Christian Burial

Scripture: Psalm 27

A gray frost covers everything. The sunlight has faded and darkness has begun its evening descent. The barren limbs of the trees scratch at the sky. The wind moans across the desolate landscape like a death lament.

And then the man standing in this lonely place discovers he has company -- a songbird:

At once a voice arose among
The black twigs overhead
In a full-throated evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
[Far or near] around
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

So goes Thomas Hardy's magnificent poem The Darkling Thrush, a work written at the beginning of the twentieth century, when its author looked into the future and struggled to find causes for hope.

Life draws us into an ongoing contemplation of the nature of hope. What is it? What reasons do we have to entertain it? What is its relationship to faith and love? How do we find it? How do we put it to work in our lives? How do we share it with those who have lost it?

I want to offer some thoughts on these questions. But let me be clear: my thoughts do not describe a destination. Rather, they describe a kind of four-pointed compass that might help us navigate our way beyond our desolate landscapes to a place of light and life.

The first point of reference is commitment. To find hope we must first find something beyond ourselves, something greater than ourselves, something to which we can dedicate our time and energy, something to which we can commit our hearts and souls.

Such a commitment can help sustain us through our periods of hopelessness. Psychiatrist and philosopher Victor Frankl wrote that "Those who have a 'why' to live can bear almost any 'how.'" In his book Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl describes his horrific experiences in the Nazi concentration camps and recounts how those who survived the physical ordeals of those prisons were not the youngest or the strongest or the most physically robust but rather those who found a reason to keep living, some purposeful work to do even amid the death and despair. "Our main motivation for living," he wrote, "is our will to find meaning in life."

Of course, a commitment must not only be made; it must be maintained. True commitments are not like New Year's resolutions, with their notriously abbreviated life spans. Rather, true commitments require resolve and relentlessness. As Christian writer Ann Lamott put it, "Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work. You don't give up."

Such stubborn resolve may require us to change -- and change profoundly. After all, as Ralph Waldo Emerson famously asked, "Of what use to make heroic vows of amendment, if the same old law-breaker is to keep them?" Still, as someone once told us, if we would see great things then we must be born anew.

Our second point of reference is courage. Psalm 27 summons us to have courage --through God, for God, and because of God. "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"

Courage is critical because it is the necessary condition for everything else we would do and be. As the poet Maya Angelou wrote, "Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest."

Courage is also critical because it is rare, and because it is rare the world notices it, and when the world notices it hope is restored and change can happen. Robert Kennedy captured this perfectly when he said: "Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and injustice."

This sounds very grand, but we might find ourselves worrying over a few things. We might worry about what this requires of us. We might feel some anxiety over the uncertainty that arises whenever we try to act boldly and bravely and discover we're standing on uncertain footing. The Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard understood this objection, and answered it. He acknowledged that "To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily." But, he added, "to not dare is to lose oneself."

We might also wonder whether our decisions, our actions, our efforts will make enough of a difference to justify the trouble. Whether through humility or insecurity, we may doubt our capacity to have much of an impact. There are a few answers to this. One of the best comes not from the poets or philosophers but from an early woman pilot, Betty Reese, who gave us this gem: "If you think you are to small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito." More importantly, though, we must remember this: it is not what we do that finally carries the day in any event -- it is what God does with what we do.

In his recent book, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus Christ, Peter Gomes discusses the relationship between hope and courage. He argues that "we cannot be ruled by our fears but only by our hopes." This is so, Gomes maintains, because we must have courage in order to have compassion. "Compassion and fear," he writes, "do not go together." And, of course, it is our compassion that is supposed to mark us as the followers of the carpenter from Nazareth.

Indeed, compassion is our third point of reference on our journey toward hope. Now, my emphasis on compassion, rather than love, is deliberate. It goes without saying that our faith places love at the forefront of virtues. Jesus said: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you." Paul ranked love greater than faith or hope. And Paul provided his own description of the relationship between love and hope when he declared that love "hopes all things."

But compassion goes beyond love. Compassion puts love into practice. The dictionary therefore defines compassion as a "sympathetic consciousness of another's distress together with a desire to alleviate it." Compassion is "love plus." It is love plus hot soup, love plus a warm blanket, love plus bandages and medicine.

Jesus told a story about this. You know it. A Samaritan once found a man on a road. Robbers had beaten him and left him for dead. "And when the Samaritan saw him, he had compassion, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn, and took care of him." We can imagine many things about this Samaritan. But is it possible to imagine that he lived a life without hope? If you have lost hope then simply do this: engage in an act of unexpected and unrequited compassion. You will find hope again.

This brings us to our fourth, final, and most important point of reference: Christ. For if we rely solely on ourselves and on the world then we will find good reasons to lose hope. And if we seek commitment and courage and compassion in our own inner impulses then we will often come up wanting. But, as the scriptures say, "We can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us." Through Christ we can dedicate ourselves to things that matter; through Christ we can act boldly and bravely; through Christ we can put our love into action. We need guidance on our journey, and Jesus Christ marks our True North.

So we have the four points of our compass: commitment, courage, compassion, and Christ. But before we embark on this voyage we need to do one more thing. Like many aspects of our faith, it involves a bit of a paradox. You see, before we can set forth on this journey we need to unpack.

We need to unpack whatever baggage we have that has held us back and that continues to burden us. Of course, this baggage can take many different forms: an old resentment that keeps us from forgiveness; a festering anger that keeps us from loving; a comfortable selfishness that keeps us from compassion; a nagging sense of unworthiness that keeps us from leading; an eager yearing for acceptance that keeps us from speaking out; a cultivated fear of the unknown that keeps us from stepping up. You see, our journey toward hope does not coast downhill on wheels; it goes straight uphill on foot; and we simply cannot get to the top of the mountain encumbered by baggage that does nothing but weigh us down.

We may find all of this daunting. But it helps to remember that we do not embark on this voyage alone. We have help from each other. And we have help from the wisest, most powerful, and most loving force in the universe.

The Lord is my light and my salvation. What shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life? Of what shall I be afraid?

Amen.