Sunday, July 3, 2011: Zechariah 9:9-12; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

I had just arrived in a new parish when a member told me how, in a horrific flash of fewer than two years, her husband died, her son was incarcerated for drug possession and her daughter committed suicide. The woman was disconsolate, drowning in grief and despairing of her empty, painful future. That's when her pastor dared to say something so bold, so outrageous, that she never forgot it. "Thank God every day," he counseled her, "even and especially when you can scarcely find a reason to do so." She admitted that there were many days when she couldn't manage to thank God for anything, but she summoned the courage to try, and in time thanks became a daily practice and a source of strength, hope and eventually even joy for her—not to mention a profound and unforgettable lesson for her new pastor many years later.

"Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!" says the bold, insensitive prophet to a people mired in the desolate aftermath of exile (Zech. 9:9–12). Those who had been under Persia's benevolent but powerful thumb returned to find their homeland of Zion a gaunt skeleton of its former glory. God's temple was rubble; the infrastructure had crumbled; the landscape had been ruined by destruction, decay and disorder. Local politics were unstable under the hot breath of empire; rebuilding efforts were slow and ineffective in a sagging, unsteady economy. The glorious past was dead, and the future was bleak. In the prophet's poignant phrase, the people were "prisoners of hope." The people of northern Japan, Haiti and the lower ninth ward of New Orleans know only too well the bitter taste of such confines—and how screechingly off-key the prophet's voice sounds. Rejoice greatly? Thank God every day?

But the bold, insensitive, barely believable counsel of scripture looks at the future not through the eyes of our present time, but through the eyes of God's future. This is especially difficult when the present is dark and the future is so far beyond the horizon that we can scarcely make out even the faintest glow of its light. It is then that we must rely on God to send us prophets who can share with us a reality beyond our reach, the cause and the case for faith, the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Heb. 11:1).