Optimism is hard to come by these days. But cynicism and pessimism won't help us now. Together, we can make the world a better place. Actually, we can do more than our wildest dreams. That's not a merely faith statement. It's a fact verified by human history. Don't believe it? Listen in.
A sermon on what it means to steward hope and invest in communities of hope. Based on Ephesians 3.14-21.
1.
Today’s scripture reading is from the Letter to the Christians living in Ephesus. It’s a first century Pauline letter, which means it’s full of Saint Paul’s ideas even though it was probably written by one of his disciples. The theological ethics of the Letter—what we are to do based on what we know about God—is about the reconciliation of all things. It’s a grand vision. An ultimate vision. A vision of what God intends for us and the cosmos. Unity and harmony. The ending of national, ethnic, gender, and racial divisions. The overthrow in Christ of anything that keeps us from the harmony that is what we are all made to be. There’s plenty that keeps us from this harmony, from unity. The Letter to the Ephesians says that in Christ, we, the church of Christ, are called by God to overturn them all for the sake of the vision.
It is Christ’s will and work, says the Letter, to “make one new humanity in place of the many, thus making peace.” In the cross, Christ has put to death all cause for hostility between persons. All have equal access to God, for all are equally born of God. We have one Father, one Mother. We are one family, brothers and sisters—kin—no one with privilege, no inequities, no one above or below another. Our divisions are signs that we are unenlightened. Not living the way of love. Still asleep. Still captive to the powers of death and destruction. Still loyal to ideas, identities, stories, and upbringings that are inconsistent with the gospel of Jesus, disloyal to the ways of Christ.
Reconciliation. Unity. Harmony. This is the will of Christ. This is the primary calling of the church. Reconciliation, unity, and harmony is what we are made to experience.
This is why Paul, according to the Letter to the Ephesians, was taken captive and imprisoned; God’s vision made him an enemy of an Empire that lived by a lesser vision.
Christ’s vision cost him. Christ’s vision moved him to sacrifice. Christ’s vision of reconciliation, unity, and harmony stirred him to give all he had to make the world a better place.
The vision has cost many others throughout history who’ve followed the way of Christ, who’ve lived God’s vision.
Their sacrifices and their energy have helped make the world a better place.
And, of course, they haven’t been alone in the struggle. People of good will, people from every language, nation, and tribe, have risen up to live a similar vision.
Their sacrifices and their determination have made the world a better place.
Things are better now for more people than at any time in history.
2.
That truth seems hard to swallow right now. It seems contrary to what we see around us. That’s why the sober and respected journalist, Nicholas Kristof, writes an annual New Years’ column every year enumerating the ways the world is better than it was a year before.
“If you’re depressed by the state of the world,” he wrote this year, “let me toss out an idea: In the long arc of human history, 2019 has been the best year ever. The bad things that you fret about are true. But it’s also true that since humans emerged about 200,000 years ago, 2019 was probably the year in which children were least likely to die, adults were least likely to be illiterate and people were least likely to suffer excruciating and disfiguring diseases. Every single day in recent years, another 325,000 people got their first access to electricity. Each day, more than 200,000 got piped water for the first time.” On and on he writes, cataloging the good that’s happening in the world.
You and I might shake our heads and say, not this year, not 2020.
But Stephen Pinker says the same thing in his 2019 New York Times bestselling book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Bill Gates calls the book his favorite book of all time. Rutger Bregman improvises on the theme in his new book, just out, Humankind: A Hopeful History in which he argues persuasively that humans thrive in a crisis and that our innate kindness and cooperation have been the greatest factors in our long-term success on the planet.
But . . . but . . . but you say, “The pandemic, the climate crisis, the crisis of racial injustice in our country, the crisis of a toxic election year . . .” We can’t be so optimistic now can we?
True, it’s a very rough time for humanity. But so was the fourteenth century. Do you remember the fourteenth century? Scratching your head? That’s the point. We’ve forgotten what horrid things happened six hundred years ago. A third of the population from Iceland to India was killed by the Plague. A climate crisis, political crises, religious corruption, war after war after war all combined to make it a century of horrors. Barbara Tuchman, in her book, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, says “it was a very bad time for humanity.” The fourteenth century is a distant mirror. In it we glimpse a similar age when “there was no sense of an assured future,” only a period of severe anguish. What ought to amaze us, she writes, is that we not only survived it, we thrived in spite of it, and forgot its anguish.
