Isaiah 35:4-7a; James 2:1-17; Mark 7:24-37

“Sounds of Hope”

For some reason these days I find myself struggling to hear sounds of hope. Maybe it’s the anniversary of 9/11/01 that directs my longing, perhaps the daily reports of death and destruction from Afghanistan and Iraq, the threats from Iran, the great pain and anger from the middle east, the ugliness in political campaigns and lawsuits right here at home. I hunger for sounds of hope.

This morning the prophet Isaiah speaks them to a people in exile, lost to home and all that is familiar: Be strong – God is here. Creation will be reordered according to God’s design – we have God’s promise!

Jesus isn’t quite so straightforward: “Don’t ask me for help; I was sent to the children of God, the chosen ones of Israel. I am a Jew and Jewish men have no time for the likes of you Jezebels…” What is this? Just a few verses later Jesus behaves like the Son of God we expect, the one sent for the healing of the world, when he gets up close and personal with the man with a speech impediment, gets close and heals him. The folks are astounded. Yet here with the outsider, the Syro-Phoenician woman, Jesus behaves like some fully human student of the Torah. He rebuffs her request as being out of line: he is sent to the Chosen and SHE is a Gentile. The woman stands her ground willing to settle for crumbs; her daughter is healed; then Jesus heads deeper into Gentile territory. Sounds of hope are born in the encounter of wrestling, resistance and unexpected reconciliation.

In these chaotic times it is important for us to listen for and name the sounds of hope. They come to us in the voices of teens raised in song, like last night as the combined choirs of St. Pius High School and the Bosque school, having survived 11 hours of choir “boot camp,” who were marvelously prepared for the concert by their young clinician (a graduate of one of the ELCA colleges in Minnesota). The noise during the day – chatter, cell phone conversations, hallway traffic as they socialized and rehearsed, and just generally behaved like teens – was transformed into beautiful music that graced these bricks.

Sounds of hope come also through the cries of new life born five years ago tomorrow, born as the World Trade Center towers lay smoldering and countless tragedies were just beginning to unfold. They are not old enough yet to understand what happened that day, but as one parent explained: “Something bad happened here [at Ground Zero in NYC]. People were really sad. But then you were born and you made them happy again.”

Sounds of hope come even in the cries of a woman in pain, standing her ground, holding hope against hope that this rabbi who had no cause to even acknowledge her would somehow turn and honor her request. Hollering, for God’s sake. This, too, is a sound of hope for it was heard.

The editorial in Tuesday’s ABQ JOURNAL was hard to miss. It was a full-page reflection entitled “A Cry For Help.” Retired New Mexico Court of Appeals judge Ruby Apodaca wrote of his two-month experience serving as judge pro tempore in Children’s Court. He shared the stories, and the pain, of children he felt just wanted to scream but didn’t, who wanted to cry but the tears were few and far between. Who would hear them? Who would care? It wasn’t until his own tears spilled forth that this man could claim the pain as his own:

After my last day in court, minutes before driving back to my home in Austin, I sat having breakfast on the patio of the home of two dear friends [overlooking the beautiful mountains near Las Cruces]…As we ate, my hostess spoke of the children in war-torn Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel. These were innocent children, she was saying, who didn’t cause the turmoil to which they were subjected. While she talked the thought came to me that one needn’t look to others countries or even beyond the borders of our own community to find these deplorable conditions.

As the sun rose over the [mountains], shedding the day’s first light on the city, I thought some poor children down there would wake up hungry. Their only meal of the day might possibly come from eating scraps of food off the floor not even fit for pets. These children would be forced to fend for themselves while their parents slept late or were in a drunken stupor or on drugs, unable to take care of their own needs.

I imagined a youngster down there in some dilapidated dwelling he called home getting verbally, physically or sexually abused or assaulted. This might be, in years to come, the force that would propel him into Children’s Court, much like the youngsters who appeared in my courtroom during the past few months.

It was on the drive home that Judge Apodaca’s tears finally came, in torrents. I have no idea what this man’s faith journey has been, but he knows something very real about the presence and the promise of the Spirit. Through the years I’ve come to believe that life is a gift we regrettably take for granted. I’ve also learned that we don’t own life, no more than we own our children. It and they are on loan to us from God. Life is here today and may be gone tomorrow. It should be treasured as something sacred…Not one of us chooses the family we are born into…Yet, we stand ever so ready to criticize and even condemn those among us who haven’t attained what we have… I would add, who don’t look like we do or live like we live or value what we value.

Children’s Court changed Judge Rudy Apodaca. He is calling others to join him in the effort to make a difference for those too young to help them selves. “It is poverty that is a major contributing cause of the tragic stories I’ve [heard]. I ask that you take time out of your own busy, hectic lifestyles to see what you can do for those less fortunate. But before you can do that, you must – as I finally did – open your eyes.”

Be opened. Open your eyes to the silent screams and pleas for help; open your ears to the defending screams around you. They are there, in the suffering half a world away. They are here – right over the interstate in Martineztown, where our neighbors long for advocates to help them get proper sewer lines and water lines so their community can be protected from flooding and their children can have the chance for health and life that we enjoy. And more than that, they long for us to know them, they long to know us, so that we can be the neighbors we like to think we are.

The pleas and screams are here – in the high schools nearby where teens are searching for meaning and purpose in lives challenged beyond anything most of us have ever encountered, who are living the stories Judge Apodaca learned about in his courtroom. Just ask a teacher. Better yet, ask a teen. The world is judgment enough – what they need and long for is acceptance and hope, and relationships with adults who will model that for them. As the church in this time and place we must continue to work to build a community where HOPE is real, where HOPE resounds above the din of fear and apathy that threaten to drown it.

This hollering for hope is here in our own families – and in our own church families – in ways we don’t want to hear, perhaps because they are too close, too painful, or too complex to sort out ourselves. Dare to listen, dare to turn, and come to trust the power for healing that Jesus offers. There’s the hope in this Jesus story for me: the fully human Jesus listened to the pleas, to the persistence of the one who was no one as far as his religious tradition was concerned; he listened to a woman in pain for her daughter’s sake, and was transformed. Jesus went from this woman, as Mark tells it, to immerse himself in an ever wider circle of caring among the Gentiles, to welcome in even more of those whose life circumstances put them out of bounds. Divine compassion prevailed, life won over death. With God all things are possible.

THE LUTHERAN HANDBOOK, a creative if not quirky little book published by the ELCA publishing house for use with adult and confirmation classes, offers this explanation of infant baptism: The forgiveness and grace of “Baptism is received by a believing heart that trusts in God’s word. In the case of infant baptism, the baptized person “borrows one” from parents or sponsors.” The little ones BORROW believing hearts for a time, until they can believe on their own. What a wonderful metaphor for the Gospel life – as members of the church, the body of Christ in the world, we are called to believe and trust in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting, and to loan OUR believing hearts to those less fortunate until they can come to believe on their own. What a great way to image being truly welcoming: come, borrow a believing heart; keep it as long as you need it, no late fees assessed!

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “There is enough for the world’s need, but not for the world’s greed.” He was talking of food. The same could be said of faith. We have more than enough to live, and an amazing ability, scarcely tapped, to give. I am blessed with a believing heart – what about you? As the new season of music, worship and education opportunities begins here at St. Paul, come study and learn with us. Come, teach the children and learn about yourself and the God who blesses you. Come, listen for the sounds of hope – together God will use us to be new sounds of hope for this world.