5 Pentecost, Proper 8B
27 June 2021
One of my favorite television shows was Northern Exposure. Great cast, great scripts. During the early1990’s it debuted and was on for about 5 years. The main character, Joel, was a New York City native, Jewish, who landed a seemingly endless stint in a small town in Alaska so he could have his medical school debt forgiven. He did not bear his burden well at all, wallowing in resentment that he could not seem to get his debt paid and get to a place that would suit him much better.
The town was a quirky blend of unique folk, many of whom could not have abided liver in the lower 48, as well as its indigenous residents.
My all-time favorite episode was one entitled “Thanksgiving”. The town celebrated Thanksgiving in what would be called a fusion holiday: Day of the Dead meets Native American Liberation movement. The natives had a tradition of throwing tomatoes at white folk, who took it all in stride. As one person told Joel it was better than being shot.
The local radio DJ Chris grew nostalgic for the canned peas from his time in a West Virginia prison. They were there in abundance on Thanksgiving. Everyone had all the peas and pumpkin pie they wanted on that day.
Then came the parade; only the native Americans could march in it. They made floats that looked more like a celebration of Day of the Dead. No pilgrims to be seen Joel’s nurse, a native woman named Marilyn, explained to him that the parade was only for those who had had everything taken from them and had no hope. Not even Joel’s story of being an oppressed minority, a descendant of survivors of the Holocaust and of centuries of persecution, was enough. It was only when he found that he was condemned to another term as the doctor of Cicely Alaska that he broke and said he had lost all hope. Marilyn tells him he can march in the parade.
The episode ends with a feast like no other, served at the local restaurant and bar. Everyone is invited; no one is turned away. There is every conceivable dish from every known part of the world and all the townsfolk gather. No one is left out. No one. Perhaps it is all about dwelling in the hope.
Hope becomes our third rung on the Ladder to the Light. Charleston likens it to looking at dark clouds but knowing that on the other side of those clouds is a world of sunlight.
Today we read about two people who had hope; hope that was steeped in faith and blessing. Perhaps you have had a chronic and relentless illness like the woman in today’s story. I try to imagine what it would be like to know that you were living with a disease that was relentless and progressive and that left you with nothing. I have seen people who lived with that burden. But this unnamed woman had faith, believed she was worthy of blessing, and hope. Jesus was her hope. He was the sun on the far side of the dark clouds. Bishop Charleston would put it this way: hope is the catalyst and tipping point where what we believe becomes what we do. We all hope; hope that runs the gamut of winning the lottery or the ball game to hope that we have health and love and that our family and friends do as well or to the hope that all humanity and all of creation can thrive. Jesus was a big picture sort of guy who also saw the hope and yearnings of every person with whom he came in contact. He loved the woman without even knowing her; she loved him. That unnamed woman was and is at some point each one of us. Without hope from the Spirit, we grow weaker and more ill.
At the same time he is going with Jairus; his hope is not for himself but for one he loves more than his own life, his beloved daughter. Even when hope should be lost, when faith should be no where to be found, he has it. He trusts implicitly in Jesus. Faith, blessing, hope. Call it a miracle if you will; it is most assuredly a story of hope, for without it the woman would not have stopped bleeding and Jairus’ daughter would not have lived.
When Emily was eight, we went backpacking on Isle Royale, along with my cousin and her ten-year-old daughter, another woman, and a twelve-year-old boy. The place is for me one of the great spiritual presence. I guess the Celts would call it a thin place. It is also a place of great and powerful thunderstorms, with intense bolts of lightning. One prepares for and expects these sorts of storms on the island; I find it part of the powerful draw of the place. One night we were caught in a severe storm; the lightening was close. Very close and personal. Because there is iron ore in the ground, lightening can travel through the ground and to your tent. The wisdom of the time was that when the lightening was close you got on your raingear, rolled up your sleeping pad, and went outside the tent and squatted on it; that barrier between you and the ground was supposed to protect you from being electrocuted. It was my job as the de facto leader to tell everyone when to roll out. Perhaps I should have done so; but something told me it would ok not to do so. We were fine, other than my cousin’s second-rate tent flooding. And before I finished writing this, I reviewed lightning safety in the back country. Other than saying you can stay in the tent, the suggestions have not changed. I also found they are based in part on hope; the hope that they are correct because there is not enough data to know it that is the right thing to do or not.
The Choctaw, the tribe of Steven Charleston, were part of those expelled from the southeastern United States in what is called the Trail of Tears. Many died, but their spirit did not. As he so beautifully put it: they knew the Spirit was with them and in their hearts. With both faith and blessing they became a force that no form of oppression can overcome or contain: the hope they saw before them as their future.
We are living in a time that seems to me one where it would be so easy to lose all semblance of hope, where the world seems so full of problems and the solutions are at best elusive; at worst impossible to find.
But we have hope; in our Christian faith we cling to Jesus and the Holy Spirit as she acts in our lives. They are the third rung of the ladder.
The hope we experience as Christians has power; it has the power to bring to fruition the Way of Love. I find that, when I begin to feel there is no hope, Steven Charleston speaks to me. Actually I believe it is the Holy Spirit and it fills me with the hope I need. And if I have hope, faith, and blessing, who then is to stop me?
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