"When We're Running Out of Hope, God is at Work" (December 7, 2025 Sermon)

Text: Matthew 11:1-11

Preacher: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing

The most honest prayers start with hunger: for bread, for laughter, for a hand to hold. From that place we follow John the Baptist into a prison cell and hear the question many of us whisper when life closes in: are we still waiting on the right hope? The answer doesn’t arrive as a debate. It arrives as lives changed—the blind see, the lame walk, those shut out are welcomed back in, and the poor hear good news they can feel.

We open this story wide with an image of John’s lamplit cell where shadows dance on the wall, a reminder that joy finds its way into even the tightest spaces. We talk about how art and movement can turn despair into breath again, why dance floors double as care centers for people carrying grief and responsibility, and how embodied practices help our minds and hearts remember what safety feels like. Hope grows stronger when it’s shared, and community is the final mile of every miracle.

From there we get practical. We name the rituals that keep us grounded—yes, including the tender, tactile liturgy of a record player, the soft crackle before Miles Davis begins, and the small decision to flip the album with your own hands. We invite you to create when fear says stop, to pay attention and be astonished, and to tell the story so someone else can borrow your light. With John Lewis’s charge ringing in our ears, we end with courage for the week ahead: choose the more excellent way, keep the lamp lit, and watch for the doors grace is already nudging open. If all is not well, all is not over.

If this conversation steadied you, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs courage today, and leave a quick review so others can find their way to this community of hope.

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Transcript

Prayer For Hope And Bread

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Please listen for the prayer of elimination. Merciful God, we need bread and we need laughter. We need music and we need a hand to hold. We need a chair to sit in and we need work to do. But maybe more than anything, we need your word and a reason to hope. So move through this space today and speak to us only as only you can. Speak a word of hope deep within our weary bones, for we need bread and we need laughter. But most of all, we need you. Amen. Our first lesson today is from Isaiah chapters 43, verses 19 through 21. I am about to do a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? I will make a way into the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people who I formed for myself, so that they might declare my praise. Holy wisdom, holy word. Thanks be to God.

