Is there anything more lifeless than a valley full of dried bones? From the skeletal ruins of life that used to be, a collage of hope for the start of Advent. Because here’s the thing about hope: it makes the most sense and is the most powerful in the face of the hopeless.

Sermon begins at minute marker 2:41

 Ezekiel 37:1-14

Resources:

• Hamlet and Horatio come upon two gravediggers who identify a skull as having belonged to Yorick, “Alas, poor Yorick! … a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy …” from Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1.
• Mariame Kaba: “Hope is a Discipline.” from an interview by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein, in Beyond Prisons, January 2018. Published in: We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, (Haymarket Books, 2021), p. 26-28.
• Andrea Gibson: “Even when the truth isn't hopeful, the telling of it is.” from Take Me With You.
• Barbara Kingsolver: “The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides.” from 2008 commencement address at Duke University, titled “How to be Hopeful”.
• Jan Richardson, “Blessing of Hope,” The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief (Wanton Gospeller Press, 2016), 172-173.
• Image: detail from “Hamlet and Horatio in front of the gravediggers” (Act.V Sc.I), print by: Eugène Delacroix, British Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.