The gift of hope...

In church, we talk a lot about God's gift of love.

We sing songs about how Jesus loves us, imagining with warmth a kind-hearted, bearded man hugging little children and touching people with healing.

We look at the symbol of the cross, imagining that kind-hearted man bruised and broken, hanging from the dingy, blood-stained wood, and we whisper to ourselves, this is love. There is no greater love than this: that a man should lay his life down for his friends.

We hear sermon after sermon about loving our neighbors by giving them aid and help, by not judging their lifestyles, and by speaking to each person with grace and humility.

Even Paul says this:

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13.13

Well, I'm going to go ahead and disagree a little bit with Paul. Perhaps the most meaningful, abiding of those three might be love, but in my experience, the greatest gift we can give to one another and that God has given to us is that of enduring hope. Today, I began my day as many of you did with the news that a teenager in our community had lost her sense of hope and had tragically taken her own life. Although I did not know this girl personally, I mourn the loss of someone so young, and I grieve the fact that she is not alone among teenagers and young adults who have lost so much hope that their only way out appears to be through death.

Here are a couple of stories of great hope that I have encountered in my life:

Biloxi, MS. November, 2005

I traveled to Biloxi, MS in one of the first volunteer crews to enter the area after Hurricane Katrina spread unimaginable devastation in the area. Up until this point, they were still finding dead bodies buried in debris. I saw and smelled and heard a lot during that trip.

I met a woman who was still sleeping in her home because she feared the abuse that was occurring frequently in shelters. She had very little money, as her job at the local convenience store had been eliminated when Katrina flattened the 7-11 where she worked. Her walls and ceiling were covered in black mold, and she shared her bed with cockroaches that spanned about 5-6 inches in length. She was additionally an addict, and what little money she had was clearly used to purchase liquor. As I stood in her doorway taking all of this in, I saw a depth of hopelessness that I could not have imagined in my worst nightmares.

Everywhere I went in Biloxi, I could smell it. At first, I thought some of my fellow students hadn't showered properly or were sweating profusely. I thought it could have been the mold or the mildew from the lingering puddles of dampness, or the lingering odor of salty sea water. Actually, we learned later that it was the smell of rot and death. So many things had died: humans, animals, plants; they had left a lingering odor of rottenness in the air. I will never be able to un-smell that smell. It is permanently imprinted on my brain. With so much death around, it seemed that the living had to be forceful and intentional to prove their life.

On basically every street corner, you could find graffiti tattooing people's homes. The slogans were things like "Nationwide ain't on your side" "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is WHERE?" We learned from our guide that many insurance companies found loopholes in their policies to avoid fully covering homes. People who had more expensive policies were able to get funding, but those with the minimum coverage were left out to dry. Many people lost their jobs in the flooding as well as their homes, which left them with limited or no resources to rebuild. Biloxi is a town with corrupt casinos who exploit immigrants (both legal and illegal immigrants), and the casinos replaced employees when they missed a day of work after the floods. They also proceeded to buy up land where homes were going into foreclosure, leaving a wake of homelessness and unemployment. I can remember looking out across a sea of broken concrete and glass thinking to myself: how can anyone surmount this? How could anyone have hope?

I was surprised by the people I found.

One couple made us the most delicious shrimp gumbo for lunch from their very limited resources. We weren't even doing work on their home, they just met us on their street and invited us for lunch.

On Thanksgiving Day, there were small jazz bands in the street playing hopeful jazz music. Some of them had instruments that had been damaged by the destruction, but they made some incredible sounds from them anyway.

For Thanksgiving Dinner, we went to a large pavilion where Salvation Army had made a Thanksgiving feast for volunteers and residents of the area. We ate with probably 300 or 400 people, and a jazz band played. They had written a song called "We Are Hope" which they hoped would become the song of the people of Biloxi through that time. People danced and sang along until late into the evening. That kind of hope is so fresh and alive. It's something, as Mark Oestreicher says, that only someone who's experienced such deep despair can truly feel.

Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community. May 2012

I did my pastoral internship at Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community, a church-plant in the South Side of Pittsburgh. HMB has a diverse population of homeless folks, recovering addicts, students from the school of the deaf, folks who live well below the poverty line, college students, artists, tattoo-enthusiasts...you name it. Each week after worship, they provide lunch and folks just gather around a table and enjoy food and fellowship together. I can remember sitting with a young man who was new to the community one Sunday. For some reason, I remember that it was Eggo-waffle day, and I was enjoying a treat from my childhood as we talked. He told me about how he had recently gotten clean and was living at a local halfway house, attending intensive-outpatient programs at the counseling center nearby.

He was telling me about some of the treatments and slogans he had been receiving, particularly about taking things, "One day at a time," a popular AA slogan. In my naivete, I responded with some fluff I had read about how therapists teach us that depression holds us in the past and anxiety holds us in the future, but we need to be anchored in the present. We were silent then for a few minutes, and I silently patted myself on the back for my verbal knowledge vomit. Quietly he said to me, "I think that is [insert your own phrase for horse manure]. In my recovery, I know that I need to focus on today, on each day, on each minute, on the present, but I also have to believe that tomorrow is going to be better than today."

Open mouth. Insert foot.

He's right. When your in the middle of it, whatever it is for you, you need to cling to the hope that tomorrow is going to be better than today.

Being bearers of hope to the world

I could go on and on and on with examples, but I think you get the picture. I believe that the hope God gives to us for a better today and a better tomorrow, is one of God's greatest gifts to us. And I believe that we are called to be bearers of that gift to one another.

And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
Romans 5.3-5

As I write this, I am conscious that many of us are grieving for losses too painful to speak. I am also conscious that the tragic reality of suicide for one student is not a foreign thought for many of our youth. When times get very difficult, many of us give the call to suicide a voice in our own brains. I'm not sure if there is anything that breaks my heart more than the fact that teenagers, with their whole lives a blank slate before them, feel so desperate that suicide seems like a viable option. And so I challenge each of us to be bearers of hope to one another.

Next time someone wears a lame shirt. Next time someone comes out as gay or bisexual or transgender. Next time we see someone who is bullied or beat up. Next time someone puts themselves or others down.

Next time.

Let's be the hope we need in this world. Let's reach out to one another in love rather than in hate, in insecurity or in meanness. Let's all commit to giving one another hope. Because the truth is, high school isn't the be-all, end-all of life. The truth is that today can be better than yesterday, tomorrow can be better than today. But if we ignore, squash, and shatter hope, we are not doing what God has called us to do in this world.

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for your harm, to give you a future of hope.
Jeremiah 29.11

My heart aches for the families affected by today's tragic loss, and my prayers go out to God for comfort, faith, and most of all for hope.

For all of my youth - I am available in the evenings this week to meet if anyone would like to talk. 412-215-8810.

Some other resources

If you find yourself in a situation where someone is threatening or has a plan for suicide:

The national suicide prevention hotline

The It Gets Better Project is aimed for teens who are suicidal because of their sexuality, but I believe it has grown beyond that:

It Gets Better Project