Jesus Points To Living Proof

Artwork And Dancing Light

Movement As Collective Care

Choosing Practices That Restore

Vinyl Rituals And Embodiment

Paying Attention To Wonder

John Lewis And Lasting Courage

SPEAKER_01 1:18

As we continue our sermon series, What Do You Fear? Insisting on hope, this advent, we turn our attention to Matthew's gospel, Matthew chapter 11, verses 1 through 11. Let us listen again for what God is saying to God's church. Now, when Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and proclaim his message in their cities. When John the Baptist heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent words by his disciples and said to Jesus, Are you the one who is to come, or are we, am I, to wait for another? Jesus answered them, Go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk. Those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear. The dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me. As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John. What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? Look, those who wear soft robes are in rural palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. He is the one about whom it is written, See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you. Truly I tell you, among those born of women, none, no, no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist. Yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. Friends, holy wisdom, holy word. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. Friends, we all have moments when our souls shrink, our spirits sag, and our hearts ache under the weight of the world. Sometimes we can't help but wonder: have all my efforts been worth it? Did I do it right? Will justice ever prevail, truly? And what if this was all for naught? The Bible is full of characters who certainly wrestled with similar anxious questions. Jonah in the belly of that fish. Daniel in the lion's den. Vashti banished outside the city gates. Mary Magdalene at the foot of the cross. And to that list today we would add John the Baptist. Usually on the second Sunday in Advent, the lectionary presents us with the story of John's introduction in the Gospels, you know, when he calls people to repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. However, in our sermon series this time, we focus on a very different stage in John the Baptist's life. In fact, the sermon series draws us to the end of his life, when he is imprisoned for challenging a different Herod from the one we mentioned in last week's sermon. Today's Herod is Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great, whose reign we explored last week. John the Baptist criticized this Herod because of his decision to marry his half-brother's wife, Herodias, who also happened to be his biological niece, both of which are against Jewish law. The historian, the church historian Josephus, records that this drama may have only been a smokescreen for Herod's real motive for imprisoning John, which was that his public influence made Herod worry about a rebellion. And so today we see John in shackles, facing almost certain execution. We hear something we're not used to hearing in John's voice, doubt. He sends word to his cousin, Jesus, asking him, Are you the one? Or are we, or I think he's really saying, Am I, to wait for someone else who's going to save me and save us. On the one hand, it's a remarkable shift from the beginning of John's ministry when he enthusiastically and earnestly pointed the way to Jesus, who he saw clearly as the unquestioned Messiah that he had preached about for so many years. And on the other hand, it's not surprising that John would have a moment of despair given his circumstances. Could any of us honestly say that we wouldn't have such doubts if we trusted someone as a savior only to find ourselves facing execution for speaking truth to power? News of his despair reaches Jesus, and he responds to his cousin by emphasizing how God continues to work in the world despite his cousin's imprisonment and persecution. The blind see, he says. The lame are walking, those with skin diseases are healed, the deaf can hear, and the dead are raised, and yes, the poor are getting that good news that God promises them. This piece of art, created by a seminary colleague of mine, Lauren Wright Pickman, depicts her imagining of John the Baptist receiving this response from Jesus. She titled this piece, Hope Like a Dancer. John is in his prison cell, but you'll notice it's not a cold, dark, damp place. It's warmed by the light of a lamp. A halo glows around John's head. And on his clothes, I don't know if you can see this, I can try to see his clothes. One of my favorite details that uh Lynn pointed out to me this week, on his clothes are birds that are flying besides empty cages with open doors. And his head is tilted to the side and propped up on his arm with a gentle smile on his face. When I first saw this artwork earlier this week, I immediately recognized John's expression and his body language. It's the same look I have when I marvel at something Winnie or Hazel Grace has done that causes my heart to burst. It's a look of wonder, a look of curiosity, and a kind of laughter that we share when we're reminded that we are each small of a much larger, ongoing march towards justice and wholeness. And surrounding John, you'll note we see figures in various poses dancing in the light from the lamp. Lauren Wright Pittman says the following about her artistic choice. She said, I decide to image this good news that Jesus sends back to John through the dancing of light of a lantern in John's prison cell. I chose dancing figures because dancing feels like a primal response to the radical healing taking place outside of John's prison walls. As these six dancers illuminate the cell, I imagined John, even if for a moment, breaking into a bit of laughter at the magnitude of Jesus' ministry. Jesus was quite literally doing the unimaginable. He was removing barriers so that the marginalized were no longer reduced to begging or sitting on mats, shoved to the edges of society. He was not only healing physical ailments, but perhaps more importantly, he was restoring people to community. I love the image of dancing as a sacred reminder for John that God is still active in the world, even during his brief moments of cynicism and possibly despair, which we are all tempted to. I am not a great dancer myself. Having attended school in South Carolina, I can do a decent shag, if I do say so myself, but that's the extent of my dance skills. Still, I have a friend and a colleague of mine who's an Episcopal priest in Colorado, and she is a passionate uh salsa dancer. She has dedicated her ministry to advocacy and justice work, which is especially, especially heavy work these days. And one of the ways that Lauren, my friend Lauren, keeps her head where the light is, so to speak, is to go to a monthly salsa dance with other uh with another group of young mothers in Denver. Her name is Reverend Lauren Grubot Thomas, and she wrote the following in a blog post on the topic. She said, I discovered over the years that when I am regularly dancing, I am