It’s terribly hard work to persuade people to hope. Especially in bleak times, but even in good times, we hide our broken hearts, failures, losses, believing in the power of evil and not wanting to be hurt again.
Lent is a growing season, an aspirational journey, and a walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Hope draws us on. Jesus, preaching hope on the road, urges people to work for the vision of God, for a new world. But he runs into our resistance everywhere.
Jesus reminded them about another terrible situation: the fall of the Tower of Siloam, a remnant of the old Temple, a place where men who didn’t like Roman rule worshiped in protest against the great Temple where Pilate and Herod held sway. Most folks blamed Pilate for the Tower’s fall. Eighteen people died in there. Do you think they were worse than all the others in Jerusalem and do you think their suffering means they were worse sinners than anyone else? Jesus asked.
We have that deep fear in us when trouble comes – oh God, oh God, why are we being punished – when pain comes, we do not feel held in God’s love, but caught in God’s anger.
When the Pilates of this world show us their cruelty, we are intimidated by the power of their hate. Even though we know they are evil, even though we know hope is divine, yet we are more impressed by their evil than by God’s good.
Hope gives birth to life. Hope creates, using imagination and playfulness and time. The thing about hope is, it takes time.
Hope does not create in response to pressure, or the insistence of the clock saying Hurry up! We’re out of time. Evil, on the other hand, screams Time’s Up! into unexpected moments, even into bright days. .’
We have that deep fear in us when trouble comes – oh God, oh God, why are we being punished – when pain comes, we do not feel held in God’s love, but caught in God’s anger.
When the Pilates of this world show us their cruelty, we are intimidated by the power of their hate. Even though we know they are evil, even though we know hope is divine, yet we are more impressed by their evil than by God’s good.
Hope gives birth to life. Hope creates, using imagination and playfulness and time. The thing about hope is, it takes time.
Hope does not create in response to pressure, or the insistence of the clock saying Hurry up! We’re out of time. Evil, on the other hand, screams Time’s Up! into unexpected moments, even into bright days. .’
Economist, Hugo Lindgren coined the expression, Pessimism Porn when he wrote about the joy of predicting and planning for economic collapse during the mortgage-based banking crisis in 2009 by some journalists.
Merriam-Webster defines pornography as the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction
Like real porn, the economic variety gives you the illusion of control, and similarly it only leaves you hungry for more. But econo-porn also feeds a powerful sense of intellectual vanity. You walk the streets feeling superior to all these heedless knaves who have no clue what’s coming down the pike. By making yourself miserable about the frightful hell that awaits us, you feel better. Pessimism can be bliss too.” Pessimism Porn: A Soft spot for Hard Times, Hugo Lindgren, New York February 9, 2009
Commenting on the 2009 meltdown, NYT Journalist. David Brooks writes, ‘People are motivated to make wise choices more by hope and opportunity than by fear, cynicism, hatred and despair. He praises leaders who never appeal to those passions, which bar the door to hope and opportunity.
At this point in time the cataclysmic events of today’s world precipitated by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is typified in our reading (Luke 13:1-9). We are consumed with the fact that we are virtually a hairs breath from a global war. The contrast between fear, pessimism and hope is all around us as we are immersed in these emotions. The way in which our world leaders have responded can be characterized as either followers of Pilate or Jesus. And what about the news media repeatedly running video clips emphasizing the graphically horrific scenes of massacre in the Ukraine, titillating viewers to want more, distracting them from the real news. How many times did the media need to show the despicable scene in which a police officer pressed his knee to George Floyd’s neck killing him? Do we need to see the January 6, 2021 siege of the Capitol to know that it was an act of treason? And does a reporter need to stand in freezing snow up to his or her knees to convince us it’s snowing? Yet, every time the scenes are shown, we look and are hungry for more
For us the personal tragedy of the Ukrainian people is just a minor inconvenience characterized by the rising price of gasoline and to some extent, inflation, although economists will tell us that began long before Russia invaded Ukraine. Does the response of our world leaders engender hope or instill fear?
Jesus never appealed to those passions, not even as he entered Jerusalem, not even on Good Friday. Along the road of his life, Jesus dispels fear wherever he encounters it, and he challenges our cynicism and despair, urging us to give hatred no room.
