Thanksgiving / Christ the King Sunday (NL3) John B. Valentine
Jeremiah 31:1-6 & 31:31-34 November 22, 2020

“HOPE FOR A HOPELESS WORLD”

Is it safe to say that we’ve just been through the most emotionally-exhausting election cycle of ANY of our lifetimes???

Seriously ...

• Does anyone MISS those countless commercials advocating one candidate and denigrating another???

• Does anyone MISS those daily trips to the mailbox wherein you discovered that you had to walk a two-inch thick stack of political pamphlets directly to the recycling bin???

• Does anybody MISS those emails and Facebook posts that hammered home just how beatific one of those candidates was and how satanic the other one was???

All kidding aside ... folks ... if you ARE missing that stuff ... rumor has it you could move to Georgia and have another six-week-fix of it due to those senatorial runoff elections that are in the works in the Peach State.

But my point is:

NOT to celebrate with those of you who were huge fans of the Biden / Harris ticket ...

NOR is it to lament with those of you who were huge fans of the Trump / Pence ticket ...

NOR is it even to console those of you who were fans neither of the Democratic candidates nor of the Republican ones.

Rather ... it is to remind you that ... if you open your eyes ... that was LOTS to be learned about the current state of the American political landscape and the American psyche by what went down on Tuesday, November 3rd.

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For instance ... what did the election tell us about FEAR???

Obviously ... Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden pandered to two different sets of fears ... did they not???

• The Biden campaign told you what was to be feared was the pandemic that threatens countless lives across the nation.

• The Trump campaign told you that what was to be feared was economic collapse under the weight of that same pandemic.

• The Biden campaign told you that what was to be feared was a foreign policy untethered from principles.

• The Trump campaign told you that what was to be feared was a porous southern border.

• The Biden campaign told you what was to be feared was another four years of a Trump administration.

• The Trump campaign told you what was to be feared was four years of left-wing progressivist agendas.

At the end of the day ... FEAR played a BIG part in the conversation ... was it not???

But didn’t the election also have a LOT to say about the subject of HOPE?

What did the candidates HOPE for ... and by extension ... how did they envision meetings YOUR hopes for our nation were they elected?

• Trump wanted to make America GREAT again.
• Biden wanted to make America DECENT again.

• Trump clamored on about liberty for all.
• Biden clamored on about justice for all.

• Trump’s hopes were for more governmental down-sizing.
• Biden’s hopes were for more governmental up-sizing.

In fact ... hope AND fear were perhaps what this whole election cycle has mostly been about.

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But actually ... I got to thinking about hopes and fears ... and the state of our nation ... NOT on account of what we’ve been seeing all over the news for the past two or three weeks now ...

But rather on account of this week’s Bible lesson.

You see ... this week’s Bible lesson comes from the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah ...

And the Book of Jeremiah is nothing if not socio-political commentary on the state of the people of God.

In fact ... the first half of the Book of Jeremiah is this devastating rebuke of just about EVERYTHING that is going on in Israel at the time ...

• How the princes and the politicians are selfish pigs ... caring not a lick for the things of God or their fellow human-beings ...

• How the priests are selfish pigs ... caring not a lick for the things of God or their fellow human-beings ...

• And how the people in the streets are selfish pigs ... caring not a lick for the things of God or their fellow human-beings!

And Jeremiah declares that there are bitter days ahead ... and that they have no one to blame but themselves.

You see ... God planted in Jeremiah a passion for the truth ...

The truth about the things of the world .... and the truth about the things of God.

And speaking the truth to people who didn’t exactly LIKE that truth was a pretty unpopular task ... which is why I told you last week that Jeremiah didn’t exactly want that job in the first place.

But after twenty-some-odd chapters of bad news and hard truth ... and AFTER the nation-state of the people of God has been overrun by the Babylonians ...

Here in Chapter 31 ... Jeremiah finally gets to bring God’s people a word of hope.

Having spent most of his life “afflicting the comfortable” ... her he finally gets to “comfort the afflicted.”

He gets to speak those abundantly hopeful words:

“Behold ... the days are coming ... when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”

“It won’t be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt — a covenant that they broke even though I was their husband. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days:

• “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” ...

• “And I will be their God, and they shall be my people” ...

• “And no longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’ ... for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest” ...

• “For I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”

It’s a message of unfettered hope from a man who’d invested the better part of his life speaking out of fear!

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Now there's obviously a difference between hope and fear ... but there’s also a difference between hope and optimism ... you know.

Not that we don't confuse them a lot of the time ... but there's a difference.

• Optimism is an attitude ... of the sort that Bobby McFarrin articulated when he sang "Don't worry, be happy."

• Optimism is the presumption that failures and negative experiences are just one-offs or maybe bumps in the road.

• Optimism says that THIS diet is going to be the one that works ... that THIS investment is going to be the one that ensures your financial future ... that THIS election is going to be the one that turns things around.

But regardless of the outcome which optimists may anticipate ... things don't always work out quite so.

But hope isn't like that ... folks.

In fact ... Vaclav Havel ... the Czech poet and political dissident and later politician ... got it just right when he said:

I am not an optimist, because I am not sure that everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure that everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart.

Hope is the feeling that life and work have a meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you.

Life without hope is an empty, boring, and useless life. I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me. I am thankful to God for this gift. It is as big as life itself.

You see ... Christian hope isn't grounded in the expectation that WE can ... but rather in the assurance that GOD can!

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Any of you remember that story from back in like 2010 about those 33 Chilean miners who spent 69 days trapped 2,300 feet below the surface of the earth??

And how it was that the whole world watched as ... after 69 days ... they pulled those miners up one-by-one in that rescue pod thing that they'd constructed?

Effecting what was the deepest and the longest-tenured mine rescue that had ever been accomplished?

I found it fascinating ... amid all the reporting about that event that transpired at the time ...

That the folks at the top of the shaft have given all the credit to the herculean efforts of the hard-working drill crews that had come from all over the world to lend a hand ...

While the folks at the bottom of the shaft ... the miners themselves told a far different story ... one laced with talk of God and faith and hope ... and a miracle.

• Like the one who insisted ... like Shadrach, Meshach and Abdenego in the fiery furnace ... how there was another Presence that always seemed to be with them in the midst of their ordeal.

• Or the ones who told of a ghostly butterfly in the mine shaft so unique and shocking that the men stopped to observe ... and by stopping avoided death from a shower of rocks falling moments later.

Curious ... that.

The odd thing was ...

There was that make-shift encampment that was erected at the top of the mine shaft.

And it was populated by workers from a dozen or so different countries ... politicians ... family members of the miners themselves ... and fifteen hundred reporters!

It was a camp wherein some waited ... some wondered ... some worried ... some worked incredibly long hours ... and everyone was optimistic that something good might yet happen.

And they called that make-shift encampment "Camp Hope".

But it seems to me that the real Camp Hope was located 2300 feet below where that makeshift village had been assembled.

The real Camp Hope was down in the mine ... amid the collapsed tunnels and the dank and the heat and the humidity ....

Where those 33 miners had nothing BUT hope ... for while they could do some things to help themselves survive ... they could do nothing to facilitate their rescue.

The folks at the top of the drill shaft were optimistic ... but the folks at the bottom ... they could only hope.

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I am not an optimist, because I am not sure that everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure that everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart.

Hope is the feeling that life and work have a meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you.

Life without hope is an empty, boring, and useless life. I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me. I am thankful to God for this gift. It is as big as life itself.