Let the Bell of Hope Ring
WayWardUMYF| April 30, 2008 late at nightThis is a sermon that I’ve written for my congregation this Sunday. I’d love to hear your thoughts. I hope that God will use it to speak to God’s people and to restore our souls in this difficult time.
Today’s message comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans, the eighth chapter, verses thirty-one through thirty-nine. I will be reading from the New Revised Standard Version.
31What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? 33Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. 35Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray:
O God, the King eternal, who dividest the day from the night and turnest the shadow of death into the morning: Drive far from us all wrong desires, incline our hearts to keep thy law, and guide our feet into the way of peace; that, having done thy will with cheerfulness while it was day, we may, when the night cometh, rejoice to give thee thanks; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
A Collect for the Renewal of Life
From The Book of Common Prayer 1979
I miss the old-fashioned typewriter. The “rat-a-tat-tat” of the keys as you manually forced those little levers to put your thoughts on paper. The simple elegance of that single font, Courier, a typeface that made pages look like part of a yet-to-be-famous screenplay. Remember the satisfaction of typing that perfect and flawless sheet? Sure, the speed of the computer is nice and lets you work quickly, but using the typewriter is a craft. It is making art. Working on a typewriter is like participating in creation itself. And can you remember the best part of the typewriter, the one thing that makes up for all of its shortcomings? It’s the bell, that little ‘ding’ that told you that you were getting close to the end of the line. When the bell rang, you remembered that you were working on something important and that soon you would be finished and would see the beautiful page before you. Ah, that hopeful sign called the bell. The bell of progress. In the days of the typewriter, we lived for the “ding!”
God has us live our lives on a typewriter, with our stories still being written. But as I proofread the pages of my own life’s work, I see omissions, splices, and fragments. I wonder why God has me live my life on a typewriter and not on a computer. On a computer, there are so many tools to make sure you don’t make a mistake. Now you can even set your computer to “auto-correct” so you couldn’t seriously mess up if you tried. But in this world, there are choices and opportunities for people to freely make, places where people can choose to do “good” and places where people might make mistake after mistake after mistake. To collaborate with God on the story of creation, a story about demonstrating shalom and justice, we press the keys toward a riveting conclusion, an ending like the world has never seen. But one thing I remember about the old-fashioned typewriter, more than the ding of the bell, is that sometimes our fingers would grow tired from typing. The longer you typed, the heavier the keys became. The longer you typed, the fainter the bell rang. Sometimes it seemed that the bell just stopped ‘ringing.’ Sisters and brothers committed to reconciliation, do you ever feel that the bell has stopped ringing in your life?
In the annals of history, we read chapters of injustice, where even God’s chosen people begin to ask, “Where has the bell gone?” In Romans 8, the church in Rome has realized that the quality of a well-lived story is often conversely related to how difficult it is to write. The Roman Christians had been followers of the way of righteousness for some time, but for them to continue their story as righteous Christians required an enduring of social and physical persecution by both Jews and the Roman Empire. The Christians were too Gentile for the Jews and too Jewish for the Romans. The Roman Christians tried to live righteously but their righteousness was never enough to change the hearts of their oppressors. “What have we done wrong,” these Christians wondered. “Maybe God has abandoned us,” many of them said. And in their deliberations, they asked God to give them a sign, a sign that their story, with its episodes of hardship and persecution, had some significant place in God’s story. They hoped their story was not a purposeless musing but a truly meaningful expression of God’s perfecting of creation. In Romans 8, Paul quotes Psalm 44 to relate with a righteous church that was worried about this ‘”flaw-filled world,” and from that world, Israel cried out:
17All this has come upon us,
yet we have not forgotten you,
or been false to your covenant.
18Our heart has not turned back,
nor have our steps departed from your way,
19yet you have broken us in the haunt of jackals;
and covered us with deep darkness.
20If we had forgotten the name of our god,
or spread out our hands to a strange god,
21would not God discover this?
For he knows the secrets of the heart.
22Because of you we are being killed all day long,
and accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
23Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord?
Awake, do not cast us off forever!
24Why do you hide your face?
Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?
25For we sing down to the dust;
our bodies cling to the ground.
26Rise up, come to our help,
Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.
