Past the Luxury of Despair--December 4, 2024

Past the Luxury of Despair--December 4, 2024

[Jesus said:] "Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly..." (Luke 21:34)

I want to say this gently, but firmly: we do not have the luxury of despair.

The world's ache in the present moment is too great, too urgent, and the news we have been given to share with the world is too beautiful, too compelling, to waste time sulking.  We cannot afford the indulgence of hopelessness.  We have too much good work to do.

That might sound surprising, I admit. We are not used to thinking of hope as something essential--we are more likely to treat "hope" as a frivolous bonus you might get as an unexpected extra in life, like the caffeine and sugar buzz of treating yourself to a latte as an afternoon splurge.  And my hunch is that we think pessimism is closer to realism in this world, so we teach ourselves to err on the side of disappointment.  "Better not get your hopes up," we tell ourselves, bracing in advance for the world to let us down.  It is easy, then, to look at the suffering and mess of the world and to just give up.

It seems like every disaster movie has one of those characters, doesn't it?  The asteroid is coming, or the hurricane is bearing down, or Godzilla is wreaking havoc on the city skyline--and there's always someone who has decided this is just too much for them to deal with.  And they give up hope.  They go home, or they break down into tears, or they start drinking themselves into a stupor, or they head off in search of a ledge they can jump off of--because they can't see a way out of despair.  That character trope keeps showing up because we know that feeling, don't we? We know that sometimes we are just ready to give up, either because the future seems so frightening, or we feel overwhelmed at the size of the troubles in front of us.  There is always the temptation to run away from it all, to seek solace at the bottom of a bottle, or to stick our heads in the sand.

But for the followers of Jesus, we don't have permission to do that.  He calls us away from the impulse to numb ourselves to the needs of the moment, and he pulls us up out of the water when we were about ready to let ourselves drown in worry.  Jesus is insistent that both the world in its pain and the goodness of God's Reign are too important to let us fall asleep or slip into despair to miss.  Jesus himself calls us to wake up--and to stay awake--because the world needs us, and because God is pulling us into the divine work of attending to that need.  We don't have the spare time or excess of energy to waste by throwing ourselves pity parties in the middle of the night; God has called us to reflect the coming dawn right now.  Sure, it can be tempting to tell ourselves that the world feels so dark that we'd rather not muster up the energy to shine a light now--but now is precisely when the world needs the light, because it feels so dark sometimes.  Hope is not a luxury we can get around to when we have more free time and the headlines don't feel so bleak.  Hope is the necessity we are summoned to take up right in this moment, because the world needs to hear it right in this moment.

I'll admit: for a long time I heard these words of Jesus more like they were a warning of something bad coming, like another disaster looming on the horizon in a movie sequel.  But the more I listen to Jesus on his own terms here, the more it seems to me he is not trying to scare us, but to shake us awake to the important needs of this time and place, and to our role in witnessing to God's Reign especially in times when folks feel ready to give up.  The more I listen to Jesus, the more I understand the fire in Dr. King's words in a theme he offered up, both at the March on Washington and at Riverside Church years later in an address called "Beyond Vietnam," when he spoke of "the fierce urgency of now."  King said:

"We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there "is" such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action."

King, like Jesus here in Luke 21, doesn't give us permission to give up, to check out, or to stick our heads in the sand.  We are called in this moment to pay attention; to the hurts of others, to the heartbreak around us, to the needs of those aching for love.  And we are called to speak God's words that heal, God's promise that restores, and God's declaration of love for the unloved and unlovely. The world needs it now, so now is the time we are called to do it.

So, yeah, we may find ourselves from time to time in a season of the doldrums; and yeah, the cold greys of early December while headlines worry us and wars continue to trouble us from a distance are a ripe time for the blues to hit. If that's where you're at, it's worth being honest and feeling what you're feeling.  But at the same time, we can't ignore the voice of Jesus who calls to us even when the world feels bleak, and pulls us forward into hope again, because we simply do not have the luxury of staying stuck in hopelessness. The good news of God's Reign is indispensable for just this moment in time, and so we are needed to bear it into the world, here and now.

Lord Jesus, keep us awake, alert, and attuned to your presence even in the mess of the world, and give us the courage to live out our calling here as reflections of your light.