2013 05 12 Mother's Day: Filled with Hope (selections from Rev 21 and 22; Ps 97)

When a woman gets married, she hopes to change her husband.  When a man gets married, he hopes his wife will never change.  And they are both wrong.

"I Feel the Winds of God Today" has the line, "If hope but light the water's crest, and Christ my bark will use, I'll seek the seas at his behest, and brave another cruise."  Hope drives us forward in our lives, and it is one of the things that remain, along with trust and love.  The three are intertwined in their own trinity.  The source of hope is love; the courage to hope is supported by trust.  Even misdirected and inadequate hope makes our journey exciting and rewarding.  And hope can pull us through difficult and terrifying times like the woman buried alive for 17 days in the factory collapse. 

Before considering hope in how our reading from Revelations, take time to consider how our experience gives us reasons to trust in God.  Start with our bodies and our minds.  The more we learn about ourselves, the more we realize we are wonderfully made.  My early years were spent in a small, rock-walled house built into a hill with two bedrooms, the front all purpose space, and a root cellar.  Consider where each of us has started in life, and what we have had the privilege of enjoying since then.  Travel to distant places was for the wealthy and the determined. The telephone was a privilege and most people died before getting to 65.  Consider how blessed we have been and are.

The good we have received testifies to trusting God's promises for the future.

John of Patmos was exiled by the Roman government at a time when it was a crime not to worship the emperor, and anyone foolish enough to deny the law paid a price if caught.  For John, that price was exile.  For others it could include torture, confiscation of property, imprisonment, or execution.  Some people were abandoning their faith, and others were considering leaving.  Many felt abandoned by God, confused as to why choosing to follow Jesus, which was supposed to be good news, could turn out so bad.

In the face of this difficulty, the author created a dramatic summary of God's activities in the world, past, present and future, to provide cause for hope. 

Their trust in him and in God's love, resulted in this account becoming an important source of hope for the wider community of followers of Jesus.  Today's reading offers a promise presented with startling images.

Imagine a cubic city about 1800 to 2200 km or about 1200 miles in each direction, a volume of about 8 billion cubic kilometers or nearly 2 billion cubic miles.  This volume, if spread out over the earth would have a depth of over 20 miles, over three times the height of Mount Everest.  When we include the statements about light, precious jewels, gold and so on, the author is pointing to a dramatically different kind of existence.  These images, while bold, do not readily offer direct comfort for day to day life.

The images of the Water-of-Life River and Tree of Life do offer direct comfort to us.  Baptism is a path to experiencing the Water of Life,  as is the love and companionship that can be offered in the life of a congregation.  And there are other ways God offers us the Water of Life each day in our lives.  All we need to do is to set aside our pride so we may drink of this water.

The Tree of Life with its twelve kinds of fruit that offer different kinds of fruit through the year resembles the many opportunities we have in our lives to be fed.  Worship, bible studies, volunteer work, prayer, and play provide food for spirit, mind and body.  In the different seasons of our life, we need different kinds of food.  School, work, starting and looking after families, and play take different roles at different stages in our lives.  Unfortunately, we often choose food that does not come from the Tree of Life, and our lives are less because of this.  But we, like death, do not have the last word in what God is doing in the world. This image points to a God who anticipates our needs an provides for them.

The promises in Revelation speak to God's enduring love for us and for this world.

In this way, we may think of God as being like the proverbial Jewish mother who does everything possible to achieve success and happiness for her children, whether they appreciate her activity or not, whether it hurts in the moment or does not.  The good news offered by Jesus is that God persists in the act of creating and shaping the world, and in caring for us.

On this Mothers' Day, as we celebrate the ways mothers have shown their love to us, and provided reasons for us to hope, we offer our prayers for those mothers who were and are not able to love, and for their children.  As we acknowledge the brokenness of the world, we are thankful for God's persistent, creative presence.  And, as we practice gratitude, reminding ourselves of the good that is in our lives, we find space for hope: hope for ourselves and hope for the world.  Our hopes are grounded in God's love, and in our love.  Our hopes are supported by our trust in God, our trust in each other, and our trust in God's gifts to us.

May the God of Hope go with you everyday.  Amen.