Up Through the Cracks--October 1, 2020

 Up Through the Cracks--October 1, 2020

"Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the Day approaching." [Hebrews 10:23-25]

I was on a Sunday afternoon hike with my family a few weeks back, and we ventured to the spillway at the end of a lake created by a local dam.  I was struck with awe, both at finding a place I never knew existed, despite being so close to to where I live, and also to see this huge sloping pile of boulders, sections of concrete, and layers of exposed rock, designed to channel an overflow of water away from more vulnerable ground.  This is a place that has been created to be pounded by torrents of water when necessary, to redirect the rain and runoff and to prevent the kind of dangerous flooding our part of Pennsylvania has lived through in waves before.  So it is a spot where there isn't really supposed to be beauty.  It's a place that is supposed to be barren, almost in a sacrificial way, so that other ground and other places can remain undamaged by a sudden deluge.

But when we found a place to sit for a bit of an afternoon that day, I was caught by surprise.  There was an unexpected weed--a single, stubborn stem with a smattering of small yellow flowers straining up toward the sunlight--and it was growing straight up out of a crack in the rocks, with no soil, no nearby pool of water, and little direct sunlight. 

It didn't just surprise me, or make me laugh--although I did.  That little weed provoked me... in a good way.  It worked its little roots not just into the crevice in the rocks, but into the folds of my brain, and it's been growing there ever since.  That defiant little sprout with the yellow blossoms became for me a picture not only of hope but of the way hope, at its best, is provocative.  Ever since I laid eyes on it, that image has been poking at me to think and act in ways that do the same in my world: to be a presence of life, against all odds, in the midst of what seems dead.

It seems to me, too, that the early followers of Jesus saw their calling in similar terms: we are called to be provocateurs of hope, people whose voices and presence in the world serve as a contrast to the deathliness that is around us, but who spark acts of defiant hope in others as well.  The flower's mere existence has been working its way into my soul over the last several weeks, pushing me to look for ways to bring expressions of life and hope into the world around me.  And if I keep trying, maybe eventually I'll get it right and raise some little yellow blossoms up through the cracks in the limestone of someone else's barren soulscape.  And maybe then they'll do the same for someone else.  And who knows, but that before long one little weed may have ended up provoking quite a harvest of hopeful actions and words farther than any of its seeds could be carried by the wind.

When I hear these words from the book of Hebrews, I get the same picture in my mind.  "Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope... and let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds."  It's an underground movement of compassion.  It's an insurgency of goodness.  It's about little provocative acts of hope that become contagious--and which at the very same time expose how much of the ground around us is hostile to that liveliness.

Look, it's no secret that the setting in which the early church grew up was a pretty hostile environment.  The letter of Hebrews talks about persecution, torture, and imprisonment as things happening to people because of their faith in Christ.  The Empire, on the one hand, was starting to crack down on these Christians because they seemed to be associated with disorderly conduct and riots, and they wouldn't give their undying allegiance to Caesar.  And on the other hand, the guardians of Respectable Religion were upset at Christians, too, because they said scandalous things like saying the Son of God got strung up on a cross.  It was dangerous being a Christian in that setting, and the danger made it easy to want to give up.  Lots of those first generations of Christians would have found it very tempting to say, "You know what?  This is an inhospitable environment to try to flourish it.  We might live for a while and then get crushed in a deluge the next time there's a crackdown from Rome.  Let's not even try."  And yet, they didn't give in to those temptations.  They kept on spurring each other on, provoking goodness out of each other and inspiring love in one another.  And that, in turn, made the watching world take notice.

I want to suggest that this is our calling, too.  Look, I get it--there are lots of things to be cynical about.  There are a lot of things to be grieving over.  We're disconnected and disjointed from people we used to be very close to, and the pandemic just has made it difficult to nurture those relationships.  We're touched by loss all around--those whose businesses are in danger, those who have been cut off seeing family members in nursing homes or far parts of the country, those who have lost jobs, those who are just afraid and depressed and anxious all the time.  We're disgusted by the toxic atmosphere in public discourse, by leaders who let us down, and by friends and mentors we have lost respect for.  We're tired.  It feels like a wasteland, sometimes, to look around.  I get it.  I feel that, too.  

But I read an insight from someone just a few days ago that has, well, provoked me to new thinking.  She wrote that after a day's particularly disheartening headlines, she wasn't hopeless, even though she might have been expected to be.  She said, in effect, "I'm not hopeless, because I didn't expect any better of this situation, and I did not put my trust in the newsmaker of the day to do any better.  My hope lies elsewhere and that hasn't changed."  Now, the person whose thoughts I was reading wasn't making a specifically faith-centered point.  But for us who name the name of Jesus, I think something like that is how we navigate these days. We need to be clear--with ourselves, and with each other--about where our hope is... and where it is not.  We need to be clear on whom and what we expect to come through for us, and we need to be honest about who and what will not be dependable sources of hope.  And that allows us not to be disappointed when it turns out the ground around us bare rock without any soil--we will be able to find a crack to plant our roots in, and slowly but surely, those little roots can widen the crack and break the rock itself into pieces.  We can be clear in a moment like this where not to put our hope, and to know in whom we can and do place our hope.

The writer of Hebrews wants to be clear that when we have rooted our hope in Christ, we can be honest about all the way the world around us is barren and cold... and we can keep straining up toward the light anyway.  When we are rooted in Christ, we will be less let down when others don't come through--our hope will not have been in them.  When we are rooted in Christ, our hope is not pinned on the stock market's close for the day, or our quarterly profit report, or the outcome of the next election, or any of the other externals that compete for our hopes. Don't put your hopes in any of them--they will let you down. They are the bare rock where you may find yourself, but they are not the source of our hope.

Once we are clear what our hope is actually placed in, we can bloom in unlikely places, and our presence in the world can provoke hope in other people.  And that's the right spirit in which to think about why we do good for others--it's not about earning anything, or racking up imaginary points with God, or winning a spot in the afterlife.  It's about letting the things that have first provoked hope in us also provoke hope through us for others.  When someone has done something to show to love to us, it has a way of making us want to show love to others.  When someone does something that inspires us, it has a way of nudging us to inspire others.  That's how this works.

So go ahead, be a weed sprouting up through the cracks in the boulders.  Let the simple fact of your existence be a wonder and inspiration to those who see you.  Be a provocateur of hope.

Lord God, let our roots find strength in you, so that we can bring hope to others, too.