The Heart That Hopes | Hope Beyond Tragedy

[00:00:00] Speaker A: There was a Garden of Eden. It was good. Everything was perfect. And then it went to hell. Dark death. We got this world with death and hurt and accidents and paralysis and all the things that so easily blind us to all the good. And on the far side of this, yes, there's restoration. There's a kingdom. The world where everything is finally made right. And I believe in that world. I believe it's coming. I pray for it. Every tear wiped away. But watch what happens. If this is the whole story, if Eden was good, this life in the middle is bad, and the kingdom is good again, then this life is nothing but something to get through. Nothing but something. We survive. And there is a kind of hope [00:00:52] Speaker B: that grows out of that reading. And it's completely the wrong kind of hope. [00:01:01] Speaker A: It is the hope that says, I [00:01:04] Speaker B: just want to escape it all. [00:01:08] Speaker A: Get me out of here. This world is a waiting room. None of this matters. [00:01:14] Speaker B: That's the wrong way to see it. Life is not a tragedy sandwich. This life, the one you woke up into this morning. It's not the bad middle of the story in any imaginable way, ever. It's the gift. Even in the depths of darkness, even in the destruction and the sadness. God did not put you here just to wait, to leave. That's ridiculous. He put you here to live and to love and to stand up and do all you can with him right here, now. Our hope will never be escape. Our hope is always and only that we have a Creator who is faithful. This is the Shabbat before Tisha B'. Av. It's called the Shabbat Chazon. It's the Shabbat of vision. That's how Isaiah's Haftarah opens. [00:02:23] Speaker A: There is a word we read. [00:02:25] Speaker B: Obviously you just heard. We read the Book of Lamentations. There is a word that opens the book of Lamentations. The word is echa. It's a word and it is a question. The word echa means how. How? And Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, standing and seeing the ruins. The first thing out of his mouth here is a echo. [00:03:04] Speaker A: How? [00:03:05] Speaker B: How does the city sit alone that was so full of people? How? And I want you to notice that that word of. You know, in Judaism, the books are named by their first word. That's how we know it. It's obviously not Lamentations. That word gave the book its name. The book is. The book is named after the question how. There is a famous kina, a liturgical poem. We have various kinot in plural Kinah liturgical poem. It's chanted There are several, a lot of these, but some very famous ones that go along with the reading of lamentations on Tishbav. And there are some questions that are asked in that kinah that would make, you know, people nervous when they think about these questions being asked of God, his creation, challenging him in such a direct way. [00:04:15] Speaker A: How could you do this, God? How could you rush your wrath upon us? How could you pronounce such harsh words upon us? How could you abandon your sanctuary and your anger? How could you aim that anger at us? How could you reject us? [00:04:40] Speaker B: Those are the questions. They're prayers, really. [00:04:43] Speaker A: They're in the liturgy, and they're sanctioned questions. [00:04:47] Speaker B: They've been chanted and sung for many, many centuries. [00:04:50] Speaker A: But that asks. The rabbis actually ask a question about these things. Do we have the right to talk to God that way? Because there's another teaching in Talmud, Berakhot [00:05:06] Speaker B: 54A, if you want to read it [00:05:09] Speaker A: yourself, it says you're required to bless God for the good and for the bad. It's a requirement. When tragedy comes, you don't argue. You say, baruch dayan hayemet, Blessed is the true judge. You hear terrible news, that's a blessing [00:05:33] Speaker B: that you say on your lips. That's what Talmud says, baruch dayen ha'. Am't Blessed is the true judge. [00:05:38] Speaker A: So which one is it do we bless? Do we question? The general principle drawn from the Talmud is that one recites a blessing for bad that befalls him, just as one [00:05:55] Speaker B: does for the good. [00:05:56] Speaker A: And you, you can't say the blessing for bad in hopes that it is going to reveal something good. You just have to say, baruch dayen hay met. [00:06:10] Speaker B: That's the general principle. There is an exception that's carved out [00:06:15] Speaker A: that is attached to Tisha B'Av and [00:06:19] Speaker B: these kinot and things like