It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.  Whenever I hear that saying, it returns me to my college days, working as the campus coordinator for Amnesty International.  I had the shirt and the bumper sticker – an image of a candle, wrapped in barbed wire, with a flame stubbornly shining through.  Amnesty International, which works tirelessly for human rights in the United States and around the world, has made this quote its mantra: It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

            It is a statement of hope.  You can light a candle, I can light a candle, and together, we can bring light where there is suffering.  There may be barbed wire wrapped around that candle, but it can still shine.

            And yet, hope is not always so simple.  It would be nice if hope could encapsulated in that powerful image – a light that keeps on shining, a candle that defies imprisonment, a flame that will not be put out.  But the reality is that a strong wind can blow out the candle.  The reality is that when we light a candle in the darkness, we may see something even worse than we imagined.  The reality is that hope makes us vulnerable, hope opens us up to failure and disappointment.

            Living in hope is no fluffy thing – For if your hope does not make you vulnerable, it is simply a reasonable expectation.  And if your hope doesn’t lead you to action, it is simply a cherished wish.  Real hope can make us prisoners – prisoners of hope, as we read in our text   from Zechariah.

            I have to admit that when I first read our text for this week, I really didn’t like that image.  A prisoner of hope – I don’t want to be a prisoner of anything.  But the more I read, the more I realized how hope can imprison us – we cannot escape from hope, from the desire, the faith, the assurance that things can be better.  And if we do escape, if we give up on hope, we don’t have to face disappointment, we don’t have to face failure.  Instead, we live with the expectation that things cannot get better, that things will not get better, and so we escape the prison of hope – we escape the possibility of disappointment when we give up on hope.

            Zechariah is writing to a people who are right on the cusp of this despair, and he calls them instead to be prisoners of hope – to return to their stronghold, to return to God, to believe that peace is coming.  It is hard for this group of people to have hope.   They have faced violence and destruction; their sacred temple has been demolished; they have lived through the exile, with hope of return.  And yet, now that they have returned, nothing is the same.  It is taking so long to rebuild, everything is in ruins, there is no Davidic King on the throne, it not at all what they had dreamed.  Yes, the exile is over, yes, they have returned to Jerusalem, yes, they are rebuilding the temple, but there is still suffering, there is still violence, and the temple is still not restored.

            And so the prophet offers a declaration of joy, a declaration of hope, a declaration of promise, that the king is coming.  That he will bring peace, that he will lift up the oppressed, that he will rely on God, that he will be gentle and humble.  This king will come on a donkey, an animal that is associated not with the business of war and death, but an animal that plays a key role in the business of life.  Rachel Baard writes, “The donkey is an animal used on the farm to help in the production of food and in the town to carry people and goods.  It is the very antithesis of the horse, at that time largely an animal used for war.  The colt symbolizes the very acts that the king is to perform…taking away the chariots and warhorses and breaking the battle bows.  His arrival and the mode of his arrival announce the end of war and the beginning of a universal peace under his rule.”   

            The Israelites have been through so much pain; the destruction of Judah, the desecration of the Temple, the exile from their cherished land.  And here is Zechariah, declaring that peace will come, that life will reign, that God will provide.  Zechariah is again asking them to live in hope.  He says, “Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double.”  Zechariah calls us as well – return to our faith, find our strength in God, and allow ourselves to be imprisoned by hope.

            The Psalmist offers a similar invitation.  Praise God, who is gracious and merciful.  Praise God, who is compassionate and powerful.  Praise God, who is faithful and good.  Put your hope in God, who will uphold all who are falling.  Put your hope in God, who raises up all who are bowed down.

            This Psalm was written around the same time as Zachariah.  The exile is over, but the Davidic monarchy has disappeared, and Judah has lost its power.  The people are falling, the people are bowed down, the people are sick of disappointment and loss.  And here goes the Psalmist, inviting them to praise and hope.  Why should we hope?  Why should we praise?  There is no more Davidic king.  We lost our homes, we lost our lives, and nothing is the same.  Why should we believe that anything will ever get better?

            This Psalm reminds God’s people who they are and whose they are.  It calls them back into the story of God’s people – a story of pain and redemption, loss and deliverance, exile and return.  Even though things are hard, even though suffering abounds, the Psalmist promises that God will raise up all who are bowed down.

            During Gladys Aylward’s harrowing journey out of war-torn Yang Chen, she faced one morning with no apparent hope of reaching safety. A 13-year old girl tried to comfort her by saying, "Don’t forget what you told us about Moses in the wilderness," to which Gladys replied, "Yes, my dear, but I am not Moses." The young girl replied, "Yes, but God is still God."  Like this young girl, the Psalmist declares that God is still God, and there is reason for hope and praise.

