Practicing Love in Community

Practicing Love in Community

Matthew 1:18-25; 1 Peter 2:21-23[1]

On this fourth Sunday of Advent, we celebrate the love that we have received through Jesus Christ. We just sang it together: “Love is the gift of Christmas.” As our Gospel lesson puts it, Jesus was born to be the one to “save us from our sins,” and to be “God-who-is-with-us” (Mt 1:21, 23). That’s what “Immanuel” means: “God-who-is-with-us.” That shouldn’t come as a surprise to us. We know that the heart of our faith is about sharing God’s love with others. We know that Jesus came to embody that love in a way that would empower us to put that love into practice. The idea isn’t a new one. And it wasn’t even a new one for Jesus. In our faith tradition, Moses taught it three thousand years ago: “you shall love your neighbor as yourselves” (Lev. 19:18). Throughout the centuries there have been many who have taught the practice of compassion. What was new was the way Jesus embodied it, not just as a human being, but as the one who is “God with us.” He put God’s love for us on display in the way he loved all those he encountered, both friends and so-called “enemies.”

Yes, Jesus embodied love even for his so-called “enemies.” Perhaps the most dramatic way he did that was by praying from the cross, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Lk 23:34). But he also embodied it by never giving up on anyone, even his “enemies.” And he taught us to do the same. Others have also taught that. They taught their followers to practice compassion for all people and embodied that compassion even for those who could have been considered their “enemies.” However, I believe it’s true that Jesus was the first to say explicitly, “you shall love your enemies” (Mt 5:43-44). It’s probably an understatement to say that’s not an easy path to take. For Jesus, loving even his “enemies” meant giving up his life on the cross. Because showing God’s love even for one’s “enemies” cuts against the grain of everything we do by instinct.

As we continue to make our journey through Advent to the celebration of Christmas with Henri Nouwen as our guide, I think we might find his ideas challenging on this day. He described the kind of love Jesus embodied by saying, “Whenever, contrary to the world’s vindictiveness, we love our enemy, we exhibit something of the perfect love of God, whose will is to bring all human beings together as children of one Father. Whenever we forgive instead of getting angry at one another, bless instead of cursing one another, tend one another’s wounds instead of rubbing salt into them, hearten instead of discouraging one another, give hope instead of driving one another to despair, hug instead of harassing one another, welcome instead of cold-shouldering one another, thank instead of criticizing one another, praise instead of maligning one another… in short, whenever we opt for and not against one another, we make God’s unconditional love visible; we are diminishing violence and giving birth to a new community.” 

Nouwen gets uncomfortably specific about what it means to follow Jesus by loving our “enemies.” It means forgiving instead of holding onto anger. It means healing wounds instead of rubbing salt into them. It means hugging instead of harassing. These are all incredibly counterintuitive. When someone hurts us, we instinctively want to protect ourselves. We do that with anger. When we rub salt in the wounds of someone who has wounded us, we’re protecting ourselves. When we criticize and turn a cold shoulder and speak of them in hurtful and harmful ways, we’re protecting ourselves. But, following Jesus, Nouwen invites us to take a different path. He invites us to “opt for and not against one another,” to choose to be on the side of those whom we perceive to be against us. It’s an astounding thing. And he says that when we make that choice, we are doing something that’s nothing short of miraculous. We’re making “God’s unconditional love visible; we are diminishing violence and giving birth to a new community.”

I think we could be forgiven for thinking that this is all far too much to expect from an ordinary human being. But also I think Nouwen is onto something important here. The love that we celebrate at Christmas is a wonderful gift to us, and we enjoy it. But it’s not just about making ourselves feel better. The love we celebrate at Christmas calls us to take the love that we’ve received from God and turn around and put it into practice for all those around us. Both “friends” and so-called “enemies.” That’s what Jesus did. He didn’t do that to prove that he was so much better than us. He did that to leave us “an example, so that you should follow in his steps” (1 Pet 2:21). And the way he did that was “When he was insulted, he did not reply with insults. When he suffered, he did not threaten revenge” (1 Pet 2:23, CEB).

