Birthing Hope into Being

Readings: Daniel 12:1-3, Mark 13:1-8, Divine Providence 27:1-2 (see below)
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Photo by Aaron Burden: www.pexels.com/photo/white-daisy-flower-bloom-2449543/

Today’s text is often called Mark’s little apocalypse. The way Jesus is talking in it seems foreboding, even as we understand it to be metaphorical in our own time. But while he doesn’t use the actual word, what I think Jesus is actually talking about in this text is hope. And so that’s what we are going to talk about today: what hope is and why it is important. 

In the aftermath of a national election with very high stakes, some of us might be struggling to hang on to hope. For those who welcomed the outcome, perhaps you can apply these teachings to another time in your life. For many others, this is a very hard time. I want to emphasize that I’m not trying to rush anyone into having hope. It is important to take time to grieve as well, to take whatever time is needed. And, here are some thoughts on hope for whenever we might be ready.

If we recall from the gospel narrative, Jesus had been teaching in the temple. This is where, last week, we received both his warning about the abuses of those in power, and the lifting up of those outside of such power, like the widow who gave her last two coins.  It seems though, that the lesson has not really settled in for some of the disciples yet.  As they leave the temple, one disciple comments on the magnificence of the temple building.  An innocent enough comment it might seem, but in the context of their recent conversation, somewhat tone deaf. So, Jesus doubles down on his point: these massive buildings, insofar as they prop up illegitimate and abusive power structures, must be thrown down so that God’s kingdom can rise up, and be re-built in a way that supports the thriving of all people. From a Swedenborgian point of view, we would make a parallel point about our own ways of thinking. For Swedenborg, stones correspond to truths or ideas, and hewn stones to truths or ideas that arise from our own self-intelligence, which naturally attempts to serve the self. So likewise, these massive stones, these massive and far-reaching ideologies of self that we carry around inside us, these must be torn down so that we can be receptive to genuine spiritual truth, the kind of truth that serves God and neighbor. (1)

The historical context of this gospel however, is that it was most likely written around the same time as the first Jewish-Roman War. Also known as The Great Revolt, it was the first of three major rebellions of the Jews against the Romans, and it culminated in the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70AD. While we can’t be sure if Mark’s gospel was written before or after the temple destruction, it *was* written during a time when such destruction was certainly foreseeable or imminent. These early Jewish Christian communities were grappling with the prospect of figuring out what it meant to live faithfully in uncertain and dangerous times, times when what little safety and consistency they had was falling down around them. While immediately after Jesus death and resurrection, his followers seemed sure he would return very quickly, by 70AD it was clear the wait would be significantly longer. They were hungry for instruction about how to live in the in-between space, live in the world in which the kingdom of God was near but not yet fully realized. 

So the disciples ask Jesus, what will be the sign that all is about to be fulfilled?  At the heart, this question asks: how will be know that everything will really be okay? And Jesus tells them, uncertainty is just part of it. Turmoil is just part of it. The human drive toward control and domination will always be with us, inside of us and outside of us. Perhaps this is something we can relate to right now. In our country, the existence of dark sentiments might feel like they are being revealed over these last several years, though to many they have been clear all along: racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism, misogyny, to name just a few. Some of these forces have been creeping out from their hiding places because they are being given permission and encouragement by our leaders, some have been dragged into the light by investigative journalism. Either way, it burdens the heart to see such hatred, callousness and self-interest. So too, in Marks time, chaos seemed to reign, the reach of empire seemed ascendent and absolute. These new Jewish Christians were discouraged. Who wouldn’t be? So, the Jesus of Mark’s gospel puts it all in context: “These are the beginnings of birth pains.” This is a pain that is going somewhere. The end goal is the birthing of something new.
Our Swedenborg reading for today tells us about God’s end goal for creation; which is not obedience or veneration but a heaven from the human race, our heavenly happiness. God’s divine providence looks towards this goal in every single thing it does. I quote: “God cannot help doing this, because God’s image and likeness is in us from creation.” God’s ultimate goal, the vision of creation, is embedded in our very being, and the operative question of our spiritual life is: are we open to it? We will all find ourselves, to varying degrees, in times when the world around us appears unstable, when relationships, institutions, rituals that we relied upon seem to quiver and maybe even fall. And so we ask the most important and difficult question of the Christian life, now as then: how do people of faith live with integrity in troubled times, social, political and personal?

The answer that I have today is: we practice hope. But first I have to be clear: as written by author Brene Brown(2), based on work by C.R. Snyder, hope is not an emotion, it is a cognitive-behavioral process. The answer is not to just be hopeful. The answer is to practice hope. Hope is a positive cognitive state that is created by having goals and planning to meet them. It is a state anchored in action. Swedenborg perhaps was intuiting this when he spoke of hope being a function of our understanding and trust being a function of our heart. (3)

And let me tell you, I hate this answer. I hate everything about it. Because, what I really want hope to be is a function of the heart, something that flows into me and holds me up, that makes me feel better when I feel bad, something that lets me know everything will be okay. Something that is a gift that I don’t have to work for. But what I’m actually describing there is comfort or trust. And though comfort or trust might have some relationship to hope, they are not the same thing. Hope is something that we create, hope is something that we grow through our choices of how to interact with the world.

