Shady Grove Presbyterian Church
January 17, 2016
Micah 6:7-8
Luke 6:37-38
It is never a bad choice to be hopeful.
President Obama gave his State of the Union Address this week.
It was his final State of the Union Address. It was optimistic and
hopeful. I felt both encouraged and
challenged by what he had to say. He said, “We should not fear the future but
rather, shape it.”
Too many times I have allowed my own fears to shape me. When
that happens, I hide in the darkness where hope, optimism and encouragement are
hard to find. In that place, I have difficulty seeing the good in me and I can't imagine it in
others. When fear is in charge of my attitude and thoughts, I am shaped by it
rather than faithfully shaping a better way.
I need to be reminded of how powerful fear can be. I need to
be invited to return to the light where hope is found, where hope can be
shared. I appreciated what our president had to say. There has been so much
fear in the air, on television, on the internet and in our conversations
lately. If our faith in the love of God is to mean anything at all, then now is
the time for us to put it to good use by speaking hope into the fear that
threatens to dominate our time, energy and relationships.
On Friday morning I attended a District Issues Meeting with
Congressman Steve Cohen. There were about two hundred people there. Steve Cohen
and his staff listened respectfully and patiently as person after person took
the microphone and expressed their needs. Veterans felt underappreciated, their
care at the VA Hospital was not as effective or as efficient as they needed it
to be. Home health care workers told about working long hours and getting paid
$7.25 per hour without any benefits. People with physical challenges told about
their need for access to public transportation. Some people told about
discrimination in their work places, injustice based on gender, race and age.
One woman told about a friend, a senior citizen, being exploited by scammers.
One man, speaking through a translator, told about families being torn apart by
deportation.
It went on for over two hours. People shared their narratives
and named their needs. It could have been discouraging. It might have left us
feeling bleak. But it didn’t. We were not discouraged because somebody
listened. Steve Cohen and his staff paid attention to what was said; they took
notes and names. They told each person which staff person would be responding
to their particular need.
If this is politics, I am for it. People need a place to share
their needs and somebody who will listen and respond with help and hope. If it
is a congressman, then thank God for congressmen! Being listened to is being
loved. Listening to others is just, kind and humble. It is the way to create
hope.
Last evening I went to Bridges for their second annual Youth Ignite
Event. Young people imagine ways to make Memphis a better, safer, more hopeful place
to live. They acknowledge a problem, imagine a solution and develop ways to
make the solution a reality. Then they present the whole thing in five minutes
with a power- point and ask for the support of the community. It is enough to
ignite hope for the entire nation!
Those young people, high school students, were so clear about
what the problems are. They were focused on solutions and so happy to have reliable
solutions to offer to us. They were hopeful, pressed down and running over with
hopefulness.
Eight presentations are selected for the event. Many students
have great ideas and they all have exhibits on site, but only eight of them get
to present for the gathered crowd. From those eight presentations a winner is
chosen, voted on by the young people there. And there were about three hundred
young people in the audience. The winner gets support to make their plan
happen.
Last night’s winner was a young man who has been in juvenile
detention. He told us that all the men in his family had spent time in jail. Men
get involved in crime. That was all he knew until the Shelby County Sheriff’s
Department introduced him to new people, new ways of looking at life, new hope.
He got a mentor and he has turned his life around. He presented the idea of
having peer mentors for every young man in juvenile detention, a program that
connects young men to new role models, a brighter future and new hope.
The presentations included a program to address and reduce sexual
harassment among students in our schools, community gardens to fight food deserts, sex
education to decrease teen pregnancy, theater programs to give students in
high- poverty schools an opportunity to shine, a support group for girls to
increase self-confidence, SAT and ACT prep assistance for students in high
poverty schools to give them a better chance at college entry.
Can you feel it? The hope generated by these
young people and their ideas? They trust the future to hold solutions. Their
own solutions. They are busy shaping the future, too busy to allow fear to hold
them back.
It is never a bad choice to be hopeful.
Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day and many of us will be
involved in some kind of service, doing something to make the world around us a
better place, doing something to honor the life of Dr. King, doing something to
help make his dream a reality. If you don’t already have a plan, you can go to
the web site for Volunteer Memphis or
the web site for Be the Dream and
find a place and a way to share your own light tomorrow.
In his “I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. King referred to the story
we call “The Good Samaritan.” You know the story. A man was going from
Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of thieves who beat him, robbed
him, and left him for dead beside the road. A priest walked by and passed by on
the other side of the road. Then a Levite went by and saw the man lying beside
the road. The Levite walked on.
But a Samaritan was traveling on that road and he went over to
the wounded man. The Samaritan was moved with pity. He bandaged the man’s
wounds, gave him water, took the man to an inn and cared for him there. The
next day he gave money to the inn keeper, covering the expenses of the room for
the next day. And he promised to cover whatever cost was incurred by the man’s
recovery.
Dr. King points out, in his Dream Speech, that we do not know
why the priest and the Levite did nothing to help the wounded man. Jesus didn’t
offer that in the telling of this story. We only know they did not help. Dr.
King suggests that the priest and the Levite might have been asking themselves
this question: “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” Maybe the
thieves were not gone. Maybe it was a very dangerous thing to stop and take
time to help the victim. Dr. King says that the road between Jerusalem and
Jericho is a rocky and twisted road, isolated… a good place for thieves to
attack and rob a traveler.
We also do not know, Jesus does not tell us why, the Samaritan
chose to stop and to go toward the wounded man, to look at him and invest in
his recovery. Dr. King suggests that the Samaritan might have been asking
himself this question: “If I do NOT stop to help this man, what will happen to
me?”
Indeed.
Dr. King urged us then and I urge us today: “Let us develop a
kind of dangerous unselfishness.” It is the only way to win a victory over our
communal fears. It is the way to increase hope in our nation, in our city, in
our homes, in our lives.
Howard Zinn, the historian writes: “To be hopeful in bad times
is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a
history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage and
kindness.”
It is never a bad choice to be hopeful.
Amen