Perhaps we should all take a moment to let that sink in. When Jesus was insulted, he did not reply with insults. When he suffered, he did not threaten revenge. To borrow Nouwen’s words, when Jesus was met with anger and curses, he did not respond in kind. Instead, he forgave: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing”! And he did that to leave us an example that we should follow in his steps. When Jesus was not only maligned but also falsely accused of the worst they could throw at him, he did not respond with hurtful and harmful accusations in reply. And he did that to leave us an example that we should follow in his steps. When Jesus was subjected to violence, when he was beaten and spat upon and crucified, he did not threaten to get even. He forgave those who were literally stripping his life away. And he did that to leave us an example that we should follow in his steps.

When you think about it that literally, I don’t think we should be surprised if we’re wondering whether Jesus really wanted us to follow his example and practice love like that. It’s understandable. That’s a hard thing to ask, for us to follow that path. But I would say the answer to the question is, “yes.” Yes, indeed. Most definitely. Jesus was “making God’s unconditional love” visible in every way possible, not only by healing the sick and caring for those who were suffering, but also and most particularly by loving his so-called “enemies” enough to forgive them. Enough to give his life for them. That’s a high standard for love. Perhaps the highest the human family has ever seen.

In fact, it’s such a high standard we may want to let ourselves off the hook. After all, can one really expect all this from an ordinary human being? We assume that Jesus loved even his “enemies” because he was much more than an ordinary human being. And we assume that no one would ever expect ordinary human beings like us to live up to such a high standard. But that phrase from Scripture in 1 Peter reminds us that he did all that he did precisely to leave us an example that we should follow in his steps. Yes, I believe Jesus expects us as those who claim to trust in him to literally follow his example and practice love like that toward everyone, even and especially toward those we may consider “enemies.” In fact, I would say that if we truly grasp the extent of God’s unconditional love for us, and the extent to which Jesus calls us to share that same love with everyone, then we really cannot look at anyone as an “enemy.”

When Jesus said, “you shall love your enemies,” he was talking about people who could literally come and take everything away from you by force, including your life. Most of us don’t have to learn to love “enemies” like that. We don’t have to fear that someone will come and invade our home, drag us out, and take our lives away from us. We find it hard enough just to love the people who spread false rumors behind our backs. Or those who rub salt in our wounds or turn a cold shoulder to us instead of standing beside us when we’re struggling. But if that’s where we perceive our “enemies” to be, then that’s where we can begin. We can begin to transform every so-called “enemy” into a friend by extending to them the same unconditional love God has given each one of us in Jesus Christ. When we do that, as Henri Nouwen said, we are not only “making God’s unconditional love visible,” but we’re also “giving birth to a new community.” Think of it: a community where even “enemies” are turned into friends. A community where we don’t even look at anyone as an “enemy,” rather we consider all to be friends. A community where we extend to one another the same unconditional love and acceptance God has given to us. That’s a whole new kind of community. That’s what the love we celebrate at Christmas is about: creating a whole new kind of community where people turn even so-called “enemies” into friends, just like Jesus did.

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[1] © Alan Brehm 2025. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, PhD on 12/21/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Henri Nouwen, Letters to Marc About Jesus, 55.

 

Finding Joy in Community

 Finding Joy in Community

Isaiah 35:1-10; Matthew 11:1-15[1]

As we make our journey through Advent with Henri Nouwen this year, you would think that joy would be the easiest of the four themes to talk about. With the festivities, decorations, music, and parties, we “should” have a lot to be joyful about. But the truth is that for many of us, this is not the “most wonderful time of the year.” Some of us see all the celebrating, all the family gatherings, all the “fun” that everyone else seems to be having, and we feel like we’re on the outside looking in. It can seem like there’s a chain-link fence separating us from everybody who’s having so much fun, and we just can’t find our way in. In fact, for some of us, while we may feel that way most intensely at this time of year, that’s how it seems all year around. We’re aware that there’s joy “out there somewhere,” but we just can’t seem to find it.

I would say that can actually be a failure of community. Yes, it might be the result of that person’s choices. But all too often, in these days, it’s a failure to live together in community in all its different expressions. Families, churches, even towns and cities can be badly divided by everything that’s going on in our world these days. And when we turn on one another, instead of encouraging, affirming, and supporting one another, we can cause great pain. We see it in families that go their separate ways. But what we may not see is that any time we fail to embrace someone enough that they no longer feel like they’re on the outside of that fence looking in, our community has failed. Any time we intentionally shun someone because they’re just “too different” from us, our community has failed. And when that happens, community can become a source of pain instead of a source of joy.