This is exactly why Jesus uses the metaphor of birth pains, of contractions, because hope is something that we have to actively birth into being. It can be large hope or small hope, that doesn’t matter, it is about daring to envision a worthy goal, creating a pathway that we can use to walk toward it, and then walking it. That goal can be about the person right beside us, or about humanity as a whole, it can realistic in focus, or more utopian and far-reaching. They key is that it is grounded in doing, rather than being. Like in pregnancy and labor, we grow a vision and we grow a pathway inside of us by the choices we make and the actions we take. That process is precious but it is also painful, it is also labor. It won’t always feel clear that everything will work out. Birthing is a natural human process but also deeply unpredictable. And just like the children that we might birth into being, hope is a complicated blessing.

Just like our children or other loved ones we nurture, we cherish our hope, it makes us smile, even laugh. We look forward on its behalf. We make plans. We put our shoulder to the wheel and we work, we try to make the world better.
But hope done right will also challenge us. It will make us question what we thought we knew. It will make us cry. It will make us re-evaluate and pivot and begin again. It will exhaust us. It will definitely spit out that dinner that we slaved over. It might well grow up to be something we never could have dreamed of. And as we labor, there will always be that moment when we feel like we can’t go on. 
Because, when the things we have hoped for do not come to pass, it can be tempting to think that it is naive to hope. The disappointment can fool us into thinking that we have done something wrong by hoping. But the moral weight of hope is not measured by the effectiveness of its calculations or strategies. Effectiveness is a different type of work, important but different. Hope is a product of empathy and imagination, where we see what needs to change and we envision that change happening, where we see something that is missing and we envision it coming into being. Whether the change actually happens or not is no judgment upon the impulse itself, upon the audacity, to hope. Hope is a holy impulse, sacred exactly because it is not bounded or limited by human outcomes.

So here’s the good news: that baby is getting born, one way or another. God will not and cannot do anything else other than work for heavenly outcomes for all of us. And so we have been made for this work. We have been created in the image and likeness of God, for the purpose of sharing love. For the days that we cannot bear the labor, we share the load; some days we will work, some days we will midwife, some days we will rest. There have always been in this world those who have cared for each other, who have cared enough to create systems that support dignity and humanity and equality, who worked to birth justice and restoration into this world. And guess what? It’s me and you.

So, how do we live in divided, uncertain times? We speak the truth, we act with love, and we practice hope. We speak the truth, not out of self-interest, but because truth connects us to God’s vision for the whole of humanity. We enact love, not out of self-aggrandizement, but because a fierce commitment to compassion will bring God’s vision to pass. We practice hope, we practice the discipline of hoping, the discipline of imagining goals, seeing pathways towards them, and walking those paths. No matter how small. No matter how inconsequential. No matter how unreasonable or unattainable. We practice hope because that is what we have been made for, to imagine love being birthed into the world, and to pursue that goal as wisely and as determinedly as we can. 

I still hate this answer, by the way. It’s not what I wanted to hear. I still want to wake up in the morning and just feel hopeful. But, how just like God, to make hope be something we are given an invitation to choose, something we are invited to be in relationship with. I don’t like it, but I believe it. And I believe it's the only way. So, I’ll try my best to practice hope everyday, and I hope you will too.

Amen.

1. Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven #8941
2. Brene Brown, Facebook Post, November 8th, 2024
3. Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven #6578

Readings: 

Daniel 12:1-3
1 “At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. 2 Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. 3 Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.
Mark 13:1-8
1 As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” 2 “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” 3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, 4 “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?” 5 Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 6 Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. 7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 8 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.
Divine Providence 27:1-2
I have explained elsewhere that heaven did not originate in angels who were created angels at the beginning, and that hell did not originate in a devil who was created an angel of light and was cast down from heaven. Rather, both heaven and hell are from the human race. Heaven is made up of people who are involved in a love for what is good and a consequent discernment of what is true, and hell of people who are involved in a love for what is evil and a discernment of what is false…
[2] Since heaven comes from the human race, then, and since heaven is living with the Lord forever, it follows that this was the Lord's goal for creation. Further, since this was the goal of creation, it is the goal of the Lord's divine providence. 
The Lord did not create the universe for his own sake but for the sake of people he would be with in heaven. By its very nature, spiritual love wants to share what it has with others, and to the extent that it can do so, it is totally present, experiencing its peace and bliss. Spiritual love gets this quality from the Lord's divine love, which is like this in infinite measure. 
It then follows that divine love (and therefore divine providence) has the goal of a heaven made up of people who have become angels and are becoming angels, people with whom it can share all the bliss and joy of love and wisdom, giving them these blessings from the Lord's own presence within them. He cannot help doing this, because his image and likeness is in us from creation.