November 2, 2025 "Hope is the thing"

All Saints Sunday

Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18

Psalm 149

Ephesians 1:11-23

Luke 6:20-31

Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ,

grace and peace to you from Christ

 the source of our hope, amen.

Spending time with our scriptures this week,

one line kept sticking out to me,

 part of Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians,

he prays that God might give them a spirit of wisdom and revelation

 “so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may perceive what is the hope to which he has called you”

Two things in this phrase caught me,

 the word hope,

 and the recognition that hope is first perceived by the heart.

There are two main ways of knowing,

 knowing with our head

 and knowing with our heart

 and in a perfect world

the two synch up

what we know to be true with our head

 matches what we know to be true with our hearts,

but sometimes they get disconnected

 particularly in times of grief and distress,

 it is amazing how disconnected our heads and hearts can be,

we can know something with head knowledge

 and still be uncertain in our heart

and it’s not until our heart catches up with our head

 that we move forward.

Of course it can be reversed as well,

 sometimes our heart moves ahead

 and our heads have to catch up,

 and I think this is often the case with hope,

 the heart takes the lead on hope,

because hope defies head knowledge,

hope believes, that despite the struggles swirling around in the present,

there will be a future

 and there will be good in that future.

And hope is what carries us between the two.

There are many ways to imagine hope

But two of the most compelling I’ve found are in poems

one by Emily Dickenson

and one in response to Emily Dickenson’s poem by Caitlin Seida.

Emily’s is:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

By Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

Caitlin’s response is the poem:

Hope Is Not a Bird, Emily, It’s a Sewer Rat

by Caitlin Seida

Hope is not the thing with feathers

That comes home to roost

When you need it most.

Hope is an ugly thing

With teeth and claws and

Patchy fur that’s seen some shit. (stuff)

It’s what thrives in the discards

And survives in the ugliest parts of our world,

Able to find a way to go on

When nothing else can even find a way in.

It’s the gritty, nasty little carrier of such

diseases as optimism, persistence,

Perseverance and joy,

Transmissible as it drags its tail across your path

and bites you in the ass. (rear)

Hope is not some delicate, beautiful bird, Emily.

It’s a lowly little sewer rat

(That snorts pesticides like they were

Lines of coke and still

Shows up on time to work the next day

Looking no worse for wear.)

I love both of these images

but especially that of hope as a tough scrappy thing

 with a will to survive despite the odds.

Of course hope,

 as scrappy as it is still needs a source and sustenance

 and for us as Christians

 there is no greater source and sustenance to hope than Jesus Christ

 the embodiment of love

 who though crucified and buried

rose from the dead

defying all previous understandings of head and heart

of what the ultimate future would hold

and he did this by the power of God,

a power Christ shares with us

when he joins us to himself in the waters of baptism,

 our future with Christ

 assured by the mark of the seal of the Holy Spirit on our foreheads,

 and in this promise we know (at least with our heads if not with our hearts)

 what our ultimate future and the future of our loved ones holds,

 life with Christ. 

But

We still have to get from here to there

death is still a reality,

one we all must go through before experiencing life everlasting in God,

 and that means that there are times in this life

we experience loss

 and are faced with a future unlike the one we had imagined

and we need hope to carry us through

and hope says that when your head and your heart are disconnected

the best way forward is to act

 to live out the truth of hope

even if we don’t understand it.

This is what Jesus is teaching in the section of the sermon on the plain

 that we have in our gospel for this morning.

We hear the blessings and woes

 and talk of reward in heaven

 and yet despite that seeming nod to the afterlife

 Jesus is actually much more concerned with life in the present

living the reversals described in the blessings and woes right now,

 filling the hungry,

bringing down those in power,

working to fix the broken things in the world that lead to suffering, death,

the things that disconnect our head from our heart. 

Loving enemies, blessing those who curse, turning the other cheek,

at bare minimum do to others as you would have them do to you,

 all actions that defy the logic of both head and heart in the world,

 and yet are the way of the kingdom of God,

 the playground of hope,

 hope who insists there is a better future

 than the one caused by hating enemies

 and returning curses for curses and eyes for eyes,

where you look out for yourself no matter the cost to others.

 Hope says with the knowledge of the heart

 there is a better way

so go ahead and start living it

and we don’t live it alone

we follow in the footsteps of Christ

 who lived the kingdom way,

 feeding the hungry, healing the sick, forgiving sins,

 giving those he encountered a taste of the possible future,

Christ who rejects any explanation for suffering that starts

“that’s just the way things are.”

Christ who defeated death,

the ultimate “that’s just the way things are”

This is the life Christ has called us to

who has assured us that we have a part in

through joining us to himself,

 giving us an inheritance of a future full of life,

who calls us to start living it now

because it can only make the present better for all of God’s beloved creation,

 this is the source of our hope.

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, may give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation as we come to know him, so that with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we may perceive what is the hope to which he has called us, the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe. Amen