As we look to Henri Nouwen for inspiration this Advent, he says it this way: “In my own community, with many severely handicapped men and women, the greatest source of suffering is not the handicap itself, but the accompanying feelings of being useless, worthless, unappreciated, and unloved. It is much easier to accept the inability to speak, walk, or feed oneself than it is to accept the inability to be of special value to another person. … Instinctively we know that the joy of life comes from the ways in which we live together and that the pain of life comes from the many ways we fail to do that well.”[2] Joy comes from living together in a community where we feel like we belong and we are loved. All too often, the pain in our lives comes from our failure to live together well in community.

As I’ve mentioned before, Henri Nouwen served as the chaplain in a community where cognitively disabled persons and their caregivers lived together. As a Catholic priest, he celebrated the Lord’s Supper every day. As a member of the community he served, he welcomed everyone to take part, regardless of whether they were “worthy.” I would imagine he knew quite well many people who struggled with feeling “useless, worthless, unappreciated, and unloved.” Given my personal experience with communities of mentally handicapped persons, they seem to have an intuitive grasp on the fact that “the joy of life comes from the ways in which we live together and that the pain of life comes from the many ways we fail to do that well.” In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they taught Henri that truth.

Those of us who are more “normal” may try to find our joy in other places. We find our “joy” in the level of success we have achieved. And we may try to demonstrate it by the kinds of homes we buy, the kinds of cars we drive, and the kinds of clothes we wear. Or we find our joy in the knowledge that we’re comfortable financially, or in the “busyness” of our social calendar. We may feel like we’ve really “made” it when we get our picture in the paper on the society page. Those kinds of external sources for joy, however, are notoriously unreliable. We never really know what the stock market is going to do. There’ve been times when people have lost a great deal of money in one single day of trading. The market is vulnerable to all kinds of changes, and given the general instability of the world these days, we have to reckon with the possibility that something like that can happen again. Our most prized possessions can literally go up in smoke or in a storm in a matter of minutes. When we make our joy in life dependent on our circumstances we’re skating on thin ice!

In a sense, our Gospel lesson for today addresses this question. John, who identified Jesus as the Messiah when he baptized him, had begun to question his faith. He was in prison, and Jesus wasn’t acting like he expected the Messiah to act. So he sent his disciples to ask, “Are you the one who is supposed to come? Or should we look for someone else?” (Mt 11:3, NIrV). Jesus answered: “Go back to John. Report to him what you hear and see. Blind people receive sight. Disabled people walk. Those who have skin diseases are made ‘clean.’ Deaf people hear. Those who are dead are raised to life. And the good news is preached to those who are poor” (Mt 11:4-5, NIrV). I would say that’s the closest thing we have in Matthew’s Gospel to Jesus claiming that he was indeed the Messiah.

The way he makes that claim is with a summary of the promises of salvation found especially in the book of the prophet Isaiah. We heard some of those promises in our lesson for today: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be opened; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy” (Isa 35:5-6). And Isaiah says that all those who have been “ransomed” by the Lord, which is a way of talking about salvation, will have “everlasting joy” (Isa 35:10). John was in prison. He wondered if he had picked the wrong “horse.” Jesus called John to rejoice because he was indeed fulfilling the promises of God’s salvation.

One of the things that drew me to ask Henri Nouwen to guide us through the season of Advent this year is his deep and firm commitment to the importance of community in all our lives. He saw it firsthand. I think one of the most significant obstacles to finding joy together in community is when we may harbor grudges or bitterness against one another. We all do it. Someone lets us down, someone hurts our feelings, someone fails to live up to our expectations, and we hold a grudge, sometimes for years. But there’s an old saying about that. Holding a bitterness against someone is like drinking poison ourselves and expecting it to hurt someone else. We’re only hurting ourselves. The way to find joy in the community of people who follow Jesus is through forgiveness. Jesus said it: “forgive as you have been forgiven.” We pray it every Sunday, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” The way to find joy in a real-life community of people who let us down, who hurt our feelings, who fall short of our expectations is through forgiveness. It gives us joy, and it gives them joy.  

Most of us have our own reasons for celebrating at this time of the year, whether it’s gathering with family, or the food we enjoy, or the music, or the decorations. But the reason for the joy of the season is because in Jesus Christ God has come to be “with us” in a way that bears our griefs and carries our sorrows, as the prophet Isaiah also says. That’s how we can find our joy together in this community, regardless of our circumstances. We start with the joy we have because God has given us himself in the person of Jesus. But as Henri Nouwen reminds us, we find that joy most fully when we find it together in this community. In this community where we can let one another down, where we can hurt one another’s feelings, where we can fall short of one another’s expectations. In this community we can hold grudges or feel bitter toward one another. In this community where we learn to practice forgiveness.