this. [00:06:22] Speaker A: Jeremiah, the prophet of God, is asking the questions. And so it is said that in a time of unbelievable tragedy like that, the questions are permitted. [00:06:33] Speaker B: Echa is an acceptable request, an approved time on Tishba'. Av. [00:06:40] Speaker A: But man, is that possible? [00:06:46] Speaker B: Seriously, [00:06:49] Speaker A: that only when the news is on the level of the temple destruction, exile, inducing sadness, then we can ask God questions. How can this be? [00:07:06] Speaker B: Is that really the only time? Because I'll tell you the truth, and you know it. There are so many moments in your life when the questions just come out. You face something hard, or you watch someone else face something hard, and these questions come up and they sound like this, God, echa, [00:07:41] Speaker A: Echa, God. How? How can this be? How is this. Okay? How could you? [00:07:58] Speaker B: And I know what Baruch Hut 54A says. I know we are supposed to bless God for the bad and the good. [00:08:06] Speaker A: And I can understand it, and I believe it. But anyone who has ever stood inside a tragedy knows that is easier said than done. Way better. Easier said than done. I stood inside one 12 days ago. You know that my nephew Gabriel has a spinal cord injury in the hospital [00:08:32] Speaker B: in Atlanta with a fractured vertebrae and paralysis. [00:08:36] Speaker A: And the timing of it all falling into this pool, these three weeks, right in this heavy season of the calendar, in this heavy, hot summer, man, I've never felt the three weeks quite like this before. [00:08:59] Speaker B: But I promise you that is not what I'm bringing you today. Last week, I stood here and wept with you. And today I want to bring you something that I found instead when I went looking. Because the 9th of AV is almost here. It is a day of sadness. Lamentations is sadness. This week, as we said, we'll go down to the synagogue, we'll sit on the floor, we have a meal. [00:09:26] Speaker A: Very traditional homes of ashes [00:09:31] Speaker B: and water and egg, Old bread. We remember the destruction of the Temple and the baseless hatred that caused it. And we look around at our world right now and we ask, has anything actually change? The wars, the hatred. And we lay all this ancient grief [00:09:57] Speaker A: on top of the present. [00:09:59] Speaker B: Grief that we feel because they still fit together. [00:10:02] Speaker A: And we'll pray. But before we get there, I want [00:10:05] Speaker B: to show you what's buried in the book. As you know, I always run to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks for insight. And here again, he does not disappoint. And I can tell you, as I [00:10:18] Speaker A: thought about this, this week, I've put [00:10:20] Speaker B: him, by far, in the top three of the people I plan to hang with in the world to come. Just to hang. Just to give him the hug I never got to give him here. [00:10:36] Speaker A: But he said this. There's a difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is a passive virtue. [00:10:46] Speaker B: Hope is an active one. [00:10:48] Speaker A: Optimism is the belief that things will get better. Hope is the belief that together we can make things better. [00:11:02] Speaker B: And then he applied it to the Jewish people. [00:11:04] Speaker A: And he said, knowing our past, no Jew can be an optimist. [00:11:13] Speaker B: But Jews, despite an incredible history of suffering, have never, ever given up hope. [00:11:24] Speaker A: Never given up hope. You think about what that means. This is to a people who watched temples burn twice. A people driven into exile, hunted, expelled, slaughtered across centuries. If anyone on Earth, I challenge anyone [00:11:42] Speaker B: to find a better candidate. [00:11:43] Speaker A: If anyone on earth has the right to despair, surely it is this people The Jewish people. That is a fact of history. Judaism refused, however, to let tragedy have the last word. And so Rabbi Sacks argues that hope in Judaism is not just some kind of wishful thinking. It is the conviction that because God is faithful, the future is never closed. [00:12:18] Speaker B: The future is never closed. [00:12:20] Speaker A: Now open Lamentations with that in your head. Because Lamentations is a dreadful book. I mean, is dreadful. Read it well, you will soon. But read it again, just for fun. Chapter after chapter of devastation, starvation, ruin, mothers weeping, death, destruction, an abandoned city. And it. It never softens. Like, it's just blah, blah, blah. [00:12:58] Speaker B: And then you get to chapter three, verse 21. [00:13:04] Speaker A: Right in the middle of the book is this. [00:13:09] Speaker B: This I call to mind, therefore I have hope. That's the translation. But the Hebrew says, zot ashiv al libi zot ashiv elibi. [00:13:26] Speaker A: This, this I return to my heart. Libi my heart. Jeremiah says, this I bring back to my heart, therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord has not ceased. His compassions do not fail. They're new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. That's where it is. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It's good that a man should quietly hope for the salvation of the Lord. Every one of us knows those words. We sing them. Great is thy faithfulness. These new morning mercies, we put them on coffee mugs and T shirts and bumper stickers, and they live in lamentations [00:14:22] Speaker B: surrounded by death and destruction. Everything before that passage is ruin. Everything after that passage is ruining. And right in the middle is this. Now, where did Jeremiah find that hope? [00:14:48] Speaker A: Because he could not find it by looking around. Look around, and that's the book of Lamentations. All I see is ashes. Victorious Babylonians starving in the streets. His eyes provided nothing for him, [00:15:10] Speaker B: and [00:15:10] Speaker A: nothing in his circumstances changed from chapter two to chapter three. And the rabbis, again, they point to this verb, zot ashiv. This I call back, this I return. This is Jeremiah's intentional act. He has to reach into his memory. He has to pull something back into consciousness because everything screams despair. But his memory recalls the mercy and the covenant and the past acts of redemption. And God, who was faithful in Egypt, who keeps his word, to Abraham, who's been faithful before. And so hope for him in this text is an act of remembering. Hope is an act of remembering. It is not a mood that you just stumble into. It's not something that just comes over you. And it doesn't actually depend on the news getting any better. It's just something you do. [00:16:22] Speaker B: Jeremiah forces himself to recall to his [00:16:26] Speaker A: heart what he knows to be true about God, because everything around him says otherwise. [00:16:37] Speaker B: And after this, he says, it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord, who loves to wait quietly while you're in distress, who loves to just wait for God to show up and do something. Who loves it. It's good, good. It says nothing has changed when he writes that line, nothing. Famine is still there. [00:17:08] Speaker A: He's not saying, hey, wait a minute. Just give it a second. The cavalry's right around the corner, guys, just chill for like 10 seconds. He's going to show up. You can count on that. Be hopeful. [00:17:21] Speaker B: That's not what he says. [00:17:23] Speaker A: He is saying, wait. And the only reason I can give you is because God is faithful. We call it. It's emunah in Hebrew, right? We say faith, but it's faithfulness, steadfastness. It's faith expressed sometimes through just sitting in patient endurance. It is emunah when you are patiently waiting and nothing's happening. [00:17:59] Speaker B: The hope of Lamentations is not optimism. Optimism looks at the situation and just says, eh, maybe it'll get better. That was my best imitation of my grandmother. It would have been more like, oy, it could be worse. Jeremiah's hope rests on one thing, and that is the character of God, [00:18:34] Speaker A: man. [00:18:34] Speaker B: That's not easy, though. The rabbis added something about this terrible day as well. They taught that when the temple was burning, the Shekhinah, the divine presence of God was going out with Israel. The divine presence went into exile. [00:18:58] Speaker A: God did not stand and watch his [00:19:01] Speaker B: people being marched away and all this. [00:19:03] Speaker A: He walked into Babylon with them, into darkness. The Shekhinah in exile and where Israel got scattered. The presence of God, God went with. [00:19:25] Speaker B: The truth is that even in despair, God has not left. And he does not leave. That's why we sang Never Alone. Martin. Sometimes we feel confused, but we're never alone. That's the theology of the Shekhinah walking into the fire. Now, let me just. Let me. Let me take you somewhere else. There's another story that follows the same. [00:19:56] Speaker A: The same lamentation structure, except in reverse. Lamentations is what I would call a hope sandwich, right? Terrible on both ends. Hope in the middle