February 16, 2025: Hope Beyond the Wilderness

Rex McKee

“Hope Beyond the Wilderness: Resurrection Rooted in Love, Sabbath, and the Beloved Community”

Saint John the Baptist, Minneapolis: February 16 2025

Rex McKee

Reach out your hand, if your cup be empty
If your cup is full, may it be again
Let it be known there is a fountain
That was not made by the hands of men

 

Jeremiah’s prophecy draws us into vivid contrasts:

“Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals… they shall be like a shrub in the desert.”

“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord… they shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream.”

 

The prophet invites us to examine where our trust lies and where we choose to be rooted. He begs the question, are we living as parched shrubs, reliant on fleeting human princes and principalities or as thriving trees, drawing deeply from the living water of God’s eternal love?

Being grounded in God is not just a hope for some distant future but an experience we can practice and experience now seizing the opportunity that reshapes how we live, love, and trust.

In “The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus,” UCC Pastor Robin Meyers emphasizes the importance of trust in the Christian faith. He advocates for replacing the term “faith” with “trust,” suggesting that this shift better captures the essence of the early church’s teachings.

Meyers understands that the early Christian beloved communities were defined by their trusting radical inclusiveness, voluntary sharing of resources, rejection of violence, and joyful egalitarianism.

He believes that modern Christianity should return to these roots, focusing on trust and compassionate action rather than rigid doctrines. He advocates for a shift from a religion of recited creeds to one of “impassioned trust in the way of Jesus.”

Trusting God is about leaning into God’s sustaining loving presence, especially when life feels chaotic, barren, and depleting. Trust is relational, embodied, and active. