|
|
I’m grateful to my daughter-in-law, Laura, for her interest in her
family’s history that took her, and my son, Nathan, and me to Ellis
Island this past Friday afternoon. Ellis Island, the reception
center in New York harbor that received twelve million immigrants
into our country from 1892 to 1924, is now a national park
celebrating our country’s diverse ethnic and national heritage. The
US Park Service now manages the property and its numerous visitors.
When you go there, you can look for the names of members of your own
family who might have first landed there on their way to a new life
in this new land. You may also take a tour that recreates something
of an immigrant’s experience.
Along that tour, you’ll climb the stairs where doctors observed
people coming off the boat and on their way to the main reception
room. The weak, the ill, the destitute, or others who might have
difficulty functioning here on their own were observed and, in a
small number of cases, sent back to their previous homeland. One
room at Ellis Island holds an exhibit that recalls the simple tests
that sought to ferret out those with low intelligence or mental
illness.
This particular exhibit at one point quotes Pauline Notkoff, a
Polish Jewish immigrant who arrived in 1917. In a 1985 interview,
she recalled her experience of the mental capacity test. “They asked
us questions,” she said. “’How much is two and one? How much is two
and two?’ But the next young girl, also from our city, went and they
asked her, ‘How do you wash stairs, from the top or from the
bottom?’ She says, ‘I don’t go to America to wash stairs.’” (Exhibit
at Ellis Island.) The exhibit doesn’t indicate whether this honest
young girl was allowed to enter the United States. Nor does it say
whether, if she was granted entry, she ever found herself washing
stairs. I like to think she was admitted, if for nothing else, her
strength of character. And who knows? Perhaps she eventually had a
home with many stairs, or started a business building stairs, for
that matter. That is our sense of the American dream, isn’t it?
The truth, of course, is that every one of those immigrants, some of
them our very own ancestors, climbed the stairs into the great
waiting room at Ellis Island with a dream. And some of those dreams
came true, in their lives, in our lives, or both. Some of those
dreams they bequeathed to us.
I remember Pauline Notkoff’s young friend and fellow 1917 immigrant,
the girl with the dream, when I hear the lessons for this first
Sunday in Advent. Jeremiah has a dream, too, a vision for his people
who have lost their homes, their nation, their leaders, and their
spirit. Jeremiah has a vision for them, of a time when God will
restore their nation. Or, to use Jeremiah’s metaphor, when God “will
cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David,” (Jeremiah 33:15,
New Revised Standard Version) when “Judah (their nation) will be
saved and Jerusalem (their beloved city) will live in safety.”
(Jeremiah 33:16, NRSV) That is Jeremiah’s dream, given to us, his
spiritual descendents.
Jesus has a vision, too, different in detail from Jeremiah’s dream,
but similar in its central hopeful affirmation. A time of transition
is coming, says Jesus, when terrible things will happen. It will be
a time of conflict, and “distress.” The point of these political and
physical upheavals says Jesus, is simple: “…when you see these
things taking place, you know that the Kingdom of God is near.”
(Luke 12:31) Of course God’s new realm, “the kingdom of God,” was
Jesus’ central message. It was also his fervent hope, for his world
and for ours that God’s kingdom would dawn in our midst. And Jesus’
core message was that the kingdom, God’s kingdom, indeed was
dawning, right in their midst. That hope is at the very core of
Jesus’ legacy to us.
I thought about Jesus and Jeremiah, and what they are trying to tell
us this Advent, this first Sunday of the church’s season, a day
devoted to hope. I think the message is simple, if challenging.
Jeremiah in his day, and Jesus in his, both call their nation to
remember that God is our hope. They put at the center of our hearts
the message that God longs great things for God’s people. God’s hope
for us is a more potent hope than we ourselves often dare. Pauline
Notkoff and her neighbors braved the dangers and the hardships of
leaving family and friends in Poland and coming to a new country
because they had a big dream. Like the girl said, “I don’t go to
America to wash stairs.”
If the word for the day is hope, our faith challenges us this day to
have a big hope. Jeremiah dreams of the Lord’s Day, when God,
through the leader God restores, will “execute justice and
righteousness” in the land. Jesus looks for the dawn of God’s
kingdom. That is a big dream.
After all, why invest your life in a small dream? Why worship a God
interested only in redeeming the edges of life? If God is really
God, then God calls us to a larger, stronger, more transformative
vision of life. We’re not here merely to wash stairs, spiritually
speaking. We’re here to climb every stair that takes us to a fuller
life, a truer life.
In contrast to the woman landing at Ellis Island, I listened to the
radio yesterday as a reporter interviewed a boy waiting to see Santa
at a suburban mall. “What do you want for Christmas?” was her
predictable question. The boy was overwhelmed with possibilities. “I
can’t say. I don’t know. I want everything.” Turning to the boy’s
older brother, she at least got an answer, also predictable. “What
do I want? Two words: video games.” (WCBS, November 28, 2009.) I
don’t fault that child. I note his Christmas wish only because I
think he speaks for all of us.
We live in a world, I suppose, where hope has been replaced by a
greedy but empty selfishness. All too often for us, entertainment
trumps vision. Perhaps our lives are merely too easy, too blessed
already. We need so little, so we no don’t long for either something
better. We’ve settled for less than the very best God has to offer.
We live dream surprisingly mediocre dreams.
If it’s true that our sights are too low, maybe that’s why the
church calls us to this time of imaginative hoping: Not for
possessions, not for trinkets, and not for imitation treasures. No.
Our faith invites us to hope for a better life, a truly better life,
and not for ourselves only but for our neighbors and for our whole
world.
If there is anything for Christians to long for in this season, it
is just this: that we, too, might listen to God’s voice – Jeremiah
heard it; as did Jesus. Maybe we, too, can listen for God’s voice
and see ourselves as part of a new world, immigrants into God’s holy
land, hoping for fulfillment rather than entertainment, imagining
ourselves as the people God already imagines that we might be; and
imagining ourselves living in a world that God waits to build for
us, with our help.
As you come to the communion table today, remember that God longs to
give you more than you know. God hopes you’ll receive nothing less
than God’s very self, offered to us in Christ our Lord, and visible
here in each other, Christ’s very imperfect but very hopeful
followers. We may not be able to imagine that much for ourselves.
We’re all too ready to settle for so much less, in two greedy little
words: More things. Jesus hopes we won’t settle for that. Instead,
Jesus offers his followers true hope, established on two different
words: abundant life.
Maybe we can hope bigger hopes. Maybe, having accepted Christ in our
hearts, we will long for Him in our world, and that will give us a
bigger, fuller hope. And maybe, just maybe, this fuller, richer,
abundant life will come true in him.
I’m not here to wash stairs, at least, not all the time. I think God
has something better in store for me, for you, and for us all.
Today, I will do my best to hope. Today, hope itself invites us to a
new life, and I’m grateful.
Amen.
Mamaroneck United Methodist, November 29, 2009.
|