chapter after grief and grief buried in the center, we have this. This piece of hope. [00:20:16] Speaker B: But there's another story that goes the other way. [00:20:19] Speaker A: It starts beautiful, turns absolutely terrible and unbelievably. Tragic and then becomes again more beautiful [00:20:27] Speaker B: than anyone could have imagined. [00:20:28] Speaker A: Can you think of the story I [00:20:30] Speaker B: might be thinking of? There are a lot of them, but I'll give you this one. I'm talking about the cross. Think about how that looked from the inside. [00:20:44] Speaker A: Everything was good. Everything was rising. It was on a beautiful trajectory. They're laying down palm leaves, for goodness sake. They're chanting Hoshanna to the God of David, Son of David. Hoshiana. Save us. Save us. The king is here. This is the moment. This is it. Come and rule. [00:21:09] Speaker B: And within a week, he was dead. Beaten, dead, bloodied, flesh ripped off of his body, [00:21:22] Speaker A: hung out to dry on [00:21:24] Speaker B: a cross, bled out, stabbed through, laid [00:21:28] Speaker A: in a tomb, cut out of a [00:21:29] Speaker B: rock, thrown into the cave, a stone [00:21:32] Speaker A: sealed over the mouth of it. It's done. And by every measure that a human being can take, it was over at that point. And the disciples knew it. They knew it. [00:21:53] Speaker B: They huddled together behind closed doors. [00:21:56] Speaker A: They're terrified. What are we going to do now they know we were with him. What are we going to do? They imagined, I'm sure, every kind of future. This was not part of what they imagined for their lives. [00:22:12] Speaker B: And I wonder about the questions that [00:22:14] Speaker A: were in that room. But I guarantee you, I can tell you how some of them started. Echa. [00:22:22] Speaker C: How? [00:22:23] Speaker A: God, we gave everything here. How could you let this happen? How? [00:22:35] Speaker B: And there was silence. God did not answer that question when they asked it. And anyone who has ever prayed from the floor knows that silence. And then on the first day of the week, of course, it's a woman. Who goes and starts the solution. She goes to the tomb while it's dark. And out of the darkness, out of the tragedy, out of the most horrendous thing that ever happened, Yeshua appears to her. And everything turns right. Everything turns. This I recall to my mind. Therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord has not ceased. [00:23:36] Speaker A: His compassions do not fail. The tomb was certainly not the end of the story. It was the start. And it was not the plan that anyone expected. It was not supposed to go that [00:23:48] Speaker B: way, as far as any of them understood. [00:23:52] Speaker A: They asked the question, Echa, God, how could you let this happen? Happened? Heaven did not answer. And then all of a sudden, there's more hope than anyone could have ever imagined because the impossible happened. This guy came back from the dead and so did a bunch of other people. [00:24:21] Speaker B: That was God's answer. Because the things he said would come to pass, came to pass because that's how God is. And on the other side of that [00:24:34] Speaker A: resurrection, they didn't have to ask the question anymore. [00:24:40] Speaker B: It wasn't easy, by the way. You can read all of their stories and know that it didn't all of a sudden become like, you know, a birthday party. [00:24:50] Speaker A: But they could see what God had been doing the whole time and why. And they had the luxury now of looking back and saying, thank you, God. Now I understand. Now I see it. Blessed is the true Judge, right? Baruch Dayen ha'. Am't. Now I get it. That's a beautiful place to stand. But most of us usually are not standing there. We are standing on the Saturday between death and resurrection. Many of us are standing in chapter three of Lamentations with bad stuff on either side. And it is that place above all places where these words matter most. When you are down, when you are hurting, that is when you say it. Not because you even feel it, but because you're reaching back into your memory, to your mind, calling back to your heart on purpose. This I recall. God, I have hope. Your steadfast love has not ceased. Your compassion will not fail me. They're new every morning. Great is your faithfulness, the Lord. You are my portion, says my soul. Therefore I must hope in you. [00:26:12] Speaker B: And Lamentations says, let him put his mouth in the dust. Perhaps there may be hope. Let him put his mouth in the dust. That is a