The Promise Lives With You Now
Rev. Dr. DeWayne L. Davis
This Week at Plymouth, July 19, 2024
“May it be an evening star
Shines down upon you
May it be when darkness falls
Your heart will be true
You walk a lonely road
Oh, how far you are from home . . .
A promise lives within you now”
—Enya, “May it Be”
I was 16 when I first discovered the single-volume Lord of the Rings novel at the local library. It was a thick and intimidating book. It took me three visits to the library before I finally opened the book and read it. Over the next ten years, I revisited it periodically, and even though I never finished the book, it left a lasting impression on me. The story conveyed a message that has stuck with me: even if those in power dismiss and underestimate you, it doesn’t mean you’re powerless. In the story, it was the Hobbits—a small and peaceful race of people journeying through a world overwhelmed by powerful, evil forces and seen as unimportant—who ultimately saved the world.
Recently, I have noticed how our political discourse and the horse race coverage of the elections underestimate the voters. Too often, the media portray our political fortunes as inevitably failing and dissatisfying, with only one person or a few people holding the nation’s fate in their hands. The novelist Marilyn Robinson describes the current media narrative as having “a tone of implied dissatisfaction . . . an attitude, not a reaction to actual circumstance, so there is no possibility of rebuttal.” One could almost forget that our democracy still affords the people avenues of action, protest, deliberation, and collaboration to imagine and achieve a different political and social order. The people are not powerless. Autocracy and illiberalism are not inevitable. As of now, the people still have a say in what kind of nation we will be. The promise lives with us now, if not with those we’ve entrusted with power.
In the Gospels, Jesus and his disciples never allowed the power of the empire to dictate their fate or faith. Acts of healing, hospitality, and compassion galvanized and inspired people who were discounted and underestimated to live out the reign of God in an age of domination, oppression, and exploitation. The promise, God’s promise, lived within them. In the face of overwhelming power, it is tempting to assume that we are powerless to change the situation, a fatalism that has a way of robbing the people of hope, faith, and urgency. Don’t underestimate our power. In one of the Oscar-nominated songs for the Lord of the Rings films, the artist Enya sings, “May it be when darkness falls your heart will be true . . . A promise lives within you now.” It is not too late to shift the atmosphere in our political life or arrest the nation’s slide into autocracy. The power and the promise are within us. Amen.