Waiting and Hoping
Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid? Really, Jesus, that’s the best you can do? How can we not be afraid, in a world that never seems to run out of ways to terrify us? In the midst of souring trade relations, a housing affordability crisis, ongoing wars and genocides, and not to mention a climate crisis that threatens our society as we know it. In the midst of all that, all you can offer is a measly, condescending “do not be afraid, little flock”? I would have hoped for something more. A set of instructions for lowering my heartrate, a way to fix everything that stirs anxiety in me, something. Anything. Certainly something more than that, something besides just “sell everything you have and give away the money.” Because what, something better is coming, and we just have to trust that it will get here before it’s too late? We’re supposed to wait—even as our skies remain hazy with wildfire smoke. We’re supposed to wait—even as migrants are kidnapped and families are torn apart. We’re supposed to wait—even as our queer and trans siblings are degraded, dehumanized, and overlooked?
How are we supposed to do that? How are we supposed to wait for the Kingdom while people we love are dying, while the world is ending, and nothing seems to be getting any better? As difficult as waiting can be, it’s astounding to me how good we are at putting things off. I can speak from experience on this, as I was a terrible procrastinator in school—although I must admit, some of my best work got done at 6 in the morning the day a paper was due. We’re great at putting things off, at embracing distraction rather than truly encountering and wrestling with the realities of the world around us. Sometimes it’s willful ignorance that helps us steer clear of the scary parts of the world. We’d rather look at the rosy picture, the hopecore videos, the jokes and memes. Anything but what’s actually going on in the world. Other times, we might acknowledge what the world is facing, but we’d rather not get involved. To do so would be too risky, too disruptive, would require too much from us. It would require that we have hope—that we believe that change is possible and that God’s Kingdom will be recognizable in our midst.
The year I started seminary, they had also just hired a brand new dean of the Theological School, Rev. Dr. Edwin Aponte. As a part of his installation celebration, Dean Aponte hosted a panel discussion on restoration and justice with three of his colleagues from other theological schools across the country. Two of the panelists were Dr. Miguel De La Torre and Dr. Stacey Floyd-Thomas. I don’t remember a lot from the conversation, but I do remember a rather heated exchange between these two theologians on the topic of hope. Professor De La Torre, when asked, said that he has no hope, but that his drive to pursue justice as a part of his vocation as a follower of Christ was driven, in part, by his view that we have nothing left to lose. When facing the irreversibility of climate change, the rise of violence in our communities, the reality of Christian nationalism, his thinking is that we ought to push back with all that we have because we have nothing left to lose—not even our long-gone hope.
This sense of hopelessness was not unfamiliar to me. For people my age— who grew up in post-9/11 America, who entered adulthood during or after the Covid-19 pandemic, who have never known a country at peace, and who have seen in our lifetime the very real impact of climate change—hopelessness is pretty normal. There are pockets of hope here and there, sure. But so many have become jaded by institutions that value their own power, profit, and preservation above their concern for justice and transformation. Whether it be the Church, the government, or the economy, the fickleness, self-interest, and lust for distraction has repelled many who yearn for a new world. For some, this void is filled by those who, despite not having any real hope, would rather go down swinging, joining social justice movements and community organizations. Others seek to fill this void with right-wing, alpha-male influencers who prey on those who feel hopeless, like they’ve already lost it all.
The other panelist, Professor Stacey Floyd-Thomas, took a different approach. She talked about her identity as a mother, saying that she has to have hope because she has everything to lose. She talked about the fear she lives with on behalf of her sons, young Black men, with whom she’s had to have the talk about what they can do to deescalate confrontations with police. We have everything to lose, she says, and so we have to have hope because hope is the only thing that carries us through when we are paralyzed by fear. It’s what allows us—forces us—to push on, even when our present reality makes it seem like believing in something other than what we’ve always known is just fantasy, just a temporary salve to keep us from falling into total despair. But hope isn’t just an intellectual belief. It’s not just something that we think or say or hold in our hearts. Hope is not a passive waiting. It’s not letting go of action and expecting God to take the reins and right the world. It’s more than sitting back and waiting for signs or simple assurances.
Hope is active, and it demands things from us. It demands that we look beyond the distractions and the white noise that we produce and enable. The distractions with which we engage in the world, as well as those that we manufacture here. It demands that we know our neighbors—not just the neighbors out in the world, like I talked about a few weeks ago, but the people who sit on the other side of the sanctuary. The people you may never have seen before, whether they’ve been here six times or six hundred times. Whatever it is that distracts us from embracing one another and engaging one another, that is what hope demands we let go. But it’s not just about what we abandon. Hope demands that our waiting takes on a different form, so it looks less like the waiting that Martin Luther King wrote about in his letter from a Birmingham jail—the kind of waiting that delays, and therefore denies justice. It demands the kind of waiting that shares God’s dissatisfaction with performative worship, and God’s call to seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow. That is what hope values—engagement in the face of distraction, action in the face of apathy, and resolve in the face of fear.
Where do you look for hope? Where do the young look for hope? Is it here? Ask them. Ask each other. Are we living out this command to wait, to look and speak and act as though we are, in fact, confident that transformation is possible, that a world renewed is coming? Or are we trapped in the same cycle of waiting…and waiting…and waiting, without anything to show for it. Our call as the Church, as people of faith, and those called Methodists, is to live out the resurrection hope we profess—that change is coming. That change has come. We are to be that hope, for the queer and questioning, for the mournful and broken-hearted, for the disinherited and dispossessed, for the disabled and chronically ill. If hope is something we value, let us live into that hope, waiting earnestly and actively. Let us not be distracted any longer. Let us turn our attention to what God is calling us to be for the world. Amen.