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Foundry United Rev. |
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Hope…Even for the Past “Hope and Trust” Sunday, May 6, 2007 |
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Romans 8: 31-39
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“For I am convinced
that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor
things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all
creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus
our Lord.” (Romans 8: 38-39) A half
a century ago Erik Erickson introduced his eight stages of the life cycle. I
learned them in college and again in seminary and, like many of you who learned
them, some of you now in high school, they are a part of the way I think. Each of
the eight stages has a developmental crisis. At every stage we have to decide
within ourselves between two alternative postures toward life. The
first stage takes place between the time of birth and 18 months old. The
decision we make during these first 18 months of our lives is to choose
between an attitude of “basic trust” versus an attitude of “basic distrust.”[i] Within
the first 18 months of our lives we decide whether the universe, other
people, and our own selves are basically trustworthy or basically
untrustworthy. If we
come through this stage of our development too trusting, Erickson suggests
that we might be tempted by a belief that we can gamble and always win, we
might become almost suicidally careless, trusting that everything will come
out fine even if we are irresponsible.[ii] If we
come through this stage too untrusting, Erickson says, we will tend to
withdraw within ourselves and be at odds with ourselves and others.[iii] A
therapist reviewing Erickson’s book Identity
and the Life Cycle says that during the first two years of our lives we
become either “polyannas” or paranoids or some combination of both.[iv] But, of
course, we don’t just decide for trust versus distrust once and be done.
Think of it this way – no matter how old we are, no matter how educated or
accomplished we may be, inside each one of us there is a year-old baby
deciding again and again whether the world is basically a trustworthy place,
whether other people are basically trustworthy, whether our own impulses and
feelings are trustworthy. Here
are the two important things I want to emphasize about this: Erickson’s
theory of life’s developmental stages says that for each decision that has to
be made at each stage of life there is a virtue at stake. In this first stage
of life, the one the baby inside each of us is making all the time, trust
versus distrust, the virtue at stake, Erickson says, is hope.[v] Hope is
the result of a year-old infant inside of us making a primal decision that
the universe, other people, and our own selves are basically trustworthy.
Without an attitude of basic trust, it is very difficult to be hopeful. If I read
him correctly, while Erickson did not believe that only religious people choose
an attitude of basic trust, he did believe that to trust or not to trust is a
religious decision.[vi]
One of
the questions religion helps us address is whether we choose to believe that
the universe, other people and our own selves are basically trustworthy or
not. And one of the results of choosing a basic attitude of trust is that it
makes us hopeful. “For I am convinced
that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor
things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all
creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus
our Lord.” (Romans 8: 38-39) So, it
is an interesting question, isn’t it? Just how much am I willing to trust the
universe? Do I believe the source of
the universe is basically benevolent and caring or is it cold and
indifferent? How
much am I willing to trust other people? Are people basically good and decent
or are they selfish and brutish? How
much am I willing to trust myself? Am I basically capable, reasonable and
humane with good impulses or am I selfish, greedy and mean with sinful
impulses? It is
possible to answer these questions in a “Pollyanna” way. We can choose to be
naďve and innocent – as though we did not live in a world of tornados and
disasters, violence, disease, and war. We can be overly trusting of others
and make ourselves victims. We can be overly trusting of our own selves and
lose our capacity for self-examination and self-criticism and
self-regulation. But the
much greater danger is that we can allow the crosses of the world to cause us
to be basically distrusting of life and other people and our own selves. We
can become hopeless. And, if
Erickson is right, the decision is being made not so much by our mature
intelligent selves, but by the one-year old inside us. This is
why I am coming to believe that the non-verbal pre-intelligent part of our
lives is much more important than many of us realize. Very primal parts of
life are essential for our hopefulness. Tasting
our food, holding hands and being hugged by people who love us, playing,
listening to music without worrying about the words – all those kinds of
things that happen at a one-year old level are very important foundations for
hope, no matter how old or accomplished or busy we become. The
same thing applies in our religious lives, I think. Being tenderly washed,
bread and wine, music, simple repetitive prayers, playing. Sometimes the
question isn’t what we believe in our minds, but what we believe in the
one-year-old self within us. Someone
said to me not long ago that one of the things he missed about no longer
being Catholic was the basins of water at the door and touching the water
onto his forehead every time he came into church. I wish we Protestants were
better at this kind of basic reminder of the presence of a trustworthy God. Bill
Coffin used to say, “Faith is not believing without proof, it is trusting
without reservation.”[vii]
Although it can be influenced by the intellect, trusting happens at a deeper
level than the intellectual; which is perhaps why Jesus said it is necessary
to become like children to enter the “For I am convinced
that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor
things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all
creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus
our Lord.” (Romans 8: 38-39) This
conviction that the universe, and other people and our own selves are
basically trustworthy – that God is for us and not against us – happens deep
within our inner child. It is the source of our hope. Erik
Erickson said that there is a linguistic connection between the words “hope”
and “hop.” Hope, he said, allows us to take leaps. Hope, he says, is the
source of imagination and initiative.[viii]
When we are in danger of losing hope, he said, we must be restored by
“competent consolation.” I can’t
remember who I heard say it, but I remember hearing someone comparing us in
church to a child in the park with a parent, a mother perhaps. The child
starts out playing near the mother and then wanders a little bit away, until
he realizes he has gone perhaps too far and runs back to make sure his mother
is still there. Then he begins to play again, and maybe this time he falls,
and he runs back to his mother, who brushes his off and tells him he is okay,
and after some cuddling and reassurance he begins to play again and wanders
of again. This is
what our spiritual life is like. We take hops and leaps into the world, but
come back again and again to be reminded that the universe is trustworthy,
despite the bruises and wounds. So we
gather again this morning to taste bread and wine. To remember that the
universe is basically trustworthy, others are basically trustworthy, we
ourselves are basically trustworthy. We remember this no so much with our
intellect as with the child within. We choose trust so that we might have
hope. “For I am convinced
that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor
things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all
creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus
our Lord.” (Romans 8: 38-39) www.foundryumc.org |
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