A Homily on Hope: Linda Lindberg's Memorial Service

Linda was a woman of hope. In a world of staggering problems, she lived as a believer in hope, a bearer of hope, and a builder of hope. Listen to the scriptures that she picked for today – hope sings from them. And this hope is not optimism or idealism. It has nothing to do with wishing or fantasy but seeks to name reality and revere truth. Hope, I believe, is what Linda would like for me to share with you today. But don’t lose hope – I also know that she would want me to be brief.

          1.    Hope walks in reality.

Hope doesn’t enter the valley of the shadow of death and pretend it’s Disneyland. It doesn’t speak of a life with God and imagine puppy dogs and fairy tales. I once heard someone describe Christianity and belief in God as a means for weak-minded people to hide from the tragedies of life. Maybe there are such people out there but I haven’t met many and that person certainly never met Linda Lindberg. Hope as wish-fulfillment is also not how the Bible speaks. The texts of scripture Linda chose speak of hope amidst fear, hardship, being crushed and even terrified. Hope is a struggle. So you are on the path of hope not when you abandon reality or refuse to live in this world with all its physical and psychological pain. You are on the path of hope when you stare hardship wide-eyed in the face, mourn its pain, seek its destruction, acknowledge real enemies, and yet keep on walking – if even with a limp. Linda was my dear friend. On one of my visits toward the end of her life I went to encourage her and pray with her. While I was there I did what they teach you in seminary you are never supposed to do – cry (not a polite kind of crying but more blubbering). After I left, she told her husband that my crying was her favorite part of my visit. Linda always understood that speaking about hope often demands real tears and expressions of genuine pain.

I once saw Linda stand right where I’m standing and share about deeply painful mistakes she had made in the past in front of this entire congregation. It was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen done in my life. And she could do it because of hope. Friends, the good news that I want to share with you today is that you may look at your life with an unflinching realism. You can sit there right now in your sadness and say, “This isn’t right. She shouldn’t be gone. Death is tragic and painful. And I miss Linda so much.” You can confess all that is wrong with yourself and the world. Hope reminds us that in the presence of a God, sometimes the most important thing we can do is to show Him our wounds.

Hope does not bathe idly in the sun swinging from a hammock. Kind David is right, “it walks through the valley of the shadow of death.” I’m reminded of the fact that if something is functional or has power in English we say, “It works.” However, in French when something is functional you say, “It walks [Ça marche].” Linda’s life right to the very end reminds us that hope isn’t silly or meaningless. It’s not nostalgic nor blind. No, in the face of real struggle and hardship, “Hope walks.”

          2.    Thankfully, hope is not about you.

Of course, nothing would make Linda more furious at me than for me to stand up here and tell you that you should be like her, or that her hope rested in her own belief to handle life herself. No, Linda’s life was not hope itself but a sign of hope – pointing you to where you should look, to whom you should trust.

The passage from Jeremiah acknowledges that hope comes from God and connects to God. It’s the “because” of Lamentations – “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed.” Hope always has an object, always demands the preposition “in.” Our Christian hope is not in ourselves, not in church, not even in doctrine. Our hope is in the one whom Linda loved and followed – in Jesus Christ. Our hope, in other words, is a historical story, rooted in reality, of Jesus of Nazareth, who spoke of the kingdom of God, forgave sinners, healed the sick, challenged religious leaders, spoke of justice for the poor and compassion for the broken-hearted. He acted out the hope that had always been attributed to God. And the world and political powers killed him. But even the grave couldn’t keep him down. Hope, it turns out, is unkillable.

Listen again to Paul’s list of what cannot separate us from the love of Jesus: death, life, spiritual powers or earthly rulers, present circumstances or fearful projections of the future. Jesus faced all of this, he conquered death in all its forms and nothing can defeat what he has defeated.

One of Linda’s friends is Larry Farwell. Larry likes to hike and loves to speak and write about people’s experience in the wilderness. On one occasion he was encouraging me to spend 24 hours on a hike by myself. When I asked him what would happen if I got lost he casually responded, “I know the path and these woods like the back of my hand. You can’t get lost.” The point my friends is that these things can’t separate you from Jesus because he knows the path, he’s already walked it. He knows the forest of pain and struggles intimately. He conquered it. You can’t get lost.

