Tag: hope

Eternal Hopetimism

Heidi Torgerson

a sermon on Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Most of you know that I grew up in rural North Dakota. My sisters and I were officially town kids. We lived in a community of about 1800 people, with parents who worked in agricultural insurance and as a nursing professor, respectively. But both of my parents grew up on farms, and my grandparents continued to farm – as their parents had – until I was well into college. I loved visiting my grandparents in the summer when we’d hop in the truck and drive around the country roads for hours as we “checked the fields.” Even better were the early days of harvest, when we especially loved to climb into the back of the grain trucks after they’d been filled with harvested wheat or barley. My sisters and cousins and I would play in those full grain trucks as though they were sandboxes. (Well, sandboxes are decidedly less itchy and dirty than full grain trucks, but still. Fun.)  

The whole of my grandparents’ generation on my mom’s side is gone now, but as I read the parable of the sower and the seed I recalled a sweet conversation between my grandpa, Norman Rudel, and his younger brother, my great-uncle Arlyn, whom everybody called Rudy. It was the weekend of my ordination, actually, 15 years ago now. They were talking over whisky Manhattans about one particular summer from their youth that yielded one of the biggest crops their family could remember. The durum wheat, in particular, had grown thick and strong that year, with full heads of grain that came as a reward for their good care of the soil, but also thanks to rain that came at exactly the right times and in exactly the right amounts. Rudy and my grandpa were remembering the work they did alongside their dad that weekend. They were up as early on Saturday and Sunday mornings as they always were, preparing equipment and grain storage bins for the harvest.

As they remembered it, the weather was perfect early that Sunday morning, but the forecasts for later that day were a little iffy. Rudy and my grandpa urged their dad to take a Sunday off from church so that they could get as much of the crop in as possible while the weather was in their favor. My great-grandparents were deeply faithful people, however, and the suggestion that they miss church was a non-starter. So, the family got cleaned up and headed into town to give thanks to the God of the harvest. And as they joined their community in worship, it began not only to rain, but to hail. Menacing, pounding, golf-ball-sized hail.

If you’ve never seen hail damage on a field of wheat, it’s something to behold. Stalks of grain that once stood tall and proud are battered to the ground in minutes, leaving the field looking like a wayward giant had stomped through it at random. The congregation full of farmers looked at each other warily across the pews as the hailstorm raged. They knew that their bumper crops were all but being destroyed as they sang and prayed together.

When worship was over, my great uncle Rudy remembered overhearing a conversation between his dad and another member of the congregation. “I just can’t believe it. You lost your crop because you came to church, Ed. I’m so sorry.”

My great-grandpa’s reply? “No, sir. We didn’t lose the crop because we came to church. We lost the crop because it hailed.”

Where I come from, it’s often said that farmers are eternal optimists. But I think there’s actually something much deeper at work in people like my great-grandpa, because optimism is tied to outcomes. Optimism implies an expectation that things will somehow unfold in a way that’s favorable. Certainly there’s some optimism – and maybe also a little stubbornness – involved in working the land, whether you’re a High Plains farmer or a backyard gardener or a tender of potted herbs on the windowsill. But optimism fades quickly when the outcome looks like hail smashing your family’s annual income in an instant, rather than the bumper crop that was right in front of your eyes just hours before. In that moment, hope needs to surface. A deep, resilient hope that has nothing to do with the outcome of the situation at hand, and everything to do with the character of God.

A sower went out to sow, Jesus says, and as he sowed, he threw some seeds on the path, where the birds came and ate them up. He threw other seeds on rocky ground, where they sprang up quickly, but didn’t last for lack of strong roots. Other seeds the sower threw amongst thorns, where the life was quickly choked out of them. And other seeds the sower threw on good soil that yielded abundant grain, as much as a hundredfold.

