The Daughters of Hope

The Daughters of Hope--November 30, 2016

"Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands at a distance; for truth stumbles in the public square, and uprightness cannot enter. Truth is lacking, and whoever turns from evil is despoiled.  The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no one, and was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm brought him victory, and his righteousness upheld him." [Isaiah 59:14-16]

Here's the bottom line, at least as far as the Scriptures tell it: when nobody else will stick up for those who have been stepped on, God will.

Even if nobody else seems to care, or everybody else is afraid, or everybody else is too busy with other things, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Sarah, Miriam, and Deborah, rolls up the divine sleeves and goes to work righting what is broken in the world.

If your picture of God is not someone who will risk troubling the waters to speak up or stand up for the people who are most vulnerable, then Isaiah would tell us we have been worshiping an idol.  The living and real God is invested in putting right what is wrong in the universe, all the way down to making sure that people who get stepped on in life get lifted back up, and those who have been taken advantage of or made to be afraid will be restored.

Now, if you and I are going to say we believe in God... and if we are, furthermore, going to say we believe in the God who is named in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, the God whose name was spoken on the lips of freed slaves leaving Egypt, and prophets denouncing decadent kings, and visionaries living in exile under one empire after another, if we dare to say we believe in this God, then quite simply the question is put to us, as well: will we be a part of what God is doing in the world?

There is deep grace, deep hope, and deep promise in these few verses from Isaiah, in the sense that God commits to shouldering the work of justice even if everybody else is too chicken, too comfortable, or too complacent.  There is the assurance that even if the rest of us all turn and look the other way... or rationalize our indifference... or insulate ourselves from any news or perspectives that might make us squirm with discomfort by only filling our Facebook news feeds and reading materials with things we already agree with... even if we should all give in and take the easy way out rather than stand up for those who are hurting, the living God will not.  There is hope, and it is not a false hope in me working up the nerve or having all the answers.  It is a hope that God will not run away or give up even when the cause seems lost.

But again, if we Christians say not only that we believe God exists, but that we are seeking to live our lives as a movement of people following after Jesus and the way of life he calls us into, then we have to ask if we really dare to follow the living God into the fray.  Sometimes we let ourselves be convinced that "being Christian" is the same thing as "being nice" (forgetting for a moment that the word "nice" comes from the French for "ignorant"). And just as easily, we let ourselves forget that "being nice" is not the same thing as "loving" people--love means truth-telling, love means honesty, love means vulnerability and suffering, and love means we sometimes go into uncomfortable places for the sake of those we love.  Being a Christian will include all of those, and that is so much more than just being "nice."  In fact, sometimes it will not look so much like being "nice" as it looks like speaking up on behalf of others... which doesn't always win you friends, in all honesty.

There is an old line that is attributed  to Saint Augustine of Hippo (with some haziness as to where it was actually said or written), but which seems to be in the spirit of what Isaiah 59 is all about here either way.  The old church father is quoted as saying, "Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage: anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain as they are."

Those words, whether they first came from Augustine or not, are important for us to remember in this Advent season of hope.  Without them, we are sorely tempted to sentimentalize the idea of "hope" in this season and to reduce it to vaguely spiritual wishful thinking, as in "I'll just hope that everything works out all right..." It is so easy in this season to reduce "hope" to mean "twiddling my thumbs and pretending that everything is fine" or "believing in the power of Christmas magic" the way the TV movies all do.  But if we take seriously the promise of an old prophet named Isaiah, we won't settle for that kind of empty "hope." We will see the Christian virtue of hope is something moving, living, and active--it pushes us to act in light of the promised future we are hoping for in the first place.  It leads us to get angry when people are marginalized.  Hope does that. Hope leads us to find courage to stand up for people who have been made afraid.  Hope leads us to discover the bravery to say, "Everything is not fine... but God is not done, either."  Hope leads us no longer to be silent when it would be comfortable, and leads us to the strength to endure as well. Hope pulls us from the sidelines and into the fray ourselves, because real hope--hope in the living God--is about being a part of a movement in time and space, to stand where we believe God is standing: as an advocate for those most vulnerable, as truth-tellers to obnoxious naked emperors, and as witnesses to the One who rolls up his sleeves to reveal nail-scarred hands getting to work as he sets right what had been knocked over.

Today, let us invite hope and her two daughters into our lives, into our homes, and into our thinking... perhaps starting with breakfast conversation, and then joining them out in the world, working where God has already promised to be.  That is what Advent hope is.  That is what the Movement of Mercy is all about, too.

Great God of justice and truth, give us the courage and anger from our hope in you to work and speak where you would have us, so that more and more of this creation would be restored to your just and truthful rule.