When Jesus sees people knotted up and tense at the mention of the murdered Galileans and the Tower of Siloam, he responds with a playful tale, creating a space in time where hope can rise:
A man comes to check on his fig tree (and everyone knows the fig tree is Israel’s symbol, the tree that lives for centuries, the tree that has many fruiting times each year, the tree that gives fruit and oil and shade and holds onto life.) But this fig tree has no fruit. Impatiently the man says to the gardener, ‘It’s been three years, and no fruit! Cut it down.’ But the gardener says, ‘Give it another year, and I’ll fertilize it and hoe around it, and then come and see.’
And who would this patient gardener be, if not God? And what is this tale about, if it is not about growing hope? Preparing ourselves for Easter requires giving up our addiction to a dystopian view of our lives. Easter requires us to hoe around our own roots, to feed our hope and not our pessimism, and to bide our time, till what is fruitful in us can emerge and be seen.
(Adapted from Nancy Rockwell, “The Bite of the Apple,” February 21, 2016.)
Merriam-Webster defines pornography as the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction
Like real porn, the economic variety gives you the illusion of control, and similarly it only leaves you hungry for more. But econo-porn also feeds a powerful sense of intellectual vanity. You walk the streets feeling superior to all these heedless knaves who have no clue what’s coming down the pike. By making yourself miserable about the frightful hell that awaits us, you feel better. Pessimism can be bliss too.” Pessimism Porn: A Soft spot for Hard Times, Hugo Lindgren, New York February 9, 2009
Commenting on the 2009 meltdown, NYT Journalist. David Brooks writes, ‘People are motivated to make wise choices more by hope and opportunity than by fear, cynicism, hatred and despair. He praises leaders who never appeal to those passions, which bar the door to hope and opportunity.
At this point in time the cataclysmic events of today’s world precipitated by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is typified in our reading (Luke 13:1-9). We are consumed with the fact that we are virtually a hairs breath from a global war. The contrast between fear, pessimism and hope is all around us as we are immersed in these emotions. The way in which our world leaders have responded can be characterized as either followers of Pilate or Jesus. And what about the news media repeatedly running video clips emphasizing the graphically horrific scenes of massacre in the Ukraine, titillating viewers to want more, distracting them from the real news. How many times did the media need to show the despicable scene in which a police officer pressed his knee to George Floyd’s neck killing him? Do we need to see the January 6, 2021 siege of the Capitol to know that it was an act of treason? And does a reporter need to stand in freezing snow up to his or her knees to convince us it’s snowing? Yet, every time the scenes are shown, we look and are hungry for more
For us the personal tragedy of the Ukrainian people is just a minor inconvenience characterized by the rising price of gasoline and to some extent, inflation, although economists will tell us that began long before Russia invaded Ukraine. Does the response of our world leaders engender hope or instill fear?
Jesus never appealed to those passions, not even as he entered Jerusalem, not even on Good Friday. Along the road of his life, Jesus dispels fear wherever he encounters it, and he challenges our cynicism and despair, urging us to give hatred no room.
When Jesus sees people knotted up and tense at the mention of the murdered Galileans and the Tower of Siloam, he responds with a playful tale, creating a space in time where hope can rise:
A man comes to check on his fig tree (and everyone knows the fig tree is Israel’s symbol, the tree that lives for centuries, the tree that has many fruiting times each year, the tree that gives fruit and oil and shade and holds onto life.) But this fig tree has no fruit. Impatiently the man says to the gardener, ‘It’s been three years, and no fruit! Cut it down.’ But the gardener says, ‘Give it another year, and I’ll fertilize it and hoe around it, and then come and see.’
And who would this patient gardener be, if not God? And what is this tale about, if it is not about growing hope? Preparing ourselves for Easter requires giving up our addiction to a dystopian view of our lives. Easter requires us to hoe around our own roots, to feed our hope and not our pessimism, and to bide our time, till what is fruitful in us can emerge and be seen.
(Adapted from Nancy Rockwell, “The Bite of the Apple,” February 21, 2016.)
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