“We had hoped…”
It’s a simple story. Two people are walking home at the end of the day. They’re joined by a stranger. They tell him that they’d gone to Jerusalem to see a man named Jesus. They say to the stranger, “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”
“We had hoped…” Barbara Brown Taylor says of this verse, “Hope in the past tense, one of the saddest sounds a human being can make.”
We had hoped. That’s the cadence these two people are counting on the road - the road that Taylor describes as:
“…the road you walk when your team has lost, your candidate has been defeated, your loved one has died, the long road back to the empty house, the piles of unopened mail, to life as usual, if life can ever be usual again.”
Here is a photo of the ruins of a 2,000-year-old Roman road just outside of Jerusalem. If it’s not the actual one these two men were on with the stranger, it’s one that is similar.
As you look at this road, imagine yourself walking along it with your own “We had hoped” list:
We had hoped that Calvary-St. George’s had enough money for air conditioning in the sanctuary and a parking lot in Gramercy Park.
We had hoped that Smith’s/DeHart’s/Munroe’s sermons were so profound that all my questions about faith would be answered forever.
We had hoped that Democrats and Republicans would learn how to work together.
We had hoped that the coronavirus would go away quickly.
We had hoped that our friend wouldn’t get sick from the virus.
We had hoped that the one we loved more than life itself would not die of COVID-19.
Walking along this road, the stranger says to the men, “How slow you are…” - and I bet he says it with a sweet, forgiving, gentle smile.
Look at this road again and imagine the stranger saying to you, “How slow you are, my sweet, forgiven child, to see that the messiah is not the undefeated champion but the suffering servant - not the one who ascends the throne, but the one who ascends the cross - not the one known by his muscles, but by his scars.”
You know how the story ends. The stranger has dinner with the two men. As he breaks bread, they see that it’s Jesus. And the passage doesn’t say it, but I think that when Jesus breaks that bread, they see the scars of the nail holes on his hands.
And then… heartburn. They run back to Jerusalem saying, “Our hearts are burning!”
So join us at 11 AM this Sunday for the livestream service from Calvary Church. Bring your “We had hoped…” list with you - and get ready for holy heartburn.
- Jim