Hebrews 11:1-16 (click for full reading)

“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1

On my first day of retreat on Monday, I climbed down the stone ledges behind our house to Rocky Point Cove. I thought this would be the most peaceful place possible, sitting on a rock at high tide, the water gently shimmering, listening to the sea birds calling overhead. I found a large, flat boulder to sit on and absorb the coolness of the Sheepscott River. What a great spot to center and listen for signs of hope!

Before I could settle, a lobster boat chugged in to haul traps, loudly transmitting some kind of Country/Rap fusion. I waited him out, trying to focus on the osprey overhead. As the boat putted away, I noticed that the seagulls out on the rock outcroppings were boisterously discussing some menu disagreements, or they did not like rap country trap music. Soon, the landscapers started mowing. Even here, where I had no cell reception, Wi-Fi, or outdoor plumbing close by, the world was full of chatter. I journaled for a bit and then made my way back.

I tried to focus on the rocks and trees around me and let go of the inward discontent when I noticed it. I saw a red raspberry hiding in the weeds. Despite its tiny size, it was delicious, a compact flavor burst with just enough pucker. I looked around and discovered another, and then more. I picked a handful of wild raspberries hidden below the ridge of our backyard. I rarely go there, so it felt purely like a generous gift from the creator, nature’s bounty that required none of my toil, except to be present. I have deep positive associations with plucking raspberries. Harvesting is like a treasure hunt. A few berries may entice you to the bush, but most stay hidden. You must change angles, carefully move leaves and branches, and reach between the protective thorns to find the treasure. Picking a ripe berry patch is meditative and enriching to me. We had great raspberry patches in Poughkeepsie and in Northampton, which took a few years to develop, and then we left them to start over—so finding this wild patch felt like hope.

This experience made me think about a line in our scripture text today. "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and a conviction in things unseen." Hope requires some searching. My search didn’t go as planned, but I found hope by being alert to a different solution. The more I looked, the more raspberries I found. I would not have seen anything sitting on my porch waiting.

Let's talk about hope. Hope is not compiling evidence to help us decide whether to be optimistic or pessimistic. That would be a conviction in things seen, not unseen. If I'm only weighing evidence, I'm not sure I would get to hope. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once said the only Christian doctrine you can prove by reading the morning newspaper is sin. That isn't going to help us much. More information will not strengthen our capacities for faith, hope, and love. It might just numb us. Hope is believing and acting on possibilities despite the evidence.

Hope is the point in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The writer looks at examples of faith from the Old Testament to show the way. Take Noah, who built an ark before there was a flood, to be ready when it came. Now I have all the same questions about Noah's ark that our kids in vacation Bible School had. He couldn't possibly have two of every species on the ark because they would have eaten each other. But we can understand the point that there is a loving God at the center of the universe who guides us, so we have hope, whatever floods may come. Noah took a great leap of faith in something unseen because he had hope.

The writer of Hebrews gives us a travelogue of faith — people who walked roads they could not see the end. God calls them in a vision to leave their home and go to a strange land to find a new life. We know stories about the trials of immigration. Abraham was migrating nearly 3000 years ago and living in a tent. If you read Genesis, Abraham and Sarah didn't accomplish too much. They made many mistakes, but they had faith and stuck in there. Hebrews points out that they never fully attained what they hoped to do. They were the first-generation immigrants who sacrificed so that the next generations could fulfill their hopes. Their faith was the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen.

This story is not just an ancient story, but it still lives in our time. Moving to a new country is challenging in any age. It may involve learning new languages, customs, and changing diet. Most immigrants do the backbreaking work that others don’t want to do, like farm labor, construction, and physical health care. I have met dozens of immigrants from around the world, and they often strike me as our contemporary Abrahams and Sarahs, hoping for things they do not yet see.

More people are on the move than at any time since World War Two. Climate change and warfare displace people, and as they flee dry and violent lands, there is now a backlash around the world against them. There is much I could say about the futility of solving a problem by rounding people up into detention camps, but today’s passage is about hope. So, I hope that we would use the billions of dollars spent on ICE to address the root causes of people leaving their homes. If we look at a map of countries hemorrhaging refugees, and overlay it with places receiving the least rainful, they overlap. Places like Sudan, Syria, the Middle East and Central America are ground zero for our climate crisis caused by global warming. My hope is that the challenge of climate change will force us to acknowledge our common humanity, to realize we are in this together. With have a great choice, to unify and thrive, or to stay in conflict and court disaster, even extinction.

From Abraham and Sarah’s long road to the uncertain paths of refugees today, the thread is the same: we find our bearings by looking back at how God has led others on the journey. Hebrews does precisely this — gathering stories from our spiritual ancestors as a kind of map for our travels. Our forebearers had faith in God's goodness during difficult circumstances, and we, too, can hope in the same God. The strategy of remembrance works. Notice that each story requires the hearer to take a journey.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen. Hope calls us to part ways with the prevailing gloom. An article in the NY Times by Joan Chasten said, "Try to Resist the Call of the Doomers." She observed that we have become too hopeless with all the bad news. Chasten says, "Doomerism luxuriates in the awful, and people seem unable to get enough of it — the equivalent of rubbernecking at a terrible car accident." She also challenges the idea that if you hammer people long enough with the severity of the situation, they will take action. As if telling people we are facing a crisis of species extinction so many times will motivate them. Instead, people just disengage. She quotes climate activist Michael Mann,

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/23/opinion/climate-doomers-possibility.html?searchResultPosition=1

"Climate doomerism can be harmful because it robs us of agency, the agency we still have in determining our future….I have found that the best way to spur action is to begin from a place of optimism — a belief that the thing you want really is possible."

I'm not a short-term optimist. But I have a warm relationship with hope. Hope tells me that even if I can't see the way, I believe a way will come. Hope says God hasn't brought us this far in history to leave us behind. I trust that God takes what we do and weaves them into the forces for good. Hope has a history with me. I was born in 1964, the Beatles came to America, and LBJ signed Civil Rights into law. I have lived to see a black president, maybe someday a woman too. I remember the first moonwalk, both Neil Armstrong and Michael Jackson. The Berlin Wall fell, gay people can marry, and every time I use my iPhone, I feel like I am on Star Trek. Hope is also very intimate. For me, hope comes from moments of deep prayer that lead to my calling as a pastor, falling in love, healing from divorce, and falling in love again; knowing a God of second chances and third chances, and seeing my kids build their own lives, discovering Maine, and kayaking.

When I look back, I see these moments as mile markers on my journey with hope. I have lots of hope. I know we have many problems, but faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Where is hope leading you this morning? As the spiritual says, "Deep in my heart, I do believe that we shall overcome…someday." Faith is not a place we arrive, but a road we walk — sometimes in the dark, sometimes with raspberries in our hands. Now we must take the journey.