DESPAIRING AND HOPING
Rev. Dr. Joyce Antila Phipps
Old First Church, Middletown, NJ
January 17, 2021
Texts: 1 Samuel 3: 1–18; John 1: 35–51
Well, here we are. On this weekend we remember Martin Luther King we saw a retired Air Force officer, a man who had sworn to defend the country against all enemies, foreign and domestic, carrying the Confederate battle flag into the Capitol of the Union that had defeated insurrection but not intolerance, rebels but not racism, partition but not prejudice.
It was not that long ago when the Nation inaugurated its first bi-racial president. It was a time that was especially meaningful to many of us, but deep-seated racism has led to a terrible backlash. This past year we went through a series of anniversaries and commemorations: sixty years of this, sixty years of that, and we had hoped that a new generation was being born.
But what we have realized over this past year is that racism is no longer subtle but open and virulent. Racist groups had little to fear as they carried torches in marches reminiscent of the marches of Nazi marches under Hitler. Even more frightening, racism and xenophobia are more pervasive than many of us even imagined.
How do we move from despair to hope? How do we touch and heal the broken souls inhabited by white supremacy?
When we talk about a hope or a dream, what do we actually envision? There are at least two ways we use the words hopes and dreams. One way is to express something out there, beyond our reach, something that’s not concrete. But philosophers and psychologists, theologians, and tacticians tell us that without creating a vision we are unable to formulate a plan of action. First, there is the hope, the dream; then there is the translation of that hope and dream into action.
The second sentence of our opening reading is telling: The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. What does that tell us? That without vision, the people perish. The words of the old spiritual say, “The only thing we did that was wrong was staying in the wilderness too long.” That wilderness was the wilderness of the mind, of the loss of hope by being crushed. It’s not just the old racism that’s referred to in this spiritual but the aimlessness of a people who have no direction, no clear vision of what their goal as a people should be.
Which brings us to our question for the day: what should our goal, what should our vision as a people be? We often hear the phrase, “the American dream.” That phrase was first used by James Truslow Adams in 1931 during the Great Depression who defined it as “a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.” It wasn’t a chicken in every pot or a car in every garage, which, by the way, was the campaign promise of Herbert Hoover, whose inaction following the stock market crash exacerbated the suffering of those affected by the Depression. It wasn’t that Hoover was a bad man. Caught up in a traditional understanding of government he simply lacked the capacity to dream, to envision another way of tackling problems.
This is what dreaming is all about: looking at our old problems with new eyes, with a new approach, one that is daring and reaches out to the stars. Dreaming means being willing to take a gamble on a crazy idea. Hoping isn’t passive; it means translating the dream into action. During Advent, we had a week marked “Hope.” That idea of hope was not one that meant we just passively waited. Hope is not just waiting, but waiting with expectation. If we just sit in despair, nothing happens.
Moving beyond despair into hoping and dreaming takes work. Our dreams cannot translate into reality without our active participation. We have to be ready when the opportunity presents itself. Nothing works without organization and a plan. It means not only sharing power but also taking responsibility. Martin Luther King Jr. understood this very well; the Montgomery bus boycott didn’t just happen but was the result of careful planning, organization, and a commitment from the people involved to take responsibility for their actions as part of the boycott. That’s why it worked.
I was in Alabama the summer during the boycott and listened to the astonishment in my mother’s family that “the colored,” as they were politely called, could plan and execute such action. I was told that white communists from the north organized it because, after all, they, meaning the “colored,” couldn’t do this by themselves, et cetera. They just didn’t get it.
A full generation has passed since those tumultuous days and we now are in another place thanks to the hopes and dreams of a committed group of people, hopes and dreams that it took many years to accomplish. I keep thinking about that verse in First Samuel: the word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.
It’s important to remember that not only are visions required, but the action to bring those visions to fruition. That’s true no matter what the cause, the situation, the present-day reality. Vision––hopes and dreams––these are all linked to an active faith.
Moving beyond despair, transforming visions, hopes, and dreams, into reality is hard work, to be sure. But we can do it. We can do it as a nation, as a community, as a church. We just cannot let our dreams die, for as Langston Hughes wrote so eloquently, then life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
Let us pray: God who gives us hopes and dreams, God who gives us a vision of the future, move us beyond despair, and help us translate our visions into reality through the inspiration of your Holy Spirit. In the name of him who came to give us hope, even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.