The Church of St.
Paul & Incarnation, Jersey City NJ
June 14, 2020
Year A, Proper 6: The
Second Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 18:1-15,
21:1-7
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
Romans 5:1-8
Matthew 9:35-10:23
Ambassadors of Hope
I
think I told you once before that, back in the 1980s, I was lucky enough to get
to visit the city of Berlin, Germany.
As
many of you will remember – and maybe some of you youngsters learned in school
– back then Germany was divided into two countries: West Germany, which was an
open and free society allied with the U.S. and East Germany, a closed and
communist society allied with the Soviet Union.
But,
it wasn’t just the country that was divided.
Germany’s
former capital city, Berlin, was similarly divided into West and East – and
beginning in 1961, the city was divided by a wall, a wall built by the
communist regime, desperate to prevent its people from fleeing to freedom in
the West.
By
the time I visited in the 1980s, what had started as barbed wire strung along
the boundary line had been expanded into a series of walls, walls separated by
a wide a no-man’s land, a place of death seeded with landmines and watched over
by guards in towers with orders to kill anyone trying to escape from East to
West, from captivity to freedom.
On
the western side, people used this terrible tool and symbol of oppression as a
vast canvas – covering every inch of the wall with political and non-political
art and the kind of graffiti you could find in any big city in those days.
With
my American passport it was possible to cross through one of the checkpoints
into the East, which will always be one of the most bizarre experiences of my
life.
Walking
around the streets of East Berlin was very much like walking the streets of any
modern city, except when you remembered that most the people passing by on the
sidewalk, going about their business, looking normal, were essentially inmates
in a giant prison.
While
I could easily cross back into the West and freedom, they would be shot dead if
they tried to do the same.
Looking
at the wall and the guard towers and the armed soldiers with their
shoot-to-kill orders, it seemed to me back then that this cruel and fearful
regime would rule for many years. What could possibly bring down this wall?
Short of a terrible war, what could end this evil regime?
And
yet, not long after I was there, I remember looking at the front page of the newspaper
on November 10, 1989, staring in wonder at the pictures of East Berliners driving
through the gates, waving and laughing – pictures of East and West Berliners
dancing on top of a wall that had not so long ago seemed insurmountable and
yet, in the end, turned out to be not much of an obstacle, after all.
The
Berlin Wall came down for several reasons, which you can look up online.
But,
something that often gets overlooked is that while I was in East Berlin trying
not to stare at all of the normal-looking people imprisoned in their own
country, there were also brave East Germans – including many faithful Christians
– who, at great risk to themselves, refused to accept that this cruel regime
would last forever – they secretly met and planned and tried to help those who
got in trouble with the authorities, preparing patiently for the day of freedom.
In
a terrible time and place, they were ambassadors of hope.
I was reminded of
the Berlin Wall last week when a much less imposing barrier was erected in
Washington around the White House to protect it, and the people who temporarily
live and work there, from the protesters marching and gathering in the streets
of the city.
I’m not a security
expert so I have no idea whether the fence was really necessary but it was
sobering to see it go up, wasn’t it?
It seemed like
something that happens in other countries, but not here, right?
And, it was hard
to avoid the irony of protecting the People’s House that was built largely
thanks to the skill and labor of enslaved people, protecting it from people
insisting that Black Lives Matter.
But then something
remarkable happened.
People began to
decorate the fence! They began to hang up signs and pictures, many bearing the
names and images of George Floyd and some of the other many victims of police
brutality.
Just like the
graffiti artists in Berlin decades ago, people used the fence as a vast canvas
to express themselves – to express grief and anger, yes – but also to express
hope – things will not always be like this – someday sooner than we might
expect – there is going to be big change.
Ambassadors of
hope.
At the start of
today’s lesson from the Gospel of Matthew, we’re told that Jesus is busy doing
his work of teaching and healing but he can’t help noticing that that the people
are harassed and helpless. He says that they are like sheep without a shepherd.
During Jesus’
earthly lifetime the people of Israel lived under the iron rule of the Roman
Empire, yet another cruel regime, one that will nail Jesus to the cross, just
as it ruthlessly killed anyone who seemed to pose a threat to its power.
