Matthew 26
Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, "Sit here while I go over there and pray." He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and agitated. Then he said to them "I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me."
Stay with me.
Remain here with me.
Watch and pray.
Watch and pray.
“Even if we have no hope, does that give us permission not to fight?”
After a day of rebuilding efforts on the Abu Omar family home, we sat in our circle of folding chairs, hearing yet another trend of oppression that characterizes the occupation of the Palestinian Territories. Reflecting on all we had seen and heard so far, one camp participant pointed out the hopelessness of the situation, causing the challenging question posed by Michael, a young Israeli activist who may well speak of hopelessness, as his family has shunned him and his community has labeled him a traitor.
This acknowledgement of hopelessness was something of a new idea for me, however, having always clung by nature and by faith to the apostle Paul’s conviction that through hope we are saved, to the idea that joy comes with the morning and that morning is really out there. But by the end of my three weeks in Palestine, I too left with a sense of hopelessness, carrying with me the knowledge that though we had rebuilt one family’s home, this small act of resistance seemed insignificant amidst so much injustice and heartache. This feeling would only be magnified six months later, shortly after my arrival in Elgin, when I learned that this home had once again been demolished, together with the home that annually housed the rebuilding volunteers and the entire neighboring Bedouin village.
My education in hopelessness continued this past spring, when at a conference, I had the fortune to listen to the Reverend Dr. Miguel de la Torre, a minister and scholar-activist who works with migrants crossing the border into the United States and the inhumane treatment with which they are confronted. Treatment created and reinforced by institutional policies. De La Torre states that “hope has become a middle-class privilege that we impose upon a situation to feel better.”
I’m not sure about you, but I have found this statement to be troubling. As followers of Christ, we genuinely care about the suffering in this world, and furthermore, we commit ourselves to becoming informed and taking action for the advancement of peace and justice.
But at the same time, as followers of Christ, we are an Easter people. We surround ourselves with the comfort of hope and faith in God, that persistent, lingering, if ever-so-slight belief that God will lead us through these trials, that God will carry us from suffering to joy. The horizon of Easter Sunday lies constantly before us.
The danger, however, of looking to Sunday is that we become inclined to look past the Saturday. Instead of giving the day of mourning its due, we try to hurry through it to the day of hope and newness.
This isn’t to say that we don’t have the best of intentions. It is not just for ourselves that we hope for Sunday, that we raise our eyes to the hills for deliverance. It is for those all around the world who we know are suffering - we maintain the hope that the God of the resurrected Christ will not let them suffer forever, the hope that wars will cease and justice will reign. And in full faith, we give our efforts and resources toward that end. But perhaps our hopes and efforts are also motivated by a fear and discomfort with the idea of mourning and suffering.
So what if, for a moment, we lay aside our hope that things will change and let ourselves become vulnerable to the way things are now. What if we remain in the Saturday? What if we lower our eyes from the hills and focus on the faces of those among us in the valley? What if we rest from our efforts of trying to fix things and quiet our inclinations to speak words of hope, and instead sit in silence, grasp hands, and let ourselves feel the pain and hopelessness.
This isn’t a call for despair or for giving up. There are people in marginalized communities the world over who continue day after day to fight for their rights, for justice and peace and equality, not because they have hope of seeing it achieved but because they have no other choice. And perhaps our call isn’t always to bring them hope and help them win that battle but rather sometimes, to stand with them when they lose.
If I had known that the Palestinian home I had helped rebuild would be demolished again in a few months, I don’t honestly know if I could have put as much energy and effort into it, knowing it was a hopeless show of resistance. And maybe, if I had been with the family when they were once again surrounded by rubble, I would have immediately started to pick up the pieces, to try to make it better. But where I was, far away and helpless in Elgin, I couldn’t make anything better. All I could do was hurt and grieve, and all I needed were people to listen to me cry and share my grief with me.
We don’t have to go very far to find people in our own lives and communities who are experiencing times of grief and hopelessness. And very often, the urge is to console, to bring hope, to make better. And there is a time for that. We are held in the arms of a God of new life, and we should sing of our hope and joy from the mountaintops. But there is also a time to hold back our words and solutions, a time to accept the grief and pain for what it is, no matter how uncomfortable it may be.
As poet Oriah Mountaindreamer states:” I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.”
Because, at the base of it all, the God of resurrection is also the God of crucifixion; the God of hope and joy is also the God of grief and mourning. And we limit God if we try to glaze over that which is difficult. Christ himself faced a situation of hopelessness, a time when his torture and death were inevitable and all he asked was for his friends to sit and share his grief with him.
There is much injustice and oppression in our world and much grief and hopelessness in our communities. So by all means, let us hope, pray, and work for Sunday to dawn upon us all. But let us not forget that sometimes what is most needed is for us is to remain present in the Saturday, for there too, maybe even more than anywhere else, God is with us.
Please pray with me:
God of hope, God of sorrow, we pray for those living in hopelessness, that they might feel the comfort of your love. Grant us the courage and the strength to remain in the places of grief and pain, with the reassurance that no matter how deep the darkness, you are there. Amen.
Thank you for the night, a measure of your care.
In darkness, as in light, you, Lord are there.
No comments:
Post a Comment