            Hope is not cheap. It is risky.  It makes us vulnerable.  It sets us up for disappointment.  It demands that we take action.  And yet, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. “Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.”  Hope is not a fluffy feeling that we get; hope is a transformative, world-changing risk that we take. 

          The word for hope in Amharic, the language spoken in Ethiopia, is Tesfa.  And in Lola House, a small orphanage in northern Ethiopia, there is now a little boy, 3 months old, whose name is Tesfa.  Tesfa represents the hope of many - my hope, my friends’ hope, and the hope of a whole country.  Tesfa is an HIV positive child who just came to live in Lola House, a new orphanage in Northern Ethiopia.  Now, I have told many of you about Lola House, about Abebe Fantahoun, and his dream of providing food, medicine, and love to children who would otherwise die of AIDS.  And in the past two years, as Abebe has lived in this hope, Lola House became a reality and it now houses 14 children, who receive medication, food, and love, where death had been the only option.

            While many of you know Abebe’s story, how he became orphaned during the famine in Ethiopia, and now spends his life caring for HIV-positive orphans, I want to tell you the story of Tim and Allie, and the risky hope that called them to help Abebe.  Tim and Allie traveled to Ethiopia four years ago, and they met Abebe while volunteering at an orphanage in the capitol.  Over time, as they worked with Abebe, they heard him speak about his dreams of starting an orphanage for HIV positive children in Tigray.  The children there were dying, without medicine, without treatment, and he wanted to do something about it.  But he needed help.  He needed money.  And that is where Tim and Allie came in.

            They could have claimed that AIDS in Africa is simply too big a problem.  They could have resisted trusting Abebe, a man they had only known for a few months.  They could have shrugged off the proposition, deciding that someone else could do it.  But instead, they gave into the risky hope – the hope that Abebe’s dream could be trusted, the hope that lives could be saved, the hope that the medicines would become available.

            And so Tim and Allie went back to the United States.  They established a non-profit, raised money, developed publicity, and started to send funds to Abebe.  In a very short period of time, the orphanage became a reality, the medicine became available, and the children appeared at the door.  Abebe began offering food, medicine, education, love, and shelter, because Allie and Tim took the risk of living in hope, of trusting Abebe and hoping that his dream could come true.

            On the walls of Lola House, painted in big letters, you can read the phrase, “I am a child with hope.”  Tesfa and all the other children have hope because others took the risk of living in hope.

            When it comes to these children, we are prisoners of hope.  How can we escape the hope that they will survive – that the medications will be there, that the food will be there, that the home will be there – that Tesfa will live.  We are imprisoned by this hope and we cannot escape it.  And so we return to the stronghold and we hold on.  We cling tight to the hope that will not let us go.  It absolutely makes us vulnerable – just like Tim and Allie were vulnerable.  But with this hope, with this vulnerability, miracles can occur, as we can cherish a little baby named Tesfa, who is alive.

            Here at Edgewood, we live in a legacy of hope.  This church was founded during the Civil Rights movement and it lived out its hope for justice in risky and world changing ways.  In fact, many of the folks here at Edgewood played a large role in desegregating East Lansing.  When this church was established over 60 years ago, East Lansing realtors had an unwritten code that houses in this city would only be sold to white people.  In order to expose this reality and demand change, individuals in this church took significant risks.  White couples and black couples posed as prospective buyers and inquired about the very same homes.  They documented their actions, and the responses, and proved that realtors refused to show homes to the black couples, while they were happy to show the same homes to those who were white.  The leaders in the congregation took this investigation to the city council and succeeded in creating an anti-discrimination policy for housing in East Lansing.    

            They took a risk – certainly there were those who wanted to keep East Lansing houses segregated.  There was the very real chance that they would not succeed, that they would face disappointment, harassment, and failure.  But they lived in the hope that things could be better, that justice could be a reality here in East Lansing.  And because of that hope, things changed, and we all benefit from this legacy.

            It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.  But every time we light a candle, every time we allow ourselves to hope, we are vulnerable.  And this very vulnerability – this real, lived hope – is what changes the world.  This real, lived hope – is what changes our lives.

            I want you to think about it for a minute.  Where, in your lives do you speak of hope, but not really live it?  Is hope just wishful thinking?  Or can you take the risk of hope, the risk of disappointment, the risk of vulnerability?  Can you trust someone else, can you hope for the best, while knowing that you may face disappointment? 

            Our faith in God demands that we live in hope.  For the promise of Zechariah is this – God’s light will shine, God’s peace will reign, God’s love will win.  And in the meantime, we will face disappointment, we will face failure, we will face pain.  But we get the honor and the privilege of participating in the triumph of love, when we live in hope, and let God work through our vulnerability.

            And so may we have the courage to light candles in the darkness, even when the wind is blowing.  Amen.