A sower went out to sow and just look at the way that sower handles her work. There’s no planning, no scheming of nice, neat rows, no evaluation of the soil and sunlight, no fences that are strategically placed to keep unwanted creatures away from the growing plants. No, the sower goes out to sow, and the sower flings the seeds everywhere. Everywhere! The sower does not wait for soil to be ready, or for the soil to look promising, or for the soil to have proved its ability in the previous harvest. The sower simply flings upon all the soils of land and life, even the ones that look the most grim. She sows the seeds of love and justice and possibility, of which there is always abundant supply. Some of the seeds grow. Some of them start growing and then wither away. Some of them immediately die. And yet the sower keeps on going, tossing seeds wherever she goes, no matter the result; no matter the outcome.

I can imagine my great-grandpa turning in his grave upon hearing about this kind of reckless approach to planting. I mean, who the heck would throw out seed so extravagantly, so haphazardly, so wastefully tossing it on soil that could never produce a harvest?

It turns out, God would.

In Matthew’s description of the sower we learn what God is like. God is like a sower who tosses seeds of love and justice and new life upon the whole earth, upon all of humanity, without discretion. This love of God is sprinkled everywhere. It lands on fields and meadows, thorns and rocks. It lands in back alleys and sidewalks, school playgrounds and parking lots. It lands on living rooms and grocery stores, jail cells and corporate office buildings. It lands on Black Lives Matter protests and law enforcement offices, COVID wings in the hospital and funeral homes. It lands on addiction recovery centers and church sanctuaries and downtown pubs and everywhere in between.

There is not a corner of this world where seeds of love and possibility are not scattered about by our gracious and generous God. Sometimes that love materializes. Sometimes it’s rejected. Sometimes it shows up in the most surprising of places, the way greenery shoots forth out of the cracks in a sidewalk. But here’s the gospel, here’s the point: the human response to love doesn’t change whether God is pouring love into the world, into each one of us, every single day. That’s just what the Sower does. That’s just what God does. All day long. All the world over.

This love of God is not a sentimental love. It is a deep, powerful, world-altering love. God’s love looks like the lowly being lifted up. It looks like the hungry feasting on every good thing. It looks like souls freed from the confines of sin and self-centeredness and fear and self-doubt. It looks like a table that grows exponentially as people of every race and nation stream toward it; a table overflowing with bread and wine and laughter in the gentle company of the faithful. It looks like restored relationships between God’s broken and beloved people – relationships characterized by justice and humility and a commitment to each other’s thriving. It looks like the unbreakable promise that we are worth loving, worth investing in, even when the soil of our hearts is too rocky to let that love move us; even when our faith feels as battered as my great-grandpa’s wheat fields that summer long ago.

Farmers where I come from are often called eternal optimists. But when the favorable outcomes of a plentiful harvest are beaten down in the span of a church service, optimism withers away like a plant with no root, bending in defeat like a hail-damaged stalk of grain. That’s when hope needs to surface. A deep, resilient hope that has nothing to do with the outcome of the situation at hand, and everything to do with the character of God.

Our whole human family is in the midst of a season of deep uncertainty, marked by pandemic and protest, anxiety and utter exhaustion. Even the most optimistic among us have had to reckon with how little control we actually have over the outcomes of our individual lives. But even now – especially now – God is still God, sowing the seeds of love and justice and the promise of new life as wildly, extravagantly, and recklessly as God has always done. May this enduring faithfulness of the Great Sower allow tender shoots of hope to keep springing up in the soil of our lives. And may that hope grow roots in us that are strong and deep, reaching beyond our attachment to expectations and outcomes and into the richness of God’s own eternally hopetimistic vision for the whole of this created world.

Amen.

I am so grateful for my dear friend and colleague, Pastor Sarah Rohde, and for her assistance with portions of this sermon.

