If you were to ask me what my favourite Psalm is I’d very quickly tell you Psalm 139. Oh Psalm 23 and 121 definitely are close runners up, with 102 for those days when I am feeling stressed, or 117 if I don’t have a lot of time (it’s the shortest one), but Psalm 139 just hits differently, it’s special.
This Psalm tells us that God is with us no matter where we find ourselves, but more than anything, what I love about this psalm is that it doesn’t pull any punches. There are no platitudes in the psalm, no cliches, no “just trust in God and all will be well” sentiments that tend toward being pedestrian. Instead, in beautiful straightforward clarity, the poem states that God is with us when things are perfect and when life feels like a living hell. God is with us when the path is clear and when it’s so dark we can’t see where to put our next step. It gives space for our human tendency to drift toward anger and resentment (which I appreciate….there is no ask here that we be disingenuous), and there’s a no holds barred nod to the fact that sometimes we are the ones who need to get our heads out of our … well, you know… and do better.
Ultimately there is no false hope offered in these 24 lines. There is just the simple statement that God is there, in good times and in bad, along with the promise that God has been there since the very beginning and will be there until the very end. This the source of hope, the tether that holds us fast. We could get up right now and head for home stronger and more faith filled with this assurance alone. But it’s our first Sunday back after the summer, our tentative dipping of the toe into fall, and you deserve more than a one-page sermon that tells you something you already know… especially when, if you’re at all like me and many others, knowing it doesn’t mean you have an easy time believing it. Because let’s be honest, hope feels fickle a lot of the time.
For anyone who has been keeping track of the liturgical seasons, today we start the Season of Creation. Six weeks in the liturgical year when we hold the Created World at the center of our thoughts and prayers. You know that “I love the mountains, I love the rolling hills, I love the flowers, I love the daffodils…” time of year. I wonder if it is meant to be a light hearted season where we relish in dragonflies and blue whales, marvel at the changing of the seasons, where our gratitude for this marble of a planet that we co-exist on is expressed. And we’ll sure have moments of that… but if we are going to look at creation honestly right now, we’re going to have to accept some pretty hard truths. This summer has proven that.
Wildfires continue to burn long past “wildfire season,” the hot weather, the drought situations around the world, the extreme weather that changes communities… the environment is changing,…and we know that. I also know it can be hard to worry about something as huge and overwhelming as the climate crisis when we have things going on in our lives that feel far more pressing. Stress about our families, our partners, our work, our finances, the state of politics here and abroad, not to mention the broken hearts we carry around inside of us that we try so hard to hide. It all keeps piling up and before we know it hope becomes this concept that is either too slippery to hold onto, too expensive to buy into, or too unstable to stand on.
In 2018, Kate Davies wrote a book where she gave space to all of this. And even though she wrote it two years before the COVID pandemic, and a second Trump administration, it still holds up. She offers an honest but encouraging way to look at this messy world through a concept she calls “intrinsic hope.” Now, Intrinsic hope is different than Conventional hope… where our hope relies on the general expectation that the Universe will eventually bend to our will and align with our personal desires and expectations.
We have been taught to believe this, not only by churches, but by Hollywood, and fairy tales, and endless self-help books. This common idea of hope is woven into the “everything happens for a reason” mindset that “if the ending isn’t a happy one then it’s simply not the ending” belief system, or that annoying “privileged optimism” that tends to be the plaything of those who don’t have to worry about something as foolish and mundane as a mortgage payment.
Intrinsic Hope, is much more realistic. Like Psalm 139 there is nothing false or supervision or naïve about it. Let’s break the phrase down: intrinsic means belonging naturally or being essential (dictionary definition). The idea is that Intrinsic hope “emphasizes the cultivation of a trusting, courageous, and hopeful outlook by accepting life’s unfolding while actively engaging with the world (as it is). It involves cultivating habits like deep listening, fostering compassion, and living with an open, non-resistant heart, and doing all of this amid a myriad of life’s challenges” (Kate Davies). It means doing all of this when things don’t go according to plan…. When the universe doesn’t even lean in our general direction never mind bend to our will.
For the next few weeks, as we celebrate the beauty and the wonder of creation around us, we will also give space to the fact that this human experience we are living is far from neat and tidy and that if we are going to do it well, we will need a hope that is actually up to the challenge. A hope that is strong enough, real enough, to stand up to what we are actually facing. This is the intrinsic hope we will tap into, learn about, weave the habits of into our daily, faithful living. Habits like being present, accepting what is, taking action, persevering for the long haul, loving the world, expressing gratitude…. All those things. We get some help from the story from the prophet Jeremiah that we heard this morning.
There is something deeply meaningful in the image of God as the Potter and we as the clay in Gods hands. How lovely that we are the result of God’s artistic nature, formed by the Holy One we are molded into being. But how in the world did we manage to miss the fact that the original pottery project had been ruined? The first plan, the expectation of how things were going to turn out had not come to pass, and so the Potter decided to start over again.
And that is the moment we pause in today because in that mere second of time is where hope, real hope, essential hope, lives. It exists in the instant when the Potter looks at the mess on her wheel, feels all the things -frustration, anger, disappointment, self content, grief – but then rather simply giving up, and trashing the piece, rather than searching for something prosaic, she pauses, realizes that the feelings are not the opposite of hope but rather the conduit of it, and starts over.
The spirit moves as the chaos is collected, reworked, and suddenly something beautiful is created out of what had been spoiled. Something different than the original plan for sure, something that had our sweat blood and tears folded into it, something that is so beautiful because it comes to life against all odds. To hold onto the kind of hope, to linger in that moment between giving up and not, it takes courage, it takes community, and it takes a willingness to play an active role in this life we share.
In her book “Field Notes for the Wilderness” Sarah Bessey wrote “Cultivating hope isn’t an empty or naïve thing… you need to fight for it, you have to contend for it. Because you’ve suffered and you’ve grieved. You’ve had your certainties blown to hell… [but] that defiant, scrappy bit of hope you still hold and tend like a campfire in the dead of night tells me you’re not done yet. The fact that you’re here tells me some little spark, some little pilot light of hope resides in the furnace of you.” (Page 71).
So let’s fan that flame, let’s mold that clay, let’s linger in that moment where hope takes root.
Amen.
