Hope in a Dark Time

It is not lost on me that we gathered for worship on Tuesday night, held our candles, and sang the comforting words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu…

Goodness is stronger than evil 

Love is stronger than hate 

Light is stronger than darkness 

Life is stronger than death 

Victory is ours, victory is ours through God who loves us.

And then in the morning hours on Wednesday, a little more than 12 hours later, further chaos broke out in Minneapolis when Renee Good was shot and killed by a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent.

The contrast between these two movements in such close succession shocked me.

• What do we do when it seems we and the world around us take one step forward and two steps back? It seems like we have a reprieve and then we’re hit with another round of bad news.

• What do we do when our faith in the goodness of God is so quickly challenged by events around us?

• What do we do when our faith in the victory in God is not obvious when we listen to the nightly news?

I have two ideas and they both come from the words pronounced from the heavens at Jesus’ baptism: “This is my Son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”

1. In troubling times, this phrase reminds us of who we really are because the same can be said of us as well. We are “beloved children of God” too.

1 John 3:1-3 “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now.”

Father Henri Nouwen was a Dutch author and priest who wrote a great deal on this aspect of our spiritual life in Christ. In a book entitled You Are the Beloved he wrote, “

“Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: “These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God’s eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting embrace.”

But we need to be reminded, because we forget. That’s why I suggest we turn this phrase into a simple prayer that we can say when we’re troubled. Maybe something like this: You call me beloved, and I believe what you say. In this way the phrase spoken over Jesus in his baptism becomes the prayer of our hearts. [Deb, Troy, Maggie, Ed, those we name in our prayers, and everyone else.] God says, “You are my beloved child, in whom I am well-pleased.” 

This becomes our anchor. This becomes our center. When all else goes wrong, we can return again and again to this promise that we are the beloved of God. 

Not only is it comforting to remind ourselves who we really are when our faith in the goodness and victory in God is brought into question. It is true. We are God’s beloved and we are going to be OK.

1. In troubling times, we declare this phrase to the world. 

At Jesus’ baptism the declaration of Jesus’ identity was declared to the world. This is God’s Son, the beloved. Heaven is opened and the Spirit descends. Though the world may be filled with violence and trouble, the answer to the way back to God for all of us is to spread that belovedness to all of God’s children. 

To remind them just as we remind ourselves that…The heart of God is love, not hate. The heart of God is life, not death. The heart of God is light, not darkness. And the root of our identity in this beloved belonging is found in the Word Made Flesh - Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

We continue to spread the message of God’s belovedness because as Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” 

Yes, we may have to go back to the well and dig deep to find hope in dark times because we are not saved from dark times, we are saved through dark times. But the promise of God in Christ is that there is a well that never shall run dry and it springs up with waters unto eternal life.