Disappearing Spaces

Heidi Torgerson

a sermon on john 14:1-14

Texts like this one from the gospel of John can be a bit tricky for a preacher, mostly because this one is so familiar. Church people have heard it a thousand times, and a whole lot of people who aren’t so familiar with church have also heard it a bunch. For example, regular church attender or not, I’d guess that most of us have heard this text read at at least one funeral. Traditional funeral sermons on this text encourage us to imagine Jesus putting his carpentry skills to good use for us in heaven, making up a bright and shiny room for us and our loved ones to call home when our time on Earth is done. Others of us have heard this text used to influence interfaith conversations, usually by suggesting that people of other religious traditions have no place in God’s reign and most certainly will NOT be our neighbors in any of those aforementioned bright and shiny heavenly rooms. The common theme here is that most us have learned to hear these words from John and cast our thoughts away from the complexity of this earthly life and instead to look heavenward toward the glories awaiting us in our Father’s house after we die.

I gotta say, I understand the tendency. Jesus’ words are reassuring. “Do not let your hearts be troubled! In my Father’s house there are many rooms, and I’m going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and bring you with me so that where I am, you will be also.” Part of my own weary soul breathes a tiny sigh of relief when I hear these words, because Lord knows – literally – that words of assurance are hard to come by in these days. Lord knows – literally – that its exhausting to battle our ways through the miniscule and massive challenges surrounding us every day right now. If you saw my weekly video message on Wednesday you heard me and my husband Jason talking about what a rough week it’s been around our house. Patience has been in shorter supply. Sadness and maybe even some atypical low-grade depression are more at the surface. We’ve been feeling frustrated about pretty much All The Things and also a little afraid of the long-haul nature of this COVID crisis, and of the reality that life isn’t ever going to be quite the same anymore.

I know because you’ve told me that things are feeling heavy for you, too. Loneliness is taking a new kind of toll for many of us, even for the proudest self-proclaimed introverts among us. Some of us are regular visitors to hospitals and clinics for health concerns that have nothing to do with COVID, except that they suddenly have everything to do with COVID because showing up to a hospital feels risky right now, even when it’s necessary. Some of us are separated from loved ones who are ill, or who are nearing the end of life, or who have died very recently, and the grief of all of that is just too much to bear. Some of us have lost jobs or have taken significant pay cuts or have been furloughed, and the financial stress on top of everything else is enough to almost topple us. Some of us live with depression or anxiety that might be relatively well-managed in normal times, but these aren’t normal times and our emotional health is suffering. Some of us are feeling bewildering signs that our overall wellness is just out of whack in ways that we haven’t really experienced before. And these are only the COVID-related parts of our life together. We don’t even have space to think about the climate crisis or the immigration & refugee crisis or the food insecurity crisis or, or, or…

It’s no wonder we long for words of assurance. It’s no wonder that we’d rather look toward that golden heavenly home than face the brokenness that’s both within and all around us. Like Philip in this gospel reading we, too, are apt to ask Jesus, “Alright, where is God? Show us the Mother – the Father – the Heavenly Parent – and we will be satisfied.”

Where is God? 

A close friend of mine named Jen kept a blog through a particular phase of her life. She began one memorable blog post in this way: “I have spent the last week seeing God everywhere, but principally in the disappearing spaces between people.” As I was praying over this text in preparation for this sermon, the memory of this friend’s words became gospel for me. It maybe sounds almost cruel to talk about the disappearing spaces between people as gospel when we’re in the middle of this extreme kind of physical distancing, but just stick with me here.

I have spent the last week seeing God everywhere, but principally in the disappearing spaces between people.

Church, I do think the scriptures promise us an ultimate future dwelling at the God’s side. And I confess my hope that God’s dwelling will be filled to overflowing with all kinds of surprising people – including ones of different faiths. But the promise of an other-worldly, heavenly home isn’t what stands out to me as I read John today. Instead, I hear a recounting of the disappearing spaces between people. I hear a story of relationship…a deep and intimate relationship between Jesus and his friends that is lived out not in the sweet by-and-by but in the grit and pain of an earthly existence which just hard as often as it is not.

