During
one such ‘pea soup’, my mother was travelling in a taxi with my
grandmother. As visibility decreased
even as the taxi driver ploughed forward, my mother became quite anxious. When my grandmother noticed this, she said,
‘Thelma Jane, do you believe God loves you?’
My mother, only a girl, said, ‘Yes, I do believe that God loves
me.’ ‘Then stop worrying,’ my
grandmother said. As my mother tells the
story, she did stop worrying and they arrived home safely.
In
today’s readings from the ‘Weekday Eucharistic Lectionary’, Revelation 15.1-4
and Luke 21.10-19, we hear two Christian voices speaking to the fears and
uncertainties of their communities in the first hundred years of the Christian
movement. Both were writing to
Christians who were beginning to experience persecution and who were wondering
what the future held for them. Both
writers, in so many words, say to their sisters and brothers, ‘Continue to hope in God’s promises. Uphold one another in all times, in all places, in all conditions. Proclaim the good news.’
Christians
living in North American today, especially those of us who live on the Pacific
Coast and who belong to so-called ‘mainline’ traditions, may worry about the
future of our expressions of the Christian faith. As society’s tolerance for religious faith
wanes, secular critics freely describe religion as the source of most of the
world’s ills. As neighbourhoods change
and more non-religious people come to live around our churches, we are faced
with the challenge of proclaiming the faith to a culture not unlike the Roman
imperial culture our ancestors confronted with their own proclamation of the
good news.
In
such a time as this we need to remember that we have a hope in a world restored
by God’s grace working in us and others, a world in which the dignity of every
human being is not only maintained but enhanced, a world in which the hungry
are fed, the thirsty sated, the naked clothed, the stranger welcomed, the sick
visited and the imprisoned liberated.
But having hope is not enough.
For
hope to thrive we need a community that shares that hope, a community that can
encourage us when darkness seems ready to consume the light. For hope to thrive we need witnesses who
point out to us the signs that God’s purposes are being fulfilled even when
nation wars against nation and believers turn against those who do not share
their beliefs. We are never alone in our
hope; even when we are not in the physical presence of our sisters and
brothers, we are surrounded ‘by so great a cloud of witnesses’, angels and
archangels as well as our ancestors in the faith who faced their own difficult
times.
So
let us live out our hope. Let us rejoice
that we are not alone. Let us proclaim
the good news. Thanks be to God!
