Sermon: Practicing Hope

By Joanna Lawrence Shenk

Psalm 4

Answer me when I call, God of my justice!
Give me relief from my distress!
Have mercy!
Hear my prayer!

How long will you people dishonor me before God?
How long will you love delusion and pursue lies?
Know that those who love YHWH
have been set apart by divine will—
YHWH will hear me when I call!

Tremble, and stop your sinning;
search your heart,
alone and silent in your room.
Offer sacrifices of justice,
and put your trust in YHWH.

So many are asking,
“Does good even exist anymore?”
Let the light of your face, YHWH, shine on us!

You put joy in my heart—
a joy greater than being full
of bread and new wine.

In peace I’ll lie down;
in peace I will sleep:
for you alone, YHWH,
keep me perfectly safe.

Last year I went on a tear, reading every Octavia Butler book I could borrow from the library. I’ve been a fan of science fiction for awhile and once I found Octavia Butler it was hard to appreciate authors who did not weave together themes of gender, power, sexuality, race and dispossession. I would also say her writing is prophetic. In the 90s she wrote a novel, Parable of the Talents, about the dystopian future of our country which included a demagogue leader claiming to Make America Great Again. 

The characters and themes in Butler’s stories are gritty, sometimes gruesome and provocative. I’ve put down books by other authors due to the graphic nature of their storytelling, but not Octavia Butler’s. Even if it’s not immediately clear to me how the story will weave together, I know I can trust her analysis, no matter how uncomfortable I am. 

Honestly I’m the kind of person who wants to read stories where everything works out in the end. I want hope to prevail. I want my stories ultimately to be utopian. I mean, yes there can be a lot of struggle and disillusionment and violence, but in the end I want there to be transformation and vindication. 

So reading Octavia Butler has been a discipline for me. She writes from her social location, as a Black woman marginalized in a society rife with oppression and violence. She does not believe that utopia in the traditional sense is possible. There will always be suffering, pain and change. 

But the way we are oriented toward it makes all the difference. Her understanding of utopia is about a freedom of spirit and mind, even in the midst of oppressive realities. Her sober reading of reality chastines me to not shut down in the face of violence or seek to insulate myself from its horror. Instead it is a call for unflinching hope that fights for survival and liberation. Like the resurrection, hers is a body of work that looks death in the face and says, “you do not have the final word.” 

In this season of Eastertide we are reflecting on this truth, that death does not have the final word. We believe that the Divine is at work in the world, partnered with the marginalized, comforting the grieving, and giving strength to all who seek healing and justice. Even with the knowledge of the resurrection, we know the way is still rough and gritty. 

Our scripture from Psalm 4 speaks to this reality as well. Preparing for this sermon I read up on the Psalms and their context. Turns out they are very hard to date and authorship is basically unknown. One scholar compared them to African American spirituals sung in the South, that were passed orally among communities and adapted along the way. 

Biblical scholar, Walter Brueggemann, notes that many psalms are dialogical in nature. He connects that to the importance of dialogue about scripture and within scripture in the Jewish tradition. In his study of Psalm 4 he suggests it be read in the way we heard Karen and Aaron read it, with two voices.  

The first voice we hear is that of the aggrieved person. They are calling out to the Divine for help. And they are also calling out the people who are doing them wrong and doing wrong in the world. Even in their suffering they believe that God will hear them and come to their aid. 

Answer me when I call, God of my justice!
Give me relief from my distress!
Have mercy!
Hear my prayer!

How long will you people dishonor me before God?
How long will you love delusion and pursue lies?
Know that those who love YHWH
have been set apart by divine will—
YHWH will hear me when I call!

And then the second voice, the instructor, responds to their plea. We could interpret their tone in a number of different ways. I find it most compelling to think of them speaking with a bit of exasperation in their voice… 

Tremble, and stop your sinning;
search your heart,
alone and silent in your room.
Offer sacrifices of justice,
and put your trust in YHWH.

So many are asking,
“Does good even exist anymore?”
Let the light of your face, YHWH, shine on us!

There is a chastening in the words of the instructor. Chill dude. Take stock of yourself for a minute and stop pointing fingers at others. Sit with the tumult inside yourself. Sit with it in silence. Let it work on you. 

Then return to your practice. Offer sacrifices of justice. This was about disciplined practice. Your practices will bring you back to trust. Brueggemann says it’s about “the voices of grief and the voices of instruction that seek to bring the aggrieved back into the world of coherent disciplined faith.”

I mean I can imagine this in my own body… I’m stressed out. I’m moving too fast, trying to work for justice and care for my family and support people in need. And I look outside myself at the tumult of the world and I’m so agitated because it’s all violence, delusion and lies. So I’m like, “God do something about that!! Why do people suck so much??” 

If I’m lucky enough to have spiritual attunement in those moments, the Divine breaks through and invites me to take a breath… to slow down… to take stock of my frenetic behavior. And then, maybe, just maybe I can return to practices that connect me with Spirit and tend to the needs of my soul. 

Divine presence is with me, enabling me to live free and seek wholeness, no matter the external circumstances. I can put my trust in God. Though the nations rage from age to age, we remember who holds us fast. It’s worth noting that the psalm does not clarify whether or not the external circumstances changed for the aggrieved person. 

This hope and trust we are invited into is much like the disposition of the protagonists in Octavia Butler’s novels. They live in stark realities with the ever present threat of violence, but they are embodying a different way. They invite others into communities of hope and resilience. They are not dependent on happily-ever-after external circumstances in order to be free and whole. 

This disposition is echoed by the complainer, the aggrieved person, who has now become a truster. 

You put joy in my heart—
a joy greater than being full
of bread and new wine. (those are the external circumstances of abundance)

In peace I’ll lie down;
in peace I will sleep:
for you alone, YHWH,
keep me perfectly safe.

The external circumstance plays second fiddle to the trust we put in the Divine. As Octavia Butler and the Buddha remind us, change is the only constant. So the external circumstances might get better and then they might get worse, like with Milo in the children’s story, but in every moment we can be oriented toward trust and hope. I’m saying this to myself just as much as to anyone else… 

May we be grounded in our practices of prayer and justice, and connected with communities of unflinching hope so together we can look death in the face and say, “you do not have the final word.” 

May it be so. Amen.