And boy, were Jesus and his disciples in the thick of that grit and pain. This particular piece of John’s gospel unfolds on Thursday evening, the night before Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus knows that he will soon leave this world and is trying to prepare his disciples for all that is about to take place. Just a few verses before the reading we heard today, Jesus told the disciples that one of them would soon betray him, and then he tells Peter that he will deny Jesus three times. It’s in this context that Jesus says, as we just heard, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Seriously, Jesus?! How could one’s heart be anything but troubled by all of this? Philip and Thomas and the others are afraid and, frankly, Jesus’ words about going to prepare a place for them, and coming back to take them with him, and reassuring them that they already know the way to the place he’s going, sound, like, actually a little bit crazy. So Thomas says it: “Jesus, we have no idea what you’re talking about. We don’t know where you’re going. We have no idea how to get there.” Jesus says, “Of course you know the way because I am the way, and the truth, and the life. If you have seen the Father, you have seen me. You HAVE seen him, and you know him.” Phillip enters the conversation with his own doubts. “Alright, Lord. SHOW us the Father and we’ll be satisfied.”

The disciples tend to get a bad rap in the gospels. They’re slow to understand and often slow to believe. But I read Thomas and Phillip’s questions and doubts not so much through a lens of thickheadedness. Instead, I see them as an illustration of the disappearing spaces between people…the disappearing spaces between them and Jesus. These disciples have walked a long road with Jesus, and Jesus is telling them that there is still a long and difficult road ahead. Their questions, to me, are an indication of the trust they have in their relationship with Jesus. That trust might not seem evident on the surface of their doubts, but somehow, their relationship with Jesus has deepened to the point where they are unafraid to be vulnerable with him, even in the midst of their fear and anxiety. A pastoral colleague of mine suggested last week that fear and anxiety, in tension with trust, is where we find the beginnings of hope. I think that’s right on.

“I’ve spent the week seeing God everywhere, but principally in the disappearing spaces between people.” This is a story about relationship. It’s about the relationship between Jesus and his friends. It’s also about the relationship between Jesus and the Father – the Mother – the Heavenly Parent. Phillip asks Jesus to show them the Father, and Jesus says, “Friends, you already know the Father because you know me. We dwell together, one within the other. There is no space at all between us. Believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. But if you can’t, believe because of the works themselves.” And oh, what works they have been!! The Way of Jesus, which these disciples have walked along with him, has been marked by acts of love that reveal the very face of God. Healing the sick. Raising the dead. Turning water into wine at a big ol’ party. Shedding holy tears along with his friends who were nearly destroyed with grief. Creating huge feasts for thousands of people out of simple fish and bread. Earthy, tangible works that change lives here and now, in this present moment, in this very time.

Beloved of God, these are anxious times. Here’s what I wonder. Dare we put that anxiety in tension with trust in the same Jesus who calls us just like he called those first disciples…who calls us again and again to allow the spaces between us and him to disappear…who calls us over and over into a deep and intimate relationship with himself? Dare we find hope in the midst of this anxiety? We HAVE seen God because we know Jesus. And we know Jesus through the radical ways in which he lived and loved and healed and served. We know Jesus for the ways he still shows up in the grit and pain of this earthly existence. Through his life, death, and resurrection he dissolved the spaces between us and him so that we might be freed to show a dead and dying world what resurrection looks like, feels like, smells like, and tastes like right here, right now. Yes, even in the midst of a pandemic.

You know the way to the place Jesus is going because you have already seen it. So as we gather again today around the abundant feast of bread and wine, rooted in relationship with the one who raises us from the graves of our own fears and anxieties, may we dare to live out the hope we find there. You know the way to the place Jesus is going because you have already seen it. So go! In whatever ways are safe and appropriate right now, Church, bring the hope you have come to know in Christ to the places he has first gone. Send notes of support to the sick and the suffering and to those who care for them, right down to the hospital custodians. Join the BEDS Plus meal train and provide for the hungry and the poor. Learn about Ahmaud Abery’s story and advocate on behalf of those who are victims of race-based violence in this country. Drop a care package on the porch of the neighbors you barely know, or make a gift to ELCA World Hunger in support of our neighbors across the oceans. And then notice as the spaces between God’s people begin to disappear, in spite of our physical distance.  Amen.   