It’s into that
troubled world that Jesus sent the twelve apostles to continue his work, to
cast out the evil spirits, to proclaim the Good News, to be ambassadors of
hope.
Those first twelve
– and Christians down through the centuries – have been given the duty and the
responsibility and the honor of being ambassadors of hope.
Hope.
Hope isn’t magic.
And, hope is not
the same thing as optimism – when we convince ourselves that everything is
going to break our way and turn out just fine.
Hope is putting
our trust in God even when God’s promises seem so ridiculous, like the promise that
a child will be born to old Sarah and old Abraham, a promise so ridiculous that,
like Sarah, you just have to laugh.
Hope is putting
our trust in God, no matter how tall the wall, no matter how great the obstacle,
no matter how cruel the regime.
As St. Paul
writes, “…and hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured
into our hearts through the Holy Spirit…”
Now, you may be
thinking, well, serving as an ambassador of hope is OK for people who are
especially holy or particularly courageous or who have special skills, but us,
well, we’re just plain folks.
Surely, God can’t
expect us – can’t expect me – to be an ambassador of hope, right?
But, you know,
looking at the names of the first twelve chosen by Jesus and sent out into the
world, you realize that we don’t know much of anything about most of them –
maybe just a story or a legend or two, and for some not even that.
And the ones we do
know something about, they didn’t always distinguish themselves, didn’t really
seem like all-stars. They often fell short – sometimes in big and catastrophic
ways – and yet this is precisely who Jesus sent out into a troubled world to be
ambassadors of hope.
And now, Jesus
sends plain old, beautifully diverse, loving but sometimes messy us – St. Paul
and Incarnation – to show through our lives and words that things don’t have to
be this way – that things won’t always be this way – that God is the God of
hope and we are the ambassadors of hope for today.
And if we sometimes
we despair, it would be good to remember that if you go to Berlin today, you
have to look very hard to find any signs of the wall that once divided the city,
imprisoning millions, and symbolizing cruelty and fear.
There are just a
few carefully preserved sections, including one where an artist recently
painted a mural in honor of George Floyd.
And, in Jerusalem
today, the Romans are long gone, leaving behind just a few ruins, but people
still gather in the that city to pray to the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God
of seemingly ridiculous hope.
And, in our own
country, as the statues of Confederate leaders and slave-owners come tumbling
down and their names finally lose undeserved respectability, I think of the
enslaved people who never accepted their inferior status, who trusted in God to
someday get them across the Jordan.
They trusted in
God even when God’s promise of freedom must have seemed ridiculous, even more
unlikely than a pregnancy in old age.
The day of freedom
finally came – June 19, 1865 – Juneteenth – when the last enslaved people in
our land learned that they were free at last.
The day of freedom
came - but freedom is not here yet.
We still have a
long way to go, and that fence sure is high.
But, look at how
much has happened in just the last two weeks – protests not just in big cities
but all over – large numbers of white people, including some very white
people, joining hands with people of color - changes are being made to police
procedures – the NFL decides, you know what, kneeling is OK after all - conversations
about how much we spend on police and what we spend on education and other ways
that might be more helpful to people.
Some companies are
even beginning to make Juneteenth a paid holiday for their employees – and, at
the rate we’re going, I bet, before too long, it will be a national holiday.
We’re not quite
dancing and laughing on top of the wall, but we’re on our way.
When Jesus sent
out the first ambassadors of hope, he warned them that it wasn’t always going
to be easy – they would sometimes be rejected – and sometimes they might even
be hurt.
And the same is
true today.
No doubt, there
are some very hard days ahead.
But the promises
of God and the lessons of history make me hopeful – and I pray that they make
you hopeful, too.
Because, hope is
putting our trust in God, no matter how seemingly ridiculous the promise, no
matter how tall the wall, no matter how great the obstacle, no matter how cruel
the regime.
God is the God of
hope – and we are sent by Jesus to be ambassadors of hope.
Amen.
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