Defiant Hope (a sermon about a world gone mad, mother eagles, and planting trees)

 Acts 2:1-21

A few weeks ago, my dad was over and helping us in our yard. He planted a whole row of pink Easter begonias in the front and then he and I went to work planting and weeding and mulching. At one point, he asked me about a pathetic little pine twig that I had half planted in a flowerpot.  

“Is this a plant?” he asked me.

Like many Chicago houses, our neighbor’s house is maybe 10-12 feet away from ours and between us we have a cement gangway. In the crack where the sidewalk meets their house, a little pine tree had sprouted. We don’t have any pine trees in our tiny yard, nor do our neighbors and my only guess is that it sprouted from our Christmas tree which I threw out the side door onto the patio in December. It is possible that the dead tree lay in the patio for an embarrassing number of weeks before I hauled it to the back alley.  I think, while it was there, it may have left a seed.  When I pulled on that little sprout, the entire root came out. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it in that moment, so I stuffed it into a flower pot. Later that afternoon, my dad commented to me that he had re-planted the little seeding in a pot.  

“Maybe it will grow into something,” he said.  

That little pot with the tiny sapling has been sitting next to my door in the gangway for several weeks now and I look at it all the time. It has new green needles sprouting at the tips of it’s tiny two branches.

There is something that is hopeful about planting a tree.  I have no doubt that the years before us will bring both heartache and joy and I don’t know what that balance of the two will look like; but, I know that when we plant a tree, it is an act of hope for the future.

I’ve had to dig deep to find hope these last couple of weeks.  Not only are my family and I heartsick at the unexpected death of my mother-in-law, Mercedes, a week and a half ago, I am heartsick at what has unfolded these last weeks in Buffalo, Uvalde, Tulsa, and more places. I’ve volleyed between rage and numbness, between fear and disbelief.

On the surface of things, our lives appear normal in my family: the kids go to school, we make dinner, we walk the dog, wash the clothes, pay the bills. We go to graduation parties and birthday parties. We make plans. And yet, beneath that there is a river rushing that all is not right in this shattered world for so many reasons. Open the newspaper for five minutes and you see our broken humanity spilling out all over itself.  How do we hang onto hope when the heartbreak is this deep?  

I’m pretty sure this is not only part of my call as a person of faith to hold on to hope, but it’s part of my call as a pastor to you all. And I have shook my head all week looking for an answer to that question. I’m not sure if I found the right answer, but, God found me. 

*****

Most worship services here at LMC, we celebrate communion. Sometimes, communion is called “The Last Supper.” Have you ever noticed that? However, It’s actually not the last supper.  Jesus shows up many times after that meal after he has been resurrected: He has fish on the beach over a charcoal campfire with his disciples, he shows up for dinner in the town of Emmaus. In those 40 days after God raised Jesus, he shows up all over the place, eating and teaching and hanging out. He, in fact, eats many more meals after that so called Last Supper. The very worst, the unimaginable has happened—Jesus was crucified—but there he is with scars in his hands reminding folks to take heart to have courage.  

This, Pastor Mary Luti writes, “is the story of our lives, the story of the church: The worst things imaginable happen. Yet, somehow, by grace and grit, we’re still here, weary and scarred, but breathing, more or less upright,” she says. Instead of the “last supper of death and dread,” she wonders if we could call it a “new supper of relief and resilience”?  

After Jesus eats all those meals in towns and villages and in upper rooms and on beaches, he ascends, like a balloon, to be with God; and then, God’s mighty and Holy Spirit rushes into this world which is where our bible story from Acts picks up today.

As I wrestle with hopelessness and grief this week, I learned something about that mighty wind that rushed into the house that original day of Pentecost.  The wind is connected by an unusual word back to two other bible stories with rushing winds. First: the story of creation where God’s spirit hovers, rushes and abides over the waters of the deep right before the creation of the universe.  It’s the same uniquely rushing wind according to scripture (1).   Second: It’s also the same word for wind used in a story in Deuteronomy (2) where a mother eagle is powerfully hovering over the nest of her chicks. Just like you might fan or blow on the hot coals of a campfire to get them to spark, the mother eagle is fanning her strong wings protectively and energetically over her nest.  She is hovering over her chicks and taking up any possible room that could be used to endanger them. 

These stories tell me two things. 1.  I’m comforted by the image of God protectively spreading her wings out over us and refreshing us with this rushing, fanning air. 2. that wind that billows over the face of the deep in creation rushes in right before something is about to happen. Same goes for those those strong protective wings of the mother eagle, fanning the nest. She hovers there ready and waiting. In the story from Genesis, creation is born, (“let there be light!”). In the story from Deuteronomy, the Eagle, after hovering in flight, suddenly grabs her chicks and shoots straight up into the sky.  When that wind rushes into the house on the ancient day of Pentecost, it marked a moment full of potential. It infused the air with God’s electric presence. It fanned oxygen onto the coals, it lifted and refreshed that stagnant heavy air in the house, for something was about to happen. God’s Spirit, while it comforts us and protects us, is always drawing us towards more than we can imagine.

*** 

African American scholar Imani Perry wrote last week that we must do more than cower in the face of ugliness of the world.  We must, she said, [raise our kids,] even into adulthood, to believe in the possibility of a loving and just world and that they have a responsibility to work for it.”   (3)

We are not done yet.  We have not eaten the last supper.  We are not done blessing one another, giving thanks, singing and shouting out.  There are feet to be washed, there’s justice to be righted, jails to be emptied, bellies to be filled.   There is rest to be taken, tears to be shared, laughter to be gifted, hands to be held. There are hearts to be consoled, dreams to be dreamed, visions to be seen.  There are trees to be planted.

In 1968, Wendell Berry, a poet and Kentucky farmer wrote a poem titled “February 2, 1968.” That time of the late 60s was a time of political and cultural rifts, even scorn, a time of bitter division, questioning of authority, mistrust, social turmoil.  Into that moment, he wrote:

In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter, 
war spreading, families dying, the world in danger,
I walk the rocky hillside sowing clover.

It’s “an earnest hope,” Kathryn Schifferdecker writes, “in a world gone mad…a defiant hope…In a world filled with so many reasons to despair.” Don’t I know it.

Wendell Berry plants clover.

In a cramped house, the early church breaks into a multitude of languages. 

In our own tattered world, we hope defiantly—even while heartbroken—for love is stronger than death.

1.  The word, merahefet from Genesis 1:2 means to hover or to move over.  An ancient translator translated this Hebrew word into Greek in an Ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures called the Septuagint. The translator used the same Greek work for Merahefet as they used to describe e rushing wind when they wrote the book of Acts

2.   Deut 32:11 

3.  “Unsettled Territory: How we must raise our children now,” for The Atlantic.  June 1, 2022