When we listen to these words from the end of this psalm, we don’t hear the sound of a bell. The psalmist contributes to God’s creation story with words of lament. We read that despite Israel’s best work, this scene of injustice seems to have no end in sight. There’s no resolution. It’s as if by the end of the Psalm, the author’s fingers are heavy from typing, and even after burning the midnight oil, there’s been no headway, there’s no visible difference of contribution, and there’s no end in sight. The psalmist and Israel haven’t even heard a “ding,” nothing to remind them of any progress they have made towards God’s plan of perfect creation. Paul cites this psalm because he knows that it will resonate with the Roman church, but when you read this psalm, can you hear echoes of our story?
Sometimes we read our own story as a reconciling church, devoted to a righteous cause that the majority of our denomination is against, and we grow cynical. We grow weary of reading sermon texts from those who spew words of prejudice and hate against homosexuals and the LGBTQQ community. There are loving couples that have grown weary because the church will never let them hear the ringing of wedding bells. And haven’t we all grown weary from hearing the testimonies of so many people who have been physically beaten by Christians while pastors shy away from ringing the bell to end the fighting? Sometimes the bells marking the progress of our accomplishments as a civilization grow farther apart. Sometimes the ringing of each bell grows more faint. And sometimes we don’t even hear a “ding.” We start doubting that there’s any hope of progress. We begin to wonder if God’s kingdom has stopped coming. And it seems that it has been far too long since many of us heard any hope in the songs rung by our church bells. In fact, it seems that it has been so long since those bells have rung that many of us would settle for the “ding” of a typewriter.
But on this day, when we hear Paul’s words to the Romans, can we wait for the bell just a little longer? Paul knows about suffering. Like all of us, he has struggled against injustice, and yet somehow he demonstrates that he has enough hope to carry on. He has enough hope to say that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” He has hope enough to continue to write his story, even when God has given him a typewriter instead of a computer. He has hope enough to know that there’s a glorious end in sight, and when we remember that Paul, eternally optimistic, was pressured with “anguish” and “persecution” and eventually the “sword,” we think, “Forget the typewriter bell. He must have heard a bell choir!”
When we read Paul’s story, we find that indeed, he hears bells all the time and that he longs to tell us about it. He knows where we’re coming from when we are pressured by “anguish” and “persecution and “humiliation.” He knows where we’re coming from when we cry out, “Where’s our bell?” He says, “What then are we to say about these things?” What are we to say when we have walked in the “shadow of death” and feared the “evils” of injustice so much that we lose sight of the glorious conclusion and all hope of progress? What are we to say when we feel like “we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter?” Paul invites us to remember the gospel. Paul knows that when times get hard in our story, when we have suffered for the sake of righteousness, and when we have lost the hope of progress, we are to remember the gospel, for the gospel is not just a “ding” but the clanging of church bells ringing a hymn with a beautiful story. Church, if we expect for our bell to give us hope of progress, then we must remember the story behind the bell. Do you remember the story?
Some versions of the story say that a righteous rabbi went to a garden to pray. And growing tired from the pressures of his critics, he said, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible.” But the rabbi knew how much the Father wanted people to know the story of love, and so the rabbi resolved to do everything in his power to share that story, even till his dying breath. Evidenced by how most people responded, the rabbi’s story didn’t even make a “ding.” Yet some of the disciples started to cry, “How did we let his death happen? Woe for God’s plan of creation. Because of us, it will never be.” But those who remembered the rabbi’s teachings replied, “Just wait three days and then we will see.”
And the so the story goes that three days after the tragic day the rabbi was crucified, God did something amazing. The disciples were awoken from their slumber of hopelessness, for they heard that their slain rabbi was raised from death. It was music to their ears. It was a scene so stunning that even those who expected it were caught unawares. And when they all gathered together at the feet of the rabbi, they heard him say familiar words, his story of love now heard with greater meaning.
This is the story that Paul has us remember. This is where Paul gets his blessed assurance. Remembering the gospel story is how you hear the bell. When we remember that every part of our story is a part of God’s story, we will hear the type of bells that can bring us the hope of progress, the type of church bells that can awaken us from the slumber of hopelessness.
When we wonder “where the bells are,” we must remember that they are in the gospel. If we remember that we are living the gospel story, then that “ding” will never grow so faint that we are conquered by despair or impossibility, but rather we will remember that “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Let us remember that for each of us a bell surely rings, and may its song cause us to continue our stories, all of which are part of God’s story. Let the bells ring. Let the bells ring. Amen.
[All Rights Reserved, Richard Newton 2008]
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