Horse Manure and Hope
The Rev. Dr. Robert R. Hansel
Interim Rector
Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee

(This sermon is also available in audio)

Well, we've made it. Today is the last day of Calvary's 2002 Lenten Preaching Series, a forty-day marathon of religious and spiritual discipline. We have heard from some of the country's most influential and powerful speakers who have been invited here to help us reflect on God's continuing effort to reach the church and its members, recalling us to the agenda of love, compassion and peace in the midst of these troubled times. The journey has been strengthening and uplifting as we have heard time and time again of how God stands with us in the midst of doubt, terror and pain so that we might make sense of so much of our daily existence that is confusing and seemingly pointless. Day after day we have come into the peace and quiet of this beautiful church to be challenged and inspired, to have some brief respite from the shouts, sirens, and honking of horns in the streets just outside. Again and again, we have gone back into that urban pressure-cooker that we know as the City of Memphis, wondering to ourselves if there will ever be any resolution for all our needs and problems: inadequate schools, drug addition, racial misunderstandings, taxation issues, homelessness, disease…Will we ever come to terms with all this stuff and lay claim to the elusive Vision of the Kingdom of God?

Those of us who live in large cities these days tend to think that our contemporary urban problems are strictly a modern phenomenon. It takes a real act of concentration not to imagine that all those who were on this earth before us lived simpler lives, free of noise, pollution, traffic snarls, trash collection, commuting, taxes, and political corruption. That idyllic picture, we realize with only a little reflection, is not accurate at all. In point of fact, every major civilization since the beginning of time, when population growth reached a certain point, has built cities and immediately encountered complex social problems--Egyptians, Mayans, Europeans, and Americans.

I wonder if you're aware that the very first Urban Planning Conference actually was convened over a hundred years in New York City. The year was 1898. Representatives came from London, Boston, Moscow, and Paris. The announced theme of that gathering was how to address the challenge of maintaining any sense of human community in the midst of the sprawling growth of each bustling commercial metropolis. The concern everywhere in those days was that cities were becoming impersonal, cruel environments in which there was no sense of human connection, no sense of belonging. So the delegates came and they prepared for a ten-day program packed with presentations, workshops, and new insights to carry back home to revitalize the emerging capitals of the world. There was a strong current of optimism as that first Urban Planning Conference got underway in New York City.

Three days later you may be surprised to learn that the world's first Urban Planning Conference abruptly adjourned. The delegates all just packed their bags and headed home. Why? Because they had run into an impossibly insoluble problem--horse manure. Now, I'm not talking about the quality of the presentations or workshops, nor the credibility of the expert speakers. I'm talking about the real thing.

Even as they were meeting there in New York City, 25,000 tons of horse manure was piling up, each and every day, on the streets of the Borough of Manhattan alone! On the streets of every city in every country all over the world, the amount of horse manure that was being deposited and had to be removed every day, was beyond calculation. The smell was awful, flies were everywhere, the soiling of dress hems for women was intolerable, and the cost of removal was staggering. All aspects of transportation and commerce required more and more horses and, as the worlds' cities daily added more population, more and more horses became necessary. The enormous challenge of how to house, feed, care for and clean up after millions of horses was becoming a worldwide nightmare (no pun intended). The ratio of horses to humans was required to be nearly one-to-one...and the problem was growing worse everyday. As you can quickly figure out yourself, it was a problem with no solution, so the Conference simply gave up and adjourned.

Ironically, unknown to our learned, but thoroughly dispirited urban planners, as they headed out of town that day, way out in northern Michigan a young man was putting the finishing touches on a primitive mechanical contraption he called "the internal combustion engine." It was to be the key component in producing the first practical motor vehicle. In a few short years the "impossibly insoluble" problem of horse manure that had spelled doom for the world's first Urban Planning Conference, would be completely forgotten and, in fact, totally irrelevant. The biggest issue facing the world suddenly just disappeared.

The reason I tell you all this, of course, is to remind you that we human beings are forever running up against the wall of our own limited capacities--the limits of imagination, resources, vision, energy and willpower. We're pretty adept at getting frustrated, throwing in the towel, and walking away from problems. We declare the challenge impossible to resolve and just pack our bags and walk away. It keeps on happening in human history and you've probably already registered on the fact that yesterday's horse manure is today's auto emission smog. Today's twenty-first Century urban planners don't have, as yet, any good answer for that one either. But beyond our human limitations, there is yet a presence and power that moves history forward, through and beyond each challenge that we see as being an impossible obstacle. There is a force that operates in spite of international terrorism, the biological scourges of cancer and AIDS, the specter of famine and hunger. Do you suppose that God's vision and plan doesn't extend for years and centuries and eons beyond the present-day? God has promised a day of fulfillment--a time when our fragile existence will be caught up in a return to that state of unity, harmony, and peace for which it and we were originally created.

