I was once in a nursing home visiting a patient and had to walk through the room where everyone was taking the afternoon sun. A woman whom I knew by sight as usually unconscious had balled up her Wonder Bread sandwich into a small circle and was staring at it with lively amazement. I ran by, not wanting to get involved in the Wonder Bread compression, but she stopped, looked me straight in the eye, and said, "What do you think they want me to do with this?" I said, knowing I was somewhat trapped, "I think they want you to eat it." She came out of her stupor, stopped balling and mauling the bread and said, "You've got to be kidding."
This encounter is a good structure for a sermon about hope. You heard the text. God is doing a new thing. Things are going to be different. Hope, Emily Dickinson says, is the thing with feathers. It flies you over reality into another place. What we know is that we all get balled up in that.
One of you wants to know how he can ever dare hope not to be alone his whole life. Every man he looks at turns out to be already in a relationship. Another wonders how she can dare hope for her daughter to find her way so she can find her way. A lot of us this week have gone beyond enjoying the unseasonably warm weather into a periodic panic. What's next? Even more of us have heard 50 shots fired against a man who instead of getting married yesterday was buried in a church not far from here. We get all balled up. Will there ever be an end to excessive force, whether by broomstick or by gun or just plane hatred? How can people survive what Rev. Sharpton's eloquence describes as "having to be afraid of both the cops and the robbers"? What do they want us to do with this?
Ah, they want us to eat it. To use it for nourishment. To take it into our bodies.
The phrase "to eat it" is often associated with bad debt. You've heard it said many times, "I just had to eat that debt." I happen to know that Wonder Bread is more than the amazed affliction of the elderly. Wonder Bread is made by IBC, International Bakeries Corporation, which happens to be in bankruptcy. The parts of their business the health movement didn't kill off, the anti-carb diets did. The people who brought us Twinkies, who were advertised so effectively on Howdy Doody - remember Buffalo Bob Smith? - "Wonder Bread Builds Strong Bodies in 8 Ways." They added more later, making it 12 ways, but people don't like to eat this fully compressible, ball-able food any more. Many people don't even like to buy sliced bread. Wonder Bread is in trouble. But Antonia Alvarez of one of the country's biggest turn around firms has been brought in to save the company. Corporate America's favorite repairmen are trying to figure out what to do with Wonder Bread. Unfortunately, it looks like he, too, is going to have to eat it.
When it comes to all the reasons why we should not hope, each one of them needs to get eaten. They come to this table where we feed each other. The table is Jesus to some, Christ to others, community for all. It takes extraordinary courage to even imagine that things can be better. You see Yoko Ono struggling for that courage in our reading for the day. You can feel Shawn Brown's might-have-been bride struggling, too. They both know they have to eat death by violence - even though it is all balled up and looks disgusting. They both know something about the night on which Jesus was betrayed, the first night the table appeared wearing a larger meaning than "just eating."
On this first Sunday in Advent, when we acknowledge that life is one long wait for hope to return and bear us up on its feathers, when we get wry about how preparation seems to be all, about how the good stuff never comes in time and how the bad stuff sure seems to be in the power seat, let me suggest a few feathery hopes. There are four "do's" and four "don'ts." They all have to do with the table and with consuming what has gone down and gone wrong. Think of them as building strong bodies 8 ways - and notice the contrast with advertising and Wonder Bread. All they would do is add nutrients - good, soft bites. When we understand despair - hope's antithesis - we know that we walk through the dark to get to the light. We don't just add vitamins and push on. We take on the dark, eat it, wear it, know it, and then challenge it.
1. Resist moralism. "You should hope." Imagine writing a woman whose husband has been murdered by a cop and saying "You should hope." I don't think so. Hope is not a moralism.
2. Don't keep your bulletproof vest on too long. One way we manage despair is to defend ourselves against it. I really don't get white people sometimes. We hear that someone is being murdered in the next room and we say things like "ain't it awful" and we go back to playing cards. It takes courage to believe things can be better. Amelia Earhart said, "Courage is the price life exacts for peace". There will be no peace until there is justice. There will be no justice until white people take off our bulletproof vest of self-protecting racism. You will say, "I don't have to care about the murder in the next room." I will tell you that is true, white privilege does mean you don't have to care. But when you don't care, you keep on your bulletproof vest so long that you rot inside. Like Wonder Bread, which can last up to ten months in the refrigerator, you become tasteless and stale. White people may feel protected from our own racism, but that is because we are tasteless and stale. We must consume our pain or we will be consumed by it.
3. Use tricks. I know I'll never find someone to love or who will love me but, for just today, I am going to act like I am wrong. I will be charming and available.
4. Consider the alternatives. Think of the last scene of M*A*S*H. Remember Klinger talking to his superior officer? He had two choices: stop loving and stay safe, or keep loving and be in constant, tender danger. Consider what doors bang shut if you don't eat your despair.
5. Stay at the table. Don't leave in disgust. Stay there. Hang on to your seat. Let the others leave the church, leave the nation, leave the job. Be people who last. Be obnoxious and persist.
6. Build communities of people who are willing to look at their own despair. Consider not just tabled and fabled churches, but churches that go straight at the King challenge. Remember Dr. King's words: "The church is often a tail light when it should be a headlight." Fight for communities that are headlights.
7. Care about somebody you don't have to care about. Even if it just one. Transcend privilege and go into the pain. On the other side of pain and privilege you come into the land of hope.
8. Finally, rename yourself. I like Harry's and my game, I am "Cupcake," he is "Baklava." Sometimes, when I have had it with everybody and everything and I look at the balled-up piece of goo that is in my hands and I want to scream at the whole world, "What do you want me to do with this," I rename myself "Feathers." Hope is the thing with feathers. Hope is the broken body of a good man at table with his friends, on the night when he was betrayed. Hope is broomsticks and guns misused by cops, feather born, eaten. Samuel Langhorne Clemens renamed himself "Mark Twain" after his riverboat experience. The phrase "Mark Twain" means two fathoms deep, which for a riverboat captain is just deep enough water to navigate. Go deep enough to navigate, then stay at table and eat what is there, renaming yourself as one who cares even though she doesn't have to, as one who cares even though he knows it might hurt. Amen.