And it’s here. There’s joy here if we have eyes to see it and ears to hear it. Those of us who can be here on Wednesday evenings experience it every week. Whether it’s around the tables or in a boisterous classroom, whether it’s in the kitchen or in the music room (and we have fun in the music room, make no mistake!). It’s here. We have joy together in this community. We all experience it every Sunday when we gather together. Especially during our greeting time. It’s one of the things I enjoy most about our worship service. If that’s true for you as well, I’m fine with that. The reason is because while Bible teaching is one of the important foundations for Christian community, so is fellowship. It’s through fellowship that we find joy together as a community. We find it around tables enjoying a meal together, or right here in worship, sharing life with one another week after week. There’s joy here. Sometimes we just have to get past the things that are blocking our ability to see that joy, and allow ourselves to experience it.

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[1] © Alan Brehm 2025. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 12/14/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World, 72-73.

 

Finding Peace in Community

Finding Peace in Community

Isaiah 11:1-10[1]

As I mentioned last week, I’m following the lead of one of my favorite authors as we make our journey through Advent this year. I’m asking Henri Nouwen to be our guide as we reflect together on what the themes of Advent—hope, peace, joy, and love—mean for us in our daily living. And as I discussed last week, one of Nouwen’s convictions is that we hold onto those aspects of our faith together in community. This week we are looking at how we find peace in community with one another. That might seem like a strange way to find peace. So much of what we hear about peace these days emphasizes finding peace with and within ourselves. And that’s no small task. It seems that our personal peace can be so easily disturbed. We let a hurtful remark that someone makes disrupt our peace, whether they meant it to be hurtful or not. We let the outcome of sporting events upset us, especially when we think the referees called the game unfairly! Our personal peace is easily disturbed!

Most of you know that I’ve participated in Twelve Step programs for years. I’m not an alcoholic or an addict, but I have been affected by people whose lives were impacted by alcohol or drugs. I recently had someone ask me why I continue to participate in those programs year after year. She asked me, “Do you have to do this in order not to drink?” Obviously, she misunderstood the purpose of the meeting. My answer to her is still the reason why I “keep coming back,” as we say at the conclusion of every meeting. I’m there because I’m learning healthy ways to live my life, and I want to stay on that path. More than that I want to share that path with other people. Every so often we have new people who come into our fellowship who are hurting deeply. One of the things we say in our meetings is that we gather together to share our experience, strength, and hope, especially with people who are in the midst of crisis.

As many of you know, one of the central features of the twelve-step program is the “Serenity Prayer”: most of us know it in this form, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” And in the twelve-step program, what we continually remind each other is that we cannot change or control what anyone else thinks or feels or says or does. That’s true at the level of our personal lives. It’s also true at the level of our families, our communities, our nation, and our world. We cannot change or control what anyone else thinks or feels or says or does. Even and especially when it affects us directly. What we can change is how we respond, how we choose to live our lives, and whether or not we stay true to our values. And I keep going back to my meetings because I’m still learning to live that way in that community of people.

The quote I want to share with you this week from Henri Nouwen is this: “Friendship, marriage, family, religious life, and every other form of community … can become ways to reveal to each other the real presence of God in our midst. Community has little to do with mutual compatibility. Similarities in educational background, psychological makeup, or social status can bring us together, but they can never be the basis for community. Community is grounded in God, who calls us together, and not in the attractiveness of people to each other…. The mystery of community is precisely that it embraces all people, whatever their individual differences may be, and allows them to live together as brothers and sisters of Christ and sons and daughters of his heavenly Father.”[2]

Again, my reading of Henri Nouwen’s books has made it abundantly clear to me that we learn how to live the Christian life only as we come together with a community of people who are also learning how to live the Christian life. It’s not something we can do on our own. Not fully. Nouwen reminds us that every form of community we experience can be the place to reveal “the real presence of God” among us. He insists that community, at least the community that makes a real difference in our lives, is “grounded in God.” That’s especially true in the community of those who claim to follow Jesus. As Nouwen points out, the community we share with each other in the body of Christ is not based on whether or not we’re “compatible” in any particular way, whether it’s ethnic background, or personality, or social and political viewpoint, or lifestyle, or family structure. Our community together in this congregation is based on God’s presence in our lives. That’s what brings us together, and that’s what holds us together. And when that is the case, then our community “embraces all people, whatever their individual differences may be, and allows them to live together as brothers and sisters of Christ and sons and daughters of his heavenly Father.” 