What I'm talking about is not obvious. There are lots of good sound reasons to think that mankind will blow itself up or so pollute the planet that it will no longer be able to sustain life. But that grim prospect has to be posed over another equally possible alternative--the one that we find deeply imbedded in Holy Scripture. Those of us who are fortunate enough to understand something of the ways of God know the reality of Hope. It is about Christian Hope and I mean the real thing-not some kind of mindless, air-headed, phony whistling-in-the-dark, Pollyanna sort of 'Gosh, I sure hope things work out OK' childishness that we too often equate with "hope." No, I want to talk to you on this final day of Calvary's 2002 Lenten Preaching Series about placing your trust and confidence in the One who is truly worthy of our trust--the One in whom we can confidently Hope.

About the same time that our intrepid urban planners were giving up in New York City and heading home to the manure-covered streets of their various world capitols, not only was young Henry Ford hard at work still seeking a solution. There was a young scholar of academic distinction named William James who was putting the finishing touches on a volume titled, Varieties of Religious Experience. His was a broad vision that was able to see beyond the individual differences in how the people of the world expressed their own understandings of a force or power beyond this world. Here, in a nutshell, is what William James observed:
There seems to be a universal human tendency toward a sense of unity and purpose, a basic optimism that says, "No matter how life appears to be going in terms of its everyday events, no matter how negative or painful the immediate moment, still it is possible to maintain an underlying confidence, a sense of greater presence that sustains life and hope." Did you hear that? "A sense of greater presence."

That pretty well describes my own experience of God and explains exactly why I have Hope. God challenges us to put aside pretending, to face life squarely and realistically, to recognize that it truly can be ruthlessly hard. That's not going to change anytime soon. But what can change is our awareness that we're not alone. God is with us in the very midst of all the chaos and confusion. God accepts and suffers the pain right along with us. God doesn't promise to wave some magic wand that will miraculously solve the problems or remove the obstacles. What God does promise is to stand with us, to be there right alongside us at every moment. We have a powerful ally and friend who will not abandon us and that's why we can look at the present and the future with genuine Hope. William James had it right: "No matter how life appears to be going in terms of everyday event, no matter how negative or painful the immediate moment, still it is possible to maintain an underlying confidence, a sense of greater presence that sustains life and hope."

For the past forty days we have been gathering here everyday, trying to gain new insight into the being and purposes of God. While that task is not an easy one and can never be fully realized, the overwhelmingly consistent message is that God has not given up on us, no matter how much we may have given up on God. Today we arrive at the very gateway into Holy Week and Easter. We come to a bottom-line message of Hope. No matter what is happening in our world or in our own life, we can be assured that God is in charge so that, beyond the limited horizon of our own frail eyesight, eternal designs are at work.

Listen to these four thousand year old words that have come down to the People of God from the prophet Isaiah:

Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will rise upon you and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes round about and see; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from far, and your daughters shall be carried in the arms. Then you shall see and be radiant, your heart shall thrill and rejoice; because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you. The sun shall no longer be your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give light to you by night; but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning be ended. Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land for ever, the shoot of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified. The least one shall become a clan, and the smallest one a mighty nation; I am the Lord; in its time I will hasten it. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of prisons to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn in Zion---to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called Oaks of Righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified."

That ringing promise from God has never been revoked. There is every reason to believe and to hope that what God wills, God does. Isaiah's words are, throughout, a message as real and alive today as when they were first spoken.

Isaiah is not some unrealistic pie-in-the-sky person who doesn't know what's going on. He lived in some very tough times in which political oppression, terror, and warfare were very much the order of the day. His witness to us across the centuries is that God knows what's happening and God lives it right along with us. And that's good enough, if you can face into the turmoil confident of God's presence. It shines from the cross, providing just enough light for us to work by.

I want to close by asking you to take a fresh look at the week ahead--the days we call "Holy Week" and think of them as an exercise in Hope-building. The terrible events of betrayal, suffering, and death need to be seen as a clear demonstration and proof of why all of us can place absolute trust and confidence in God. The Hope of the Church--and, indeed, of the world--is that the same God who does not give up his love, forgiveness, and compassion for us, in spite of our inflicting upon Him the very world that the world has to offer, is still working out the plan for our salvation. Once again this year, throughout Holy Week, the Truth of God's unconditional love will dawn upon us… schooling us, challenging us, literally daring us to make a commitment, a commitment never to lose Hope, never to abandon the struggle, never to believe for a moment that God will not make good on those ancient promises spoken to us by Isaiah. Holy Week and the Easter that lies just beyond, could be for you the place where the promises of God evoke the promise in you--the promise of a life lived thankfully and hopefully, reflecting for all the world to see the beauty of God's peace.

Let us pray:

These are the words of a beautiful Celtic prayer that speak to me deeply of God's unchanging power and the Hope each of us may rightly place in his will for us. May this prayer come alive for you this day, offering up everything that we have learned this Lent.

Son of God, perform a miracle for me: change my heart. You whose crimson blood redeems mankind, whiten my heart. It is you who makes the sun bright and the ice sparkle; you who makes the rivers flow and the salmon leap. Your skilled hand makes the nut tree blossom, and the wheat turn golden; your spirit composes the songs of the birds and the buzz of the bees. Your creation is a million wondrous miracles, beautiful to behold. I ask of you just one more miracle: beautify my soul. Amen.

Copyright 2002 Calvary Episcopal Church