This means, Paul tells us in Romans, that “nothing” can separate you from the love of God. That word “nothing” is an interesting word in the Greek. It literally means no one, nada, not anything, no pain or tragedy, or illness, or terror – it literally, figuratively, metaphorically, means “nothing” can separate you from Jesus. And so at Linda’s urging I invite you – to place your trust, your energy, your life, your hope, in Him.

A Christian's Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse ~ Galatians 5:13-15

¹³ For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. ¹⁴ For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁵ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. ~ Galatians 5:13-15

“Zombies.” I know – I never thought I’d be saying that in church, particularly in a sermon. But I’ve seen them. I bet you’ve seen them too.

  I recently encountered a few on Facebook. In my feed a Christian friend from college recounted a recent visit to a doctor’s office in which an “awful mother” with “no parenting skills” despondently sat while her dirty children ran around the waiting room with no regard for anyone present. She painted a supposedly frightful scene and others were quick to chime in – devouring this woman with all manner of judgments while they lauded their own behavior. Foolishly, I waded in to the zombie horde and made the following suggestion: “Friends, I don’t think I would want one moment to judge me as a parent. I have made some foolish mistakes and would hate for any one of them to summarize who I was.” 

The responses were grindingly swift. I must also be a bad parent if I couldn’t recognize one myself. And I fled as arms hungrily reached out to devour me as well.

Paul, in Galatians 5, is making an astounding claim that agrees with my experience. There are such things as zombies, even Christian zombies, who “bite and devour one another.”

And friends, like many of you I’ve been chased and even bitten. And we all know what that means – to be bitten by a zombie is often to become one. How do you know if you’ve been infected?

How do you know if you’re a zombie Christian?: the four-fold test

      1.    If you can’t reason and won’t listen – you might be a zombie. Zombies don’t ask questions, moan a lot, and won’t compromise. They see the world in very simple terms – food & not food and they never change their mind. By the way, I’ve met liberal zombies and conservative zombies. I’ve met old zombies, young zombies, zombies with Bibles, and atheist zombies. For our purposes, we must always remember that navigating our world is too complicated for overly simple reasoning. Following God, reading the Bible, demands all of our thoughtfulness but also our humility – the ability to admit what we might not fully know. That was the failure of the Facebook horde. Christian knowledge should always be tempered by a deep humility. We’re talking about God. That’s why we must also listen in order to be faithful, even to enemies.

      2.    If you indulge the flesh – you might be zombie. Flesh (sarx) can be a tricky term - NIV “sinful nature” NRSV “self-indulgence.” It doesn’t primarily mean the physical body as opposed to a spiritual body; rather it focuses on the whole person (mind, body, spirit – an integral whole) and reflects a desire to live outside of God’s will and apart from God’s Spirit. Maybe the best interpretation is “sinful inclination.” Now, having a sinful inclination doesn’t make you a zombie but using it as an “opportunity” or “pretext” to sin without regard does. So if you are abusing your confidence in Christ – your freedom from sin and the law, as a reason to not care about how you behave – you might be a zombie. Orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right practice) MUST go together.

      3.    If you hold no responsibility for others – you might be a zombie. This point also connects directly to the previous one. Zombies are utterly individualistic. Christian zombies often assume a stance toward “freedom” that focuses on “from” rather than “for.” They wish to enjoy a freedom from sin, from guilt, from worry, from hell – concerned about their own destiny or plight. Their spirituality only concerns their own needs and rarely others’  – this is why the NRSV notion of self-indulgence is also helpful. In Paul’s list of sins, however, in verses 19-21 he emphasizes interpersonal ones in more detail than any other category - of the fifteen sins listed, eight concern the “social sins” of the church – “hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy.” How often do denominations talk about these as current, dangerous, “issues”? Why don’t we ever hear about the horrible agenda of “hate”?

Recently, a Covenant pastor posted the following post on Facebook which illustrates this zombie tendency perfectly:

“Looking for some insight or wisdom: We have a mom with two kids that have been coming to the church for a couple years before I started with the congregation. The kids have a very long leash and the 2-year-old will run around the sanctuary, up around the alter and at times has started playing the piano before the mother intervenes. Many times I've just picked up the child and brought him back to his mom. I've had a conversation recently with the mom who is very receptive and understands, but at the same time is at her wits end being the only believing parent with little support at home and trying to actively grow in her faith. Then, there are many in the congregation who are frustrated, but put all the expectation on the mom to watch her children and have them behave.”