Maybe you wonder if this is overly optimistic now in 2020. I sometimes do, in my crankier moods. But those moods are at odds with history, at odds with the facts of our existence, and at odds with the vision of Christ’s gospel.
No matter how bad things may look, we human beings have a way of rising to the challenge, working together, sacrificing for the common good and creating a better future.
The truth is, there’s no good reason for us to doubt these facts now.
Humans, despite all our competitiveness and divisiveness, are endowed with the higher nature of kindness and cooperativeness that means we’re capable of the sacrifices necessary to make a better world.
This is happening now. The current travail will give birth to new progress. This is the lesson not only of human history but of planetary evolution.
We are moving, despite appearances, toward a better world. And that movement, that Great Turning, needs us to help turn the wheel.
3.
Last week, everyone on our mailing list received a letter. It’s not unlike the ancient Letter to the Ephesians. It expresses God’s vision for us and invites us to live the vision, to work together to bring it into being. Our Letter to the Christians Living in and Around Davis, California invites each of us to do what we can, through these new ways of being Christ’s church, to work for reconciliation, unity, and harmony, and to give of ourselves spiritually and materially to make the world a better place. Our life together, sustained by new ways of connecting and gathering, makes a difference in our lives and the life of the world.
What would Davis and the area around it be like today without DCC these last 150 years? Who would you be today without the relationships this congregation nurtures, the help and healing, inspiration and courage you gain from our life together? How have we helped keep you sane and grounded and hopeful? Think of the ways DCC has given you a place you can belong, a faith you can believe in, and a way to make a difference. Imagine the ways you’ve benefited because of your connection to this community, whether you’re a long time member or friend or whether you’ve just found us online these last few months.
I’m inviting you today to live Christ’s vision through this local community and to help others live it, too, so we can make the world a better place for all. Our financial leaders are a dedicated group of lay leaders who help manage us financially. They’ve just completed our budget for mission and ministry for the fiscal year 2020-2021. We’re in uncertain times. Would you help them know we can count on you for some kind of support?
If you got the letter, please complete the pledge card. If you’re not on our mailing list, would you send us an email or a letter? You’ll see the address later in this service. Will you give our leaders a compliment? Tell them about something you’re grateful for. Tell them you think you can give something to support the congregation financially. Our leaders know that the future is so uncertain that giving may be out of the question for you. They also know that some of you may be able to give extra to make up for others. Several dozen of you have made special Legacy pledges this year that will sustain the congregation for many years to come. We’re immensely grateful.
This is a sign of the innate human traits of kindness and cooperativeness that can make the world a better place.
4.
“DCC seeks to become a hybrid space, a true ‘commons,’ for people of all walks of life, a threshold community that brings together the spiritual and the material, the religious and the non-religious—in ways that complement each other rather than compete with each other.”
This is how our Vision2028 plan begins. It’s the way our elders, our governing council, envisions DCC living out Christ’s vision. It continues:
“In this time and place, we will create a center for spiritual formation, human transformation, and compassionate engagement that sustains fruitful ways of life, making us all more open, more generous, more courageous, and the world more beautiful, sustainable, resilient, and capable of honoring the sacredness that’s all around us.”
Adopted in 2018, it speaks prophetically about these days:
“Amidst the systemic injustices and brokenness arises a renewed moral voice speaking the language of transformation, healing, and reconciliation. . . . This is a threshold time. And it’s high time we claim our divine calling as Christians—rising to the challenge, rejecting despair and fatalism— and truly seek the well-being of the planet.”
This is a vision worthy of our sacrifice and commitment now. And it concludes with these words:
“Toward this end, we will build bridges, innovate lavishly, meet practical needs, work cooperatively together, and never, ever give up hope.”
When you invest, in whatever way you can, in this community, you make it possible for us to “never, ever give up hope.”
And so, may grace unite us
with all who sing Love's song
until we know how high and wide and deep and long
is this Love supreme.
All Abundance now is ours:
filled up by this Three-Person'd Love,
within, beneath, beside, above,
more than all our wildest dreams.
Together, we can do “more than all our wildest dreams.”