Hope Marks the Road

Heidi Torgerson

a sermon on luke 24:13-35

I had only been in Mexico a handful of weeks on the day that I got hopelessly lost on the streets of Mexico City. I had moved there as a 27-year-old first call pastor, serving as a missionary on behalf of the ELCA. I remember feeling a comforting sense of growing confidence as I’d set out for the market that particular morning. My Spanish language skills were deepening, I knew the walk down Revolucion and past the Barranca del Muerto Metro station, which would bring me to the entrance door I wanted, and I’d been to this market enough times by now that a few of the puesteros – the vendors – recognized me and called out greetings as I walked past.

I snaked my way ever deeper into the labyrinth of the market, buying some tomatoes, some jalapenos, some eggs, and a few strawberries along the way. I was feeling SO confident by the end of my little excursion that I decided to leave the market through the back rather than the front entrance to which I was accustomed. Well, that back exit spit me out not onto a main road, but into the outdoor extension of the market. Vendors lined the narrow winding streets, selling pretty much everything you could imagine – pirated DVDs, single cigarettes out of open packs, secondhand clothing, plastic food storage containers, you name it. It only took me a few blocks before I realized I had no idea where I was anymore. So, I started to ask for directions.

Now, my Spanish had gotten way better than when I’d first landed in Mexico, but there were a number of things happening here that were decidedly not in the favor of this lost gringa. First, the street Spanish being spoken around me was peppered with all sorts of idioms and slang that I didn’t yet know how to use in my daily life. Second, lots of the street names in Mexico City come not from Spanish, but from the indigenous language of Nahuat’l, and let’s be real. My ear was not yet attuned to just catching words like “Nezahualcoytl” on the fly. So, I took a deep breath and resigned myself to the probability that I was going to be out here for awhile, and to the certainty that I was going to need to ask a new person for help approximately every block and a half.

I’d been at this game for probably 20 minutes when I came across an elderly woman, sitting on a blanket with small candies and gum spread out in front of her for sale. Her long, white hair was pulled back into a thin braid, and the thick callouses on her bare feet suggested to me that she probably didn’t own shoes. I must have looked as bewildered as I felt in that moment because she called to me from her blanket.

When I told her I was lost and gave her the general direction of where I was trying to go, she stood up carefully and, in a beautifully intimate gesture, took my face in her hands as she said to me, “Ay, mi vida, mi corazon, mi amor, yo te enseno el camino.” Ay, my life, my heart, my love, I’ll show you the way. And she did. This poor, elderly Mexican woman – whose name I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t even have the presence of mind to ask for back then – showed me all the way home that day. But she also showed me so much more. In a moment when I was feeling particularly vulnerable, she showed me the face of Jesus.

It’s amazing, isn’t it…the simple but also life-changing things that can happen to us on the road as we’re making our way through this life? Cleopas and the other disciple had some first-hand experience with the exact same kind of thing back in the day, on that 7-mile road between Jerusalem and the village of Emmaus. Things had gotten pretty dangerous in Jerusalem, especially for the followers of Jesus. Jesus, the disciples’ beloved friend and leader, the one whom they had hoped would finally liberate their people, had just been publicly executed by the Roman government. Jesus was dead, and all of their hopes for a new kind of life…a new kind of world order, even…had died along with him.

Cleopas and his friend are re-hashing all of these things as they walk the road together until a stranger comes alongside them, asking what they’re talking about. The disciples are understandably surprised that this stranger seems so clueless. Like, this thing that’s just happened in Jerusalem is trending on every social media platform, and it’s the leading headline for every news outlet, but whatever. They decide to bring the stranger up to speed.