That’s what brings us together as a community. And it’s the presence of God in our lives that creates peace between us that will last through all the ups and downs of our lives together. We live in a world where peace may seem like just a “dream.” Especially the kind of peace that the Prophet Isaiah envisioned when he foresaw a time when real justice would be extended to all people, especially those who have been exploited by the rich and powerful. It seems like those who are exceedingly rich and powerful always have a way of getting out of having to face the consequences of their actions, and those whom they have exploited never really have things made right for them. That peace that Isaiah foresaw can seem like a dream. So can the peace that he envisioned extending from the human family to embrace all of nature, so that the “the wolf and the lamb will live together; the leopard will lie down with the baby goat. The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion, and a little child will lead them all” (Isa 11:6, NLT). But that kind of peace that can seem too good to be true is precisely what God is creating in and through us in this community, right here and right now.

It seems to me that is the basis for our peace in this world—at least any peace that is lasting. It starts with the peace that we have with God through Jesus Christ. Our experience of being loved and accepted by God—unconditionally, irrevocably, and without any qualifications or exceptions—enables us to find peace with ourselves. As we learn to accept ourselves as those who are beloved by God—always and forever—we find peace that endures all the circumstances we may have to live with. When we have peace with God and come to be at peace with ourselves, then we can extend that peace to those around us. We can accept the people in our community, regardless of any differences that may threaten to undermine our community.

We can live in peace with one another when we learn to do as the Apostle Paul said in the lesson from Romans for today: “accept each other just as Christ has accepted you” (Rom 15:7, NLT). Again, in these days when there is so much division and strife among us, that might seem like a “dream.” Some of you may be able to remember a time when the larger community in this place was divided based on whether your ancestors were German or Dutch. They went to different grocery stores, and they went to different churches. We’ve moved past that now. These days, the dividing lines are drawn based on social and political views. But as we gather in this place, however, the presence and the work of God in our lives overrules all the lines that may appear to divide us. The peace that lasts is the peace that is based on God’s presence among us. It’s based on the fact that we recognize God’s presence in each other. That’s the peace that keeps us together.

I believe with Henri Nouwen that we learn that peace best as we practice it in a community of people who come from all kinds of different backgrounds and perspectives. When we learn to live in peace in this community, with those who hold opinions that we may find offensive, we’re developing peace like a muscle. The peace we find in a real community like this one despite the differences between us is a peace that can sustain us in our divided world. Perhaps more than that, it can begin to make that dream of peace from Scripture a little more real in our lives.

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 12/7/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Henri Nouwen, Making All Things New, 82-83.

Embodying the Light in Community

Embodying the Light in Community

Isaiah 2:1-5[1]

Most of you know that I am primarily a Bible teacher and preacher. I’m not much of a storyteller. I’m also not much for telling jokes in the pulpit. There are others who have those gifts. Mine is that I’ve spent a lifetime studying the Bible. And I try to share as clearly as I can the insights I’ve gained over the years. I know that when I’m in my “Bible preacher” mode I can come across as intimidating. When I was a seminary professor, I was always amazed when students told me that some of their peers were intimidated by me. I know what I know, and I’m not shy about speaking out about it. But I also care more deeply about people than about being “right” about anything. I think that’s why I am always surprised to learn that some people may find my preaching intimidating.

I think one of the most important things I would want to share about the insights I’ve gained over the years is that much of it did not originate with me. Yes, I have read through the New Testament in the original Greek text. And that gave me access to some insights that I gained on my own. But so much of what I “know” I learned from those who have served the body of Christ before me. Bible scholars, theologians, professors, pastors, and friends have shared their insights with me, and they’ve left deep impressions. Over the years, their contributions have become so much a part of who I am that I can no longer sort out what came from where. Not precisely. But there are some people who have influenced me deeply. If you haven’t heard me say it before, while I’ve studied and studied with world-class scholars, it was my younger brother, Douglas, with his various disabilities, who shaped me perhaps most deeply.

