the question printed in your bulletin: “Where does hope come from?”

It’s difficult to pinpoint from where, exactly, the author of Psalm 126 writes. Though they certainly have a prosperous past to remember: reaching the Promised Land, the rule of great kings (and some not-so-great ones), the building of the temple in Jerusalem. But we also know they faced a hostile overthrow, the destruction of the temple, an exile to Babylon which brought subjugation, oppression, and great loss. Some scholars argue that the “restoration of fortunes” mentioned in verse one hints at the people still being stuck in exile, while others argue that this psalm was written after the Babylonian Exile, when the people returned to Jerusalem to find it less than they remembered. No matter which explanation we go with, it’s clear to see how Psalm 126 is the song of an “in-between” people—in-between a prosperous past and the flourishing future for which they hope.

Listen again to verses 5 and 6: “May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.” “Those who sow in tears” and “those who go out weeping” represent the present experiences of living, against which the writer of this psalm envisions “reaping with shouts of joy.”

We can certainly see how hope functions audaciously in this psalm. Contrary to the present realities, hope serves as the bedrock upon which these people build the bridge to their future even when the ground around them is dry sand. They hope, in verse 4, that their fortunes will be restored like water to the dry waterways in the Negeb. These are irrigation ditches through which water would obviously have been known to bring forth life and harvest. The same joyful harvest we just read about in verses 5 and 6.

So, where does hope come from in this psalm? The Lord. Or more specifically, believing in the Lord. It is because the writer of this psalm believes in the Lord that they are able to envision “reaping and glad” while surrounded by “weeping and sad.” This is audacious believing, believing contrary to what they know and experience, hoping for gladness where they see sadness. This is the power of faith, of believing in what you can’t see.

Believing in God is how we give ourselves hope, and hope is how God gives us strength to join together and build the Kingdom of God in the midst of a world that looks quite different: making “crooked places straight” and “rough places plain.” Believing in God reminds us that we were created in the image of a Creator and given a role in the continuing work of creation. Thus, believing in God gives us the hope to not just envision but to create justice where we see injustice, to envision and create liberation where we see oppression, to envision and create love where we see hate, to envision and create the living Kingdom of God in place of this world of suicidal selfishness. This is the task of the Advent season. Believing in something we can’t see right now, but preparing ourselves for it nonetheless, and through that preparation, ushering it into being.

I invite you to imagine the church as the sad sowers of seed in this psalm, that the seed you sow is hope, and that this world is your garden. We all know how sad it can make us to attempt to cultivate hope in the midst of our hopeless present reality. And there are those who want you to feel hopeless. Mary probably felt pretty hopeless: an unwed teenage mother living in a time and culture where that was even more heavily stigmatized than it is now. One would expect that young Mary’s visit with Elizabeth would have been spent weeping and bemoaning her fate: “I can’t believe this happened to me, what are people going to think? And of course this had to happen right before Joe and I are about to travel by foot to his hometown! Arrgh!! Why does God hate me?” But yet we read that Mary sings a song of praise to God.

Where we might expect weeping and sad, Mary is singing and glad, and the song she sings is striking in the language she uses. Mary sings about God’s established justice, about lifting the lowly and toppling tyrants, about filling the hungry, she sings about these things in the past tense, as if they have already happened. These are pronouncements of what God will do, of God’s justice and mercy in the end time. These are things which will be accomplished through the Christ, through his second coming, and his first coming hasn’t even happened yet. Yet Mary is so sure of what God will do, that she sings of it as an already accomplished fact. Like the song of the Psalmist, Mary’s is also a song of audacious hope, sung in “in-between” times.

Advent is our time to sing such songs. We typically turn to texts from Isaiah, such as the text from Today’s lectionary readings which speaks of nations “beating their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” What a song! What a vision! Can you imagine a world in which the fear of violence evaporates like dew before the morning sun? A world where people have no use for instruments of death, and turn them, instead, into gardening tools, instruments of life? Can you envision such a world in this in-between time of violence? I have an easier time imagining the backlash to suggesting the possibility of such a vision: “This isn’t talking about our guns and bombs. This is just talking about swords and spears, and no one uses those anymore…”

“National shall not lift of sword against nation,” is and Advent song, a song of audacious hope, a song whose lyrics paint a vision of God’s will. The challenge we face in reckoning with the reality of this vision is the same challenge faced by the Psalmist, and by Mary, and by any person seeking to sing God’s praise in an “in-between” time. It is the challenge of locating hope. The gift of Scripture, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, is the gift of never facing this challenge alone. The gift of faith is like a compass heading pointing our lives directly towards the source of our hope, the source of our life: God.

Because of these gift, we need not be surprised when hope shows up where we least expect. Because of these gift, we are empowered to follow when our faith points us toward unrealistic vision. Advent forces our faith to radically relocate our hope. Do not look to places of power, to thrones and armies, to wealth and fame. Look to the star, to little old Bethlehem, to an animal barn, to an unwed mother and her infant child laying in a manger.

That infant child grew up and taught us to sing a song of hope. “Lord, teach us to pray!” asked his disciples, a question which I interpret as having an air of desperation about it. It is a question asked by an “in-betweener,” one who is living in between God’s promises and their fulfillment. “How are we to pray?” is not so much a question of what words to use, but a question of how to relocate our hope. I invite you to join me in that prayer that Jesus taught, which, just for fun, I’ve also rewritten in the style of Dr. Seuss.

Let us pray:

Our great God in heaven, we bless your name.

May your will and our will be one and the same.

And as knowledge of your will in us is unfurled,

to build up your kingdom in the midst of this world,

te ask you, sustain us, as strength from within.

And please, God, forgive our submissions to sin

that make us neglectful of sisters and brothers

and cause us to outsource our suffering to others.

And also we pray that your grace may be felt

as we forgive those from whom blows have been dealt.

And do not permit guilt and fear to thus tempt us.