They tell him about Jesus, a prophet who was mighty in word and deed, who had been handed over to the authorities and condemned to death. They tell him about how, because of Jesus, the people had begun to feel hope for the first time in generations. And they tell him about the women in their group, who asserted that the tomb where Jesus’ body had been laid was empty, but how none of the men had actually seen Jesus. The stranger doesn’t even need to ask how Cleopas and his friend are feeling in the wake of all these things because it’s written all over their faces. They are sad. Anguished. Heartbroken. They are most certainly also burdened by the weight of carrying all these feelings, and anxious about the uncertain future that now lies before them. Whew. Can you relate?

Before long the stranger begins to speak, opening the scriptures to the disciples starting with Moses – the great liberator of God’s people who led them out of slavery in Egypt – and continuing with the prophets, who throughout the Old Testament were consistently speaking truth to power, calling out the wealthy and elite and the rulemakers of the day for the extravagance of their lifestyles…lifestyles which served to, as the prophet Isaiah puts it, grind the faces of the poor into the dust.

It’s no accident that the stranger chooses Moses and the prophets as he talks with the disciples. It’s like the stranger is saying, “If this Jesus was who you say he was – a prophet mighty in deed who came to usher in a whole new world – how could he have met any other fate than what all the prophets faced…to lose his life at the hands of those who felt threatened by him?” Because then just as now, there were those who felt threatened…by the expansiveness of Jesus’ welcoming arms…the stubborn insistence of his love for all who were hurting and excluded…the life-altering nature of the hope that his ministry gave to the people.

As the disciples listen to the stranger something starts to move within them. When evening draws near they insist that the stranger stay with them. And then they do what we, too, do as a church community every week, and what we’ll keep doing online while we’re apart. They gather around a table. They share a meal. And in the breaking of the bread the disciples recognize the truth – that this one in their midst has never actually been a stranger…

As soon as they recognize Jesus he vanishes from their sight, but something profound has happened. “Were not our hearts burning within us as he talked with us on that road?” the disciples reflect. And immediately, they know what they have to do. Nothing has changed in Jerusalem. It’s the same chaotic, scary, and uncertain place it was when they left. Their future is no less clear to them. But somehow, the disciples have been so radically changed by their encounter with the crucified and risen Christ that they get back on that road, returning to the place they’d just left, filled anew with hope, to re-engage in the work of helping God’s reign break forth in the world.

Church, it’s no secret that we are living in extraordinary times. Our circumstances are obviously different than those of the disciples, but the road we are walking is similarly difficult. The stay-at-home order in Illinois has just been extended through May 31. We have no idea what this continued pandemic and the gradual reopening of our public spaces will mean for us, for our families, for our livelihoods, or for the church. The road ahead of us is as bewildering as the winding back roads of that Mexico City market that swallowed me up all those years ago. And like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, grief and fear and confusion can keep our eyes from seeing any hope along the way…can keep us from recognizing the face of Jesus when he shows up.

But it doesn’t matter. Truly, friends, it doesn’t matter. Because here’s the thing. It was always Jesus. Even when the disciples’ ability to recognize him was clouded by the stuff of their own difficult lives, it was always Jesus. The presence of Jesus doesn’t depend on our ability recognize him. Just like the presence of Jesus doesn’t depend on our feelings. The presence of Jesus doesn’t depend on our ability to muster up some certain kind of positivity when things seem bleak, or some false sense of hope when we feel like we’re hanging by a thread. In fact the presence of Jesus doesn’t depend on us at ALL. The presence of Jesus just IS…sure, and certain, and true, today and always. No matter what.

These are difficult days, friends, but Hope marks the road. Embodied in Jesus, Hope accompanies every step we take as we journey through life. Even when we can’t recognize it or feel it Jesus is there, showing us the way when we feel most lost. And that seems just about right. Because at the end of the day, in the company of Jesus, aren’t we all just walking each other home?