I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite authors who shaped me is Henri Nouwen. He was a professor at some of the most prestigious theological schools in this country. He pioneered in the study and teaching of pastoral care. And after spending a year’s sabbatical at a community in France where mentally disabled people and their caregivers lived together, he walked away from the academic world to serve as the chaplain at a similar community in Toronto. I’ve learned a great deal over the years from reading Nouwen’s books. I’m still learning some of the lessons his insights have to teach me. I think I might be learning some of those lessons all my life, truth be told.

I bring him up because I’m going to do something different this year for Advent. I’m going to ask Henri Nouwen to be our guide through Advent. Each week I’m going to share my reflections on the four themes of Advent—hope, peace, joy, and love—based on a quote from Nouwen. And not surprising to me, one of the themes that these quotes will continually emphasize is community. Nouwen was keenly aware that we practice our faith, we continually learn what it means to follow Jesus, we keep discovering new ways for our faith to make us more like Christ in our daily lives precisely as we live together in community with one another.

This week, the focus of our Advent expectation is hope. Hope can be the essential cord that holds everything together. Yet it’s like silk, which can at times be strong, and at times can be fragile. I don’t know about you, but lately my hope has been feeling somewhat weak, as if the very fabric has come unraveled to some extent. That’s a scary feeling, for anybody. As I mentioned in my sermon a couple of weeks ago, St. Paul teaches us that when we endure hardship, it reinforces hope. But as I shared, in my experience many times it is our hope that helps us to endure. When our hope seems to give way, however, we may be left feeling like we’re falling into an abyss of fear.

The quote I want to share with you from Henri Nouwen is this: “Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us. In this way we can live with courage, trusting that there is a spiritual power in us when we are together that allows us to live in this world without surrendering to the powerful forces constantly seducing us toward despair. That is how we dare to say that God is a God of love even when we see hatred all around us. That is why we can claim that God is a God of life even when we see death and destruction and agony all around us. We say it together. We affirm it in each other. Waiting together, nurturing what has already begun, expecting its fulfillment—that is the meaning of marriage, friendship, community, and the Christian life.”[2]

Nouwen reminds us that we keep “the flame of hope alive” in community in all its forms, and especially in this community. We keep the flame of hope alive in our hearts and in each others’ hearts as we make the journey together in community with one another, committed to walking this path together as the body of Christ, committed to helping each other complete the journey, especially when we may grow weak or stumble and fall. It is only as we encourage each other along the way that we can keep trusting the promises of our faith. Think about the ones we heard from the Scripture lesson from Isaiah for today. When in the history of this world has any nation beaten “their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Isa 2:4, NIV)? When in the story of the human family has any nation given up warfare and stopped treating those who are “other” or “different” as enemies? It hasn’t happened! Instead, as Nouwen says, what we see are “death and destruction,” and we see that “all around us.” It can at times take the very life out of our faith and our hope. It can leave us despairing of the world that we are leaving to our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren!

But that is precisely why our life together in this community of faith is so very important. Because, as Nouwen wisely observes, we keep our faith and our hope alive by “saying it together.” We keep our faith and our hope alive by “affirming it in each other.” We do that by worshipping together right here. That’s why worshipping together is so important. That’s where we keep our faith and our hope alive together. We do that in this community. Yes, in this community where some of us hold long-standing hurts over offenses we’ve inflicted on each other. In this community where some of us have let others down. In this community where we may be afraid to speak our deepest truth out loud, for fear of having others gossip about us. We keep “the flame of hope alive” as we nurture it and affirm it together in a real, live, flawed community of real, live, flawed people.

I think what Nouwen might be calling our attention to is that Christian hope, real hope that has the strength to face the real world with everything in it that we want look away from, takes root and grows in our hearts as we share it together with real people in a real community. Even and especially when that community might include people we may not particularly like. If our hope is to remain alive in the real world, it has to be nurtured in a real, live community, flaws and all.  In fact, as Nouwen reminds us, that is the very meaning of Christian community: it’s the place where we affirm our faith and our hope together. We nurture hope in one another precisely as we affirm it in one another, even and especially in those we may not care to have in our community! And as we do so more and more, we embody in ourselves and in this community the light of life that Jesus has given to us. That’s what keeps “the flame of hope,” real hope, hope that can stand up to the challenges of real life, alive in each other.

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 11/30/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Henri Nouwen, Finding My Way Home, 105-107; cited in Henri Nouwen, You Are the Beloved: 365 Daily Readings and Meditations for Spiritual Living, 361.