Naked Hope--December 13, 2024

Naked Hope--December 13, 2024

(Zechariah said:) "By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:78-79)

So a few years ago, there was an author whose posts would appear on my social media feed regularly (her name is Jessica Kantrowitz), and for a good long while, she would tweet the same message, every evening, just to put it out there in the world for whoever needed it.  She would write these words: "You are not alone, and this will not last forever."  No other details. No other explanations or exceptions.  No asterisks or list of terms and conditions.  Just the declaration, to whomever would come across it: you are not alone, and this will not last forever.

I know it got difficult for the author to keep writing those words, because sometimes people would reply to her and unload all the heaviness of life they were carrying, and at some point she decided to stop writing that same post.  But I think about it often, and I think about those words, floating out there in the internet forever, and in my memory as well.  And I hear in them echoes of these final verses from Zechariah's song in Luke.  After all that we've heard in Zechariah's song over these recent days, we come at last to a final future-framed hope: that "the dawn from on high will break upon us."  Zechariah speaks of a hope that God will move in a new way to bring light for those who are currently stuck in the gloom of death, and to bring peace for people weary of violence, war, and fear.  And to my ears, Zechariah's words feel very much like those words, flung out for anybody whose eyes fell upon them on a screen: You are not alone, and this will not last forever.

We've looked some this week at the kinds of pain that Zechariah knew first-hand: he had seen the destruction wrought by Rome and the empires that had come before it.  He knew the weariness of waiting for God to act after literal centuries of foreign domination.  He likely knew that some kind of trouble and suffering were in store for his son, John, who would announce the coming of the Messiah.  And yet his song here ends with a deeply hopeful, but also very precarious, picture.  He is convinced that the pain of the world, and in particular the pain of his people under the boot of an empire, will not endure forever.  God's love, however, does endure forever, and it would outlast all the worst that the Romans and their predecessors could do.

One of the things I notice about how Zechariah speaks this last hopeful section of the song is that he doesn't offer us statistics to prove his hope is reasonable. He doesn't do a historical analysis about the average duration of an empire's rise and fall. He doesn't give us math or algorithms or astrological signs to back up his claim.  He just offers us the unadorned, unpolished, desperate and naked hope that God will not let the shadow of death last forever, and that God will be with those who sit in darkness while they wait for the dawn.  He only gives us the assertion that he deeply needs to be true: in spite of the evidence to the contrary, Zechariah tells us that we are not alone, and this will not last forever.

Look, I don't know what you are going through at this moment as you read these words.  That is one of the unavoidable realities of the internet-era--words are flung out there where anyone can read them, and we never know in what context someone else will find what we've said and how they'll hear our words.  But I'm willing to bet that there have been times--or maybe that you are living through one right now--where you've felt like you were sitting in the darkness like Zechariah sang about. I'm willing to bet you have been in the shadow of death before, too--and that you have needed the promise that the people of God have always held when we are in the valley of the shadow of death: "I will not fear, for you are with me."  For whatever things are swirling around you, whatever fears keep you up at night, and whatever struggles you cannot see the end of right now, the hope we hold onto keeps insisting: it will not last forever, and we are not alone.  We may not see how things will ever change, and we may strain to see the presence of God when we're in the gloom.  Sometimes we pass a hope still unfulfilled on to the generation that comes after us, and sometimes we are handed a hope from those who have come before us--but we do hope that God's new day will come, and that at last the night of death and violence will end. We wait with urgency, tenacity, and endurance--and we keep reminding one another until our hopes are fulfilled: that none of us is alone, and the power of death will not last forever.  God's new dawning day will outlast the worst.

For whoever needs to hear it, know it. Own it.  Take it and share the word.

Lord God, be with us to sustain our hope, and bring about the new day of peace and life for which we have been hoping.