The Promise of New

A couple of days have gone by now since I sat in a folding chair on the aisle at Hope Church and heard David Dwight deliver a message entitled The Promise of New. I’ve wanted to write about it but haven’t known where to start. I’ve listened to a recording of it on the church website twice, taking notes, each time...not wanting to miss anything. As the son of a minister and someone who because of this accident of birth has been in church since he was born, I sometimes feel as if I have heard every sermon topic at least a dozen times. I’ve listened to all types of preachers, heard every style imaginable. Some have been inspiring, others not so much. Some have insulted my intelligence with moronic formulations and non-sequiturs. Others have sounded like scolds who could hardly stand to look at the horrible sinners before them. Still others gave off the clear impression that they had figured it all out, every anguishing cruelty of life, every cosmic contradiction, every confusing disappointment was simply a matter of too little faith which could be remedied with simplistic sloganeering. 

But the message I heard Sunday was perhaps the best thirty minutes I have spent inside a church in a very long time. What follows is an attempt to explain why nearly three days later it still dominates my thoughts. I doubt very much that I will do the thing justice, but I must make the attempt, if for no other reason than to provide myself with a reasonable record for future reference.

It may seem odd that after such a glowing introduction I should begin with a criticism...but I do have one nit to pick. David began with a request for a show of hands...How many of you have made Resolutions? When he got very few responses, he changed his question to...How many of you have set goals? Then he laughed and made a suggestion that there was little difference between the two. WRONG. In fact, there is a world of difference between a resolution and a goal...goals being things that are quantifiable, while resolutions are nothing more that worthless, airy abstractions. I resolve to lose weight, is a resolution. I intend to lose ten pounds by June 30, is a goal. Goals are actionable and failure to reach them represent a glaring failure of discipline. Resolutions are wishes, and nobody cares! But, enough of quibbling. 

David then proceeded to a verse of Scripture from Matthew where Jesus prefaces a remark about the future with the throwaway line...At the renewal of all things. He then went to great length to explain the import of the idea that Jesus intends to ultimately make all things new and what that concept actually means for us in the here and now. The first part of this making things new business is the redemptive power of Christ to transform the human heart, the evidence for which is all around us in the personal testimony of millions. If we accept this power as true, it gives us every reason to live a life full of hope rather than despair and gloom. Here’s where his words got very personal for me. When he points out how we have every reason for optimism over despair, and hope over gloom, he is essentially calling into question my default point of view about life. I must here confess to being a natural cynic. I have spent a lot of time throughout my life assuming the worst out of most people, especially people who hold great power or wealth. My reasoning is based on the quantitatively sound principle that no one has ever gone broke undervaluing the corruption and duplicity of the human heart. But as practical as this clear-eyed view of human beings might be, it is a terrible way to...live. To buttress his point, he put a quote up on the screen by someone named Eugene Patterson, a man who he often quotes, and after Sunday...someone I have determined to get to know...

It is far easier to languish in despair than to live in hope. For when we live in despair we don’t have to do anything or risk anything. We can live lazily and shiftlessly with an untarnished reputation for practicality. It is fashionable to espouse the latest cynicism. If we live in hope, we go against the stream. All acts of hope expose themselves to ridicule because they seem impractical, failing to conform to visible reality...Hope commits us to actions that connect us with God’s promises.”

I could have gone all year without hearing this. This Patterson guy was essentially talking to me, calling me out.

Then, as he always seems to do, David boiled the truth of the matter down to an illustration that I could grasp. After asking the rhetorical question, When you read the news today, do you find reasons for gloom?...to which this packed house of wealthy Presbyterians merely nodded. (It occurred to me that if I had been in a Pentecostal church, this hanging curveball would have been greeted with shouts and hand clapping...in a black church, the crowd would have wailed, Lawd, YES!!! In unison.) He then continued by pointing out that embracing hope did not mean becoming pollyanish simpletons and ignoring the messes of the world. But, it did mean not being overcome by the mess. He put it this way:

I have found in my life that gloom and discouragement grow all by themselves just like weeds in my lawn. I don’t have to do a thing to make weeds grow. They just do it all on their own. But, Ive been told that if you really want to get rid of weeds in your yard, you shouldn’t waste all your energy on the weeds. Rather, you should concentrate on growing the large yard full of green grass. When you do so, eventually the healthy green grass will overwhelm the weeds to the point where you hardly notice them anymore. In other words...don’t live in the weeds, don’t live in despair and gloom, rather cultivate hope.

He began to wrap up with the observation that a good indicator of whether or not your life is guided by hope rather than despair is how you would answer this question...What are you excited about? It’s a hopeful question since it suggests the expectation of something wonderful in the future. I have asked myself this question for the past couple of days and have decided to do a better job of pursuing the answers.

David then closed with a discussion of how to fight the inevitable post Christmas letdown by quoting a poem from a black pastor from the 1960’s who I had never heard of, Howard Thurmond...paying especially close attention to the very last line...

When the song of the angels is stilled

When the star in the sky is gone

When the kings and princes are home

When the shepherds are back with their flocks...

The work of Christmas begins

To find the lost

To heal the broken

To feed the hungry

To release the prisoner

To rebuild the nations

To bring peace to the nations

To make music in our hearts

Reading back over this, I see what a woeful job I’ve done of recreating the power of the moment. David did it so much better. I can only hope that the truth of the moment remains and that maybe, just maybe, someone reading this might be encouraged to try to cultivate a little more hope in 2019.