Active Hope
Active Hope
February 1, 2026
Minister: Rev. JT Smiedendorf
Readings: John 1:1-12
Download a printable PDF of this sermon here.
CENTRAL FOCUS:
To introduce Active Hope as an expression of a faithful inspiration and integrity-based form of hope and action, especially necessary in difficult times of anxiety
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God…
These are the words of our ancient tradition.
May the Living Word of God in Scripture be alive within us, among us, and beyond us.
It only took 108 years. The Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 1908 and then again in 2016. For fans like me, for decades, hope was hard to come by, and when it did appear was often bitterly deflated by late season and playoff events.
This is hope that is based on favorable outcomes.
Interestingly to me, I learned of the Cubs World Series win while I was at the Standing Rock Lakota Reservation with my wife, Allison, protesting the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Getting the Cubs news while I was at Standing Rock was a powerful teaching of perspective about what really matters and also a profound teaching that hope was nurtured best beyond the likelihood of a favorable outcome.
At the camp in Standing Rock, it was actually more accurate to say that we were protectors more than protestors. We were for something first and then, because of that, against something. Our mantra was “water is life,” mni wiconi. That gathering was a prayer meeting where the prayer fire never went out and the hope was always to protect the water and therefore to protect life. The legal system had conspired against the Lakota, and law enforcement was well funded and equipped with vehicles, personnel, and plenty of weapons to protect the pipeline meant for oil. In that time, the likelihood of success seemed low.
That gathering at Standing Rock was a place and time to learn about active hope. Minneapolis is such a time and place now.
I learned the term ‘active hope’ from a book by the late Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone titled, “Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy.”
‘Business as usual’ has created a mess of environmental systems, economic systems, and fostered the rise of authoritarian movements in the world. Macy and Johnstone get us right to the point of their book with the subtitle “how to face the mess we’re in without going crazy.” For if we really faced the truth of it, it could drive us to madness, certainly to despair and heartbreak. Our collective behavior seems crazy. Our prospects for change often dim.
If you don’t know her, the late Joanna Macy was a systems theorist, ecology leader, and a Buddhist teacher. I find her trustworthy for those reasons and also for the reason that this teaching about active hope resonates with the stories of faith in our Scriptures and in the lives of so many of our Saints. It is in our Scripture stories and the stories of the Saints that I see the kind of active hope that Macy talks about.
What is active hope?
Well, it’s not hoping that the Cubs will win. That’s a form of passive hope of some outcome outside of me happening. In fact, active hope is not based on the likelihood of an outcome at all, rather it is hope rooted in a vision of what we long for, or in the case of the people of faith, what God longs for and calls us to. You could call it the Realm of God or the kin-dom of God or the Beloved Community (as Dr. King was fond of calling it). It is that vision of blessing and fullness and wholeness, that vision of justice and peace and the integrity of creation of which God dreams and to which God calls us.
Active hope is rooted in this vision and out of it grows action, action that is in integrity with that vision, fed by that vision. Not unlike the way that Jesus so often taught that the Realm of God is already here, practicing active hope means that we are living out the values or participating in the energies of that Realm here and now. Through our presence, our choices, and our actions, we can live in that only partially realized Realm already. We act to bring that Divine vision further into being, not calculating the likelihood of a short term or even an ‘in our lifetime’ outcome.
Active hope, then, is a practice—something we do with our imagination and actions. It is not about how we feel things might likely turn out. It is about what we are committed to and what we do. It is about what we cultivate in ourselves. Staying connected with Divine vision, and acting for it, no matter the situation, keeps us from becoming hopeless or even lifeless in the face of this mess. Says Macy,
“Of all the dangers we face, from climate chaos to nuclear war, none is so great as the deadening of our response.”
A few moments ago, the first 12 verses of the Gospel of John were read. This poetic prologue from John’s community is a wondrous, mystical presentation of the coming of the intangible divine into the tangible incarnate world. In this case, through the person of Jesus who became recognized as a Divine Christ Presence. We can talk about high ideals, grand design, and expansive patterns, but that does not matter much to the life of Creation unless it is experienced, embodied, and expressed, unless it is lived in this complex messy world. It is one thing to talk about love and another to live it out, to incarnate it. In John’s prologue we have this amazing poetic summation that the Word became flesh and lived with the people. “And the darkness could not overcome it,” says John.
Active hope is like that. Incarnate. Fleshy. Earthy.
It’s like bringing these great aspirations right down into the messiness and even the darkness of the world in our lives. It is about choosing faith, choosing a trust in the way of Jesus and the good news of God even though the outcome is uncertain at best and doubtful at worst.
Our tradition is full of situations where it seems there is no way, but somehow God makes a way when the people act. There were the Hebrew people chased by pharaoh’s army and pinned up against a great body of water with nowhere to go, but, as an ancient Jewish interpretive story says, God made a way only after someone went into the water up to their neck. There was the story of Jesus surrounded by an angry mob in his hometown intent on throwing him off a cliff, but somehow Jesus moved and passed through them. Over 70 years ago, there was a woman named Rosa who sat down on a bus where she was not supposed to sit, where they said she would never be allowed to sit, yet somehow she sat, Spirit moved, and people of color found a way to act into their hopes and, indeed, did sit in the front of the bus, and then vote, and then go to any school.
Learning and practicing active hope is timely for there are many reasons to not hope if one is basing hope on the likelihood of a good outcome. Yet, our faith tradition doesn’t say that life is easy or that life unfolds with simple, predictable steps of linear progress toward goodness and liberation, especially in times like these. It does say that faithful people act and then surprising things can happen.
The irony here is that finding Active Hope, facing problems, those seemingly intractable difficulties, asks us not to focus first on the problems, on what is wrong, but on what is right, what is worthy, what is beautiful, what is of value that is already present. Then Active Hope invites us to build the base of our faith-filled reality with gratitude. And like Active Hope itself, gratitude is a practice, a learnable way of seeing and living. Gratitude is a basic spiritual practice across traditions. It is the valuing of what is already present that inspires us to protect it, to act for it, to make the changes necessary to nurture it and preserve it.
We need hope, my friends, to respond faithfully to our situation, and we need it to be active hope. And active hope is alive right here in Minneapolis and here at Plymouth Congregational whenever people bag groceries and deliver them to those too afraid to come out of their homes, whenever we watch out for our neighbors and escort them to and from work, whenever we feel our feelings and pray our prayers of love and lament, whenever we stand up to dehumanization with acts of re-humanization.
Oh, and in case you might have forgotten about Standing Rock where so many were bravely opposing the Keystone XL pipeline, let me remind you that in July of 2021, 5 years after we were praying and protecting the waters, the company sponsoring the Keystone XL pipeline declared the project dead.
So remember, our stories of faith are full of people wondering how they would continue, how they would find a way where there was no way, how they would get through a tight spot. Our stories of faith are full of ordinary people just like us, doubting and limited, but who found a way through by participating in God’s hopes and then rising up, acting them into being, such that the darkness could not overcome their active hope. May we go and do likewise.
AMEN.