happier, clearer-headed, and more imaginative in the ways I respond to life's most pressing problems. And I've found I'm not alone in this. I have met many people in caring professions and social change-oriented vocations for whom dance is a vital form of contemplation and collective care. I know a swing dancing hospice chaplain, more salsa dancing school teachers than I can count, and a psychologist whose dance talents include but are not limited to Lindy Hop, salsa, ballroom, and hip-hop. Lauren then uh she interviewed a fellow colleague who does work in trauma healing through dance, named Gabrielle Rivero, who said the following about her use of dance as self-care. She says, when we move, we can engage with the world in a way that actually makes us feel better, in a way that actually makes us feel whole, in a way that actually brings back memories to the brain. That movement allows us to engage with the world in ways that we haven't even processed yet. In ways we haven't even engaged with yet. Now, maybe you're a dancer, maybe that's your thing, maybe like me, it's not, but this is all to say that we each need to spend plenty of holy time these days caring for our spirits so that we might lose, not lose sight of the fact that, y'all, God is still in control, God is still opening new doors that our fears say are shut, that there are new possibilities, and y'all, all is not lost. We all need self-care practices that remind us of what Jesus reminds John from his prison cell, that if all is not well, then all is not over. As I've mentioned before, one of my favorite parts this week, or in every part of my work week, is gathering with our The Word This Week group on Tuesday mornings, and I pose the question to them. I said, What do you do when you feel that you're running out of hope and you need to be reminded that God is still at work in the world? And one of them said something I found quite prolific. They said, You know, we worship a God of creation. So when I feel the tug of despair, I try to create something. For this person, it was working with fabric. For others among us, it was getting out in nature, singing in a barbershop quartet, practicing meditation or cooking. So I invite all of us this week to take a pause from the rat race that we are all in in the month of December. The shuffling of kids back and forth from one party to the next, going to Disney on ice, we survived, it was fun. Um, the shopping, whatever. Pause, take a breath. Do something that fills your spirit. I'll share something with you that has been nourishing my weary spirit lately. I've told some of you all this week that for Christmas this year, Trisha and I decided to give each other a new family gift. Um, it's here on the screen. You know what this thing is? It's this ancient piece of magic known as a record player. If you don't know what this is, imagine a magical box that spins shiny discs while producing music that makes you feel like a warm hug from the past. It's like a DJ from the 1970s deciding to party in your living room, but instead of swiping a screen, you flip a switch and carefully place a needle on a groove. It's the ultimate retro vibe machine, perfect for impressing your friends with your old school taste, or just pretending that you live in a black and white movie. This record player thing has amazed Hazel Grace and Winnie. Like Hazel Grace is pointing at it. You know what that is. They're obsessed. It's blown their mind, y'all. Their current favorite is my Dave Matthews band vinyl I have from their 1996 album Crash, which in hindsight has some lyrics that are not really age-appropriate for them. I have, of course, used a record player before. It's been a long time. I remember growing up listening to my father's old Rush, Sting, James Taylor, Steely Dan, Toto albums. And this week, as I reconnected with analog nostalgia, I was reminded of just how physical the process of listening to a record is. There is no app. There is no Wi-Fi. There is no screen with love and care. I remove the vinyl from the sleeve, I place it on the turntable, put the needle just outside the disc, and then that moment of bliss when you hear the small crackles and pops, you know, right before you know that, you know, Miles Davis is about to come on or something like that. I sit down and I listen and I eat or read, and after a few songs, I have to get up physically with my body, walk across the room, flip over the record, and start over. And what my millennial mind tempts to tell me is inconvenient, I instead call liturgy and ritual and embodiment. It's an act of love that I cannot delegate to an algorithm or a software. It's just me, some electricity and intentionality. And though it may sound silly, it has reminded me that this life is beautiful and full of possibilities, especially when I feel like it's all gone to you nowhere in a handbasket. After coming home after a long day last week of pastoral care and sermon writing and driving the girls around, cooking dinner, few things calmed my spirit more than sitting down and playing Miles Davis' 1959 kind of blue album. And just had this moment that God's still working. And there are still things that are being created, and there is beauty in the world, and I have to take care of my spirit so that I can be a part of whatever small part of that justice God calls me to be. As I was sitting listening to Miles Davis, I was remembering my favorite quote from Mary Oliver, the poet, that said, Here are three instructions for living a life. Pay attention, be astonished, and tell about it. This is how we build a healthier relationship with our fears. This is how we cling to hope when it seems that fear is closed every door. This is how we make room for the new Christ to be born, which is the ultimate challenge to any status quo that weighs heavily upon our hearts. John the Baptist may never have left that jail cell. But I have to believe that Jesus' words of encouragement to him reminded him in his final moments that his story was only part of a larger narrative of truth and justice, because ultimately we are each a part of that story, but never the end of it. The end of that story belongs to God, y'all, and we've been told that it will be good. So, friends, in that spirit, I will close this sermon with the following quote that I was thinking of as I was listening to my record player this week from the noted civil rights icon John Lewis. These were the last words that John Lewis said before he died in the summer of 2020. He said, Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your hearts and to stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way, and now it is your turn to let freedom ring. When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation that laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last, and that peace finally triumphed over justice, or peace triumphed over violence, aggression, and war. And so I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide. Maybe that was part of what John the Baptist was thinking when he received that good news from Jesus Christ. In the name of God, the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, may all of us God's children say. Amen.