man face down, or woman face down on the ground. That's as low as it gets. And the text says, do not rebuke him for being there. Her allow him to be there. [00:26:42] Speaker A: It says, sometimes that is where you are, mouth in dust. Even there. Perhaps there may be hope. That is why Baruch Dayen ha emet does not mean what people sometimes think. It means blessing. The true Judge does not mean we cannot mourn. It does not mean we do not hurt. It doesn't mean we don't sit on the floor and weep. It does not mean we cannot ask God. Echa. God allows us. There. He wrote it into this book. Jeremiah captured it. Perhaps sometimes we just. We have to be down here. [00:27:32] Speaker B: But the text does not leave us on the floor. We can sit on the floor on Tisha b Av. We sit on the floor on purpose, because grief gets that time. But then we must stand up. And this is the next part. But that's hard for me to say this week of all weeks, with my nephew lying in the hospital, unable to move his legs at present. But I'm going to say it anyway. When we are sitting Down. [00:28:11] Speaker A: We must stand up and walk. [00:28:20] Speaker B: We trust that whatever is ahead, that God will give us the step. And you know what? In Gabriel's case, even if it is [00:28:29] Speaker A: not a literal step, God will give [00:28:31] Speaker B: him a step, and then the next one, and then the next one. [00:28:37] Speaker A: Because what is true today will not [00:28:40] Speaker B: necessarily be true tomorrow. What I face today does not have to be my tomorrow. I do not know what God will do. I don't. Blessed is the true judge. He knows. He loves, he cares, he nurtures, he guides. And as I said, the future is never closed. There is science behind all of this, [00:29:11] Speaker A: psychological studies, physiological studies, on what hope [00:29:15] Speaker B: does to a human being. I'll just summarize it by saying, guess what? You're a lot better off with some hope. There are the people who live in the surrounding chapters of Lamentations, and there are those who live in section 321 of Lamentations. And these same circumstances, same ruins, different life. The different person who forces him or herself to recall to mind, to recall to the heart the faithfulness of God. And that is Israel's testimony to the world. That's what Tisha B'Av teaches. [00:29:58] Speaker A: A people who buried the temple twice have never buried our hope. [00:30:07] Speaker B: Hope. [00:30:09] Speaker A: Hope for the coming of Messiah. Yes, above all. But hope now, in real life, in hospital rooms, in ruins. Because what is life without hope? And I'll close with this. Life is an incredible gift. Incredible gift. This world is an incredible gift. It's so beautiful and in so many ways, it's also incredibly tragic. Both of those are true at the same time. And you know it because you live here now. If you wanted to, you could read the whole human story as one more of these shapes. There was a Garden of Eden. It was good. Everything was perfect. And then it went to hell. Dark death. We got this world with death and hurt and accidents and paralysis and all the things that so easily blind us to all the good. And on the far side of this, yes, there's restoration. There's a kingdom, the world where everything is finally made right. And I believe in that world. I believe it's coming. I pray for it. Every tear wiped away. But watch what happens. You. If. If this is the whole story, if Eden was good, this life in the middle is bad, and the kingdom is good again. Then this life is nothing but something to get through, nothing but something. We survive. And there is a kind of hope that grows out of that reading. [00:31:54] Speaker B: And it's completely the wrong kind of hope. [00:32:01] Speaker A: It is the hope that says, I [00:32:03] Speaker B: just want to escape it all. [00:32:08] Speaker A: Get me out of here. This world is a waiting room. None of this matters. [00:32:14] Speaker B: That's the wrong way to see it. Life is not a tragedy sandwich. This life, the one you woke up into this morning. It's not the bad middle of the story in any imaginable way ever. It's the gift. Even in the depths of darkness, even in the destruction and the sadness, God did not put you here just to wait, to leave. That's ridiculous. He put you here to live and to love and to stand up and do all you can with him right here now. Our hope will never be escape. Our hope is always and only that we have a Creator who is faithful. And that's hard. I can't lie. It's hard that destruction is never final, that he's always working behind the scenes [00:33:20] Speaker A: even when we don't see it. [00:33:22] Speaker B: That's got to be the heartbeat of faith in our lives. [00:33:25] Speaker A: No, they definitely do not always look like we imagine they should. And I think everyone in the room can say to that. Amen. I agree. But we do not look around at the tragedy and fix our eyes on [00:33:43] Speaker B: these things, do we? [00:33:45] Speaker A: And stay seated on the floor. And we don't just settle for the optimism to say oy, maybe it'll get better. Some vague feeling that it'll just work out. [00:34:03] Speaker B: We hope actively. [00:34:04] Speaker A: We recall our minds and our hearts. [00:34:07] Speaker B: We hope for the faithfulness of God. [00:34:09] Speaker A: And we stand up. And this week when we sit on the floor and we chant echa and we ask questions about that and whatever else, you are allowed to do that and when that day ends, you stand up. There is a day for lamenting and there are three hundred and sixty four other ones to get up and walk. [00:34:35] Speaker B: I talked with my brother and he and Katie and Gabriel, they got transferred over to this Shepherd Center. [00:34:46] Speaker A: It's a godsend. [00:34:48] Speaker B: It's a wonderful opportunity and option for his therapy. But they had been in a brand new hospital in Atlanta for nine days prior to that Choa. [00:34:58] Speaker A: This beautiful hospital and light and bright [00:35:01] Speaker B: and everyone's happy and all of a sudden they're transferred into this [00:35:08] Speaker A: dreary dark [00:35:11] Speaker B: place with a lot of people in terrible circumstances. And Katie said it was so hard and I promised I wouldn't cry this time, so I'm not going to. She said it was so hard. And Jonathan told me the next day, he said that night we finally had the conversation. Gabriel coming to realizations and just the sobs of anguish. And the question, eh, [00:36:06] Speaker A: how? [00:36:11] Speaker B: And they all had it together and they wept and they Hugged and they held and they wept. It was their sitting on the floor conversation. If you have to suffer, it's better to suffer with someone. But they had that. And in it, God broke something open to recognize we're as low as we can get. We are at the bottom. And, God, this is the thing I keep returning to, that you are faithful. Kelly and I FaceTimed with Gabriel last night. They finally gave him a device that allows him to use his phone because he can't use his fingers. So he was finally able to check his text and FaceTime with Aunt Kelly and Uncle D. And we FaceTimed. And, man, I can't even believe this kid. That is my nephew teaching me, telling me, uncle D, I know that. I know. I know that God didn't want this for me, and I know that he was with me. I said, he's always with you, Gabriel. He said, no, he was with me on July 5th, and he's with me now. And he said, I already told you, Uncle D. I told you, I'm a fighter. I don't have anything I can do. Looking back, I can only go forward. And, you know, I. When that injury happened, I asked God and I said these very words, he's 17. Echo. You know what I said to myself last night? He's 17. Hallelujah. [00:38:41] Speaker A: God, [00:38:44] Speaker B: you can do something. And I believe with my whole heart that he can be restored. I do. But I also know that if getting up off the floor looks a little different than it did before July 5th, I know that he can do it. And you know what else he said? This is the hard part. He said, uncle D, Aunt Kelly, the thing that's gotten me through is just the support of everyone else, hearing from them, knowing them. I said, I know you're famous now, Gabriel. He said, no, seriously. Knowing that everyone's thinking about me and praying for me, sending me messages, it makes all the difference. So please keep doing that. Please do that. This I recall to my heart, and therefore I have hope. My dad told me this week, we were talking, he said, my dad has just. He's such a sage of a man. He said, I refuse to believe that what is today is forever. His compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Lamentations 3. 23. Great is your faithfulness. And sometimes that is our only hope. My friends, I hope that we can have hope. That is my hope. Shabbat Shalom. [00:41:04] Speaker C: I'm Darren with shalom. Macon. If you enjoyed this teaching, I want to ask you to take the next step. Start by making sure you subscribe to our channel Next. Make sure you hit the like button on this video so that others know it's worth their time to watch last year. 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