"Things Unseen"

 Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 and Luke 12:32-40

August 7, 2022

On Tuesday night, I drifted off to sleep with the words of Irish poet Seamus Heaney rolling through my head. In the Cure at Troy, he writes:

History says, don’t hope

On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up,

And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change

On the far side of revenge.

Believe that further shore

Is reachable from here. [1] 

If you’ve never had the experience of waiting for the electorate to vote on whether or not you have access to your own God-given rights - well, I can’t quite describe how surreal it feels. I was a nervous wreck all day Monday and Tuesday. Unable to think clearly and keyed up. Once the national news called it on Tuesday night, I didn’t feel much of anything. Just numb disbelief. We’ve all become so accustomed to uncertainty and disappointment, haven’t we? 

But as I fell asleep, Heaney’s words came to me. And I thought about how many times in the past they’ve been a touchstone for me when things didn’t turn out the way I had hoped. When disappointment gave way to despair and I needed someone to remind me that we all have to keep finding a way to “hope for a great sea-change.” 

Rarely have I held onto this poem as a touchstone when justice DOES rise up or when hope and history DO rhyme. It felt good to experience a connection to these words in a new way. Poetry can be a balm when we are hurting and a party popper when we are rejoicing. Thank God for artists. 

The author of Hebrews had a way with words, too. This book contains some of the most beautiful language in the Second Testament. And it includes several needlepoint scriptures like the one at the beginning of today’s passage, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Faith is what we hold onto when we’re not sure things are ever going to turn around. And faith is also a party we throw when we are finally surprised by something good. Faith is the ability to squint our eyes at the horizon and see a glimmer of hope there. Faith is reminding ourselves, “everything will be okay in the end - if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” [2] Faith is living and loving as if the “not yet” is already here. Faith co-exists with doubt because, otherwise, it wouldn’t be faith, would it? 

I’m stuck this week on the statement that faith is the conviction of things not seen. What a thing! To be certain of something invisible. 

Think about some of the most faithful people you’ve known. Were they able to see things you couldn’t? Were they able to share that vision with others? 

One of the gifts of artists - and poets - is the ability to see things the rest of us don’t. And then to paint those realities with a brush or clay or words or their body or a bow….and make them visible to us. 

When artists do this - they make faith visible for us. They help us see the unseen. They shine a light on the shadowy corners of the world and invite us to name truth. They turn on a disco ball and invite us onto a dance floor with glitter and sweat and pulsing joy and remind us that faith is for the hard times, sure, but it’s for the good times, too. 

Jesus reminds us that God is pleased with us. That God desires for us to live in the kindom of justice and peace and joy here and now. That faith can look like holding on tight in desperate times AND it can look like twirling and whirling in celebration and laughter. Faith is big enough for the downs and ups. The key is turning our hearts to the frequency of things hoped for but not yet seen. 

Poet Ross Gay does this beautifully in his collection of short essays, The Book of Delights. You can find it in the newly-created box of prayer resources out in the lobby, by the way. 

Gay says, 

One day last July, feeling delighted and compelled to both wonder about and share that delight, I decided that it might feel nice, even useful, to write a daily essay about something delightful. I remember laughing to myself for how obvious it was. I could call it something like The Book of Delights. 

I came up with a handful of rules: write a delight every day for a year; begin and end on my birthday, August 1; draft them quickly; and write them by hand. The rules made it a discipline for me. A practice. Spend time thinking and writing about delight every day…..

It didn’t take me long to learn that the discipline or practice of writing these essays occasioned a kind of delight radar. Or maybe it was more like the development of a delight muscle. Something that implies that the more you study delight, the more delight there is to study….I also learned this year that my delight grows - much like love and joy - when I share it. [3] 

Gay’s writing not only brings vicarious delight - he makes you want to follow in his footsteps and be a collector of delight, too. This must be what Jesus was talking about when he said, “Sell what you own and give the money to poorer people. Make purses for yourselves that don’t wear out—treasures that won’t fail you, in heaven that thieves can’t steal and moths can’t destroy. For wherever your treasure is, that’s where your heart will be.”

In other words: live generously. Remembering that all good things - love and joy and delight - grow when we share them with others who need them. Cultivate spiritual practices that give you new eyes for seeing the world. Make purses that don’t wear out - collect treasures every day - little nuggets of delight. Gather them up, turn them over in the light like the treasurers they are. 

Inscribe these visions of God’s goodness - this faithfulness - upon your heart and soul, bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you are at home and when you’re away, when you lie down and when you rise up. Write this faith on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be blessed. [4]

It’s a little bit like Mirabel in the Disney movie Encanto. Everyone else in the family Madrigal has a magical gift but Mirabel doesn’t receive one. But by the end of the movie it’s clear that she does have a gift. Her gift is seeing things as they really are, naming hard truths, and finding hope anyway. If you split her name in two it means mira = sees, bel = beauty. She is the one who sees what’s really there. And, in doing so, saves her family. 

In good times and hard times, this gift of seeing is one our faith invites us to. The assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of seeing what’s really there - even when it’s hard to see. The simple act of gathering up delights in our purses that don’t wear out. For those acts of intentionality become our spiritual disciplines. Gathering up treasures that really do sustain. And being led to share what we have generously with others who might need a little extra. 

I’ll close with a final reminder from one more word-artist, Amanda Gorman. She spoke so beautifully of the hope that comes through shared faith on Inauguration Day 2021. Her words sound like faith: 

The new dawn blooms as we free it

For there is always light,

if only we’re brave enough to see it

If only we’re brave enough to be it

NOTES:

[1] https://besharamagazine.org/newsandviews/poems-for-these-times-14/ 

[2] As best I can tell, this saying originated with Fernando Sabino. 

[3] Gay, Ross. The Book of Delights, preface. 

[4] An interpolation of Deuteronomy 11:18-21.