Friends, church members who are more interested in their own freedom to worship at the expense of this mom in need are certainly in danger of becoming zombies.

      4.    If you regularly gnaw on others – you might be a zombie. To bite and devour others is illustrated when the issue is about who is right, rather than what is right. It’s discovered when you use words like “hate” or “despise.” When the people that you see have lost their humanity – have become only food. Remember what Peter tells us – Satan walks around seeking whom he may devour. Don’t help him. By the way, you aren’t actually the one who gets to determine this reality. If you’re infected, you can’t be the one who determines whether you are a biter or not. If so, you will always claim that the flesh between your teeth is simply a “love bite.” But, if others regularly complain that they are being bitten, regularly say “Ow!” in your presence, regardless of your own intent, then you are a zombie.

The Apostle Paul’s Antidote for Zombies: 

      1.    Refocus on “our” sin

We need to remember that sin seeks to destroy healthy relationships. That it isn’t simply an individual problem but aims to create, as Paul says – enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, and envy. To be honest, however we rarely talk about that. Rather, we often revel in such attitudes believing that our rightness calls for such fracturing; that truth necessitates fighting tooth and nail and, in that spirit, anything goes. In response, we must do more to practice confession and recognize that our political and social landscape has no place for confession; no means of saying “We we’re wrong. We’re at fault.” Our current climate wishes to point to the misdeeds of others whenever we are pointed out as being in the wrong. To be a community of forgiveness demands that we are also a community of truth and the truth is this: the church is a place for sinners, of sinners, filled with sinners. Our freedom requires our confession.

You won’t be a zombie if you are continually inoculated with these words: “Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.” These are OUR words.

      2.    Reconsider our diet.

How you eat is determined by what you wish to accomplish? The goal matters. Paul’s point is that scripture reading or more specifically, following the law, is summed up the statement, “love your neighbor as yourself.” What if we held as our most important reading strategy of the Bible not our own fulfillment, our own growth but love of neighbor?
Augustine, in On Christian Doctrine, set forth a vision of how to interpret the Bible. He argues that the building up of love – love of God and love of one’s neighbor is the end or purpose of the Bible. He states, “Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.” And love is not love in the abstract but love as modeled by Jesus Christ. So we read the scriptures “for” others and in order to be a “slave” for others.

Do you read with the Bible with the goal of becoming more sacrificial, for the freedom of others, to become a willing “slave”? A slaves job is not to serve himself but to serve others primarily and often painfully.

How might love function in order to help us read Scripture better?

Shusaka Endo’s historical fiction, Silence, offers an interesting case study about how to read the Bible in order to love our neighbor. It’s about 17th-century Jesuit missionaries in Japan, who are forced to encounter a deeply problematic and painful issue: apostasy. Apostasy means the renunciation of one’s faith.

The issue, of course, is made all the more painful because Jesus himself issued the following warning: “Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven. ~ Matthew 10:32-33

In the book, Jesuit missionaries, after being tortured are threatened by Japanese authorities to deny Jesus, which entailed stepping on an image of Jesus (called a fumi-e, which literally means “stepping on”). Otherwise, they’re told, the Japanese Christians that they had been serving would be tortured and killed.

As an aside, this threat was utterly novel to Christians —forcing a person to apostatize to prevent others from being tortured or killed. Typically, in Christian history, it was the person himself or herself who was tortured and martyred for his or her own beliefs.

The dilemma was stark: recant their faith, seemingly disobeying Jesus’ words, and set the Japanese Christians free, or hold onto their faith and let others suffer. It is an almost impossible choice. Thus, the Jesuits are forced to “discern” in a complicated situation where there are no easy answers. They come from a world of black-and-white and are forced to make painful decisions in a world of gray.

After agonizing in prayer and wrestling with the Scriptures, they apostatize not simply because they wished to save the lives of the Japanese Christians, but because they understood that this was how Christ himself loved his neighbors – his enemies.

Why do you read Scripture? Because of this. “On the night when he was to be betrayed . . . .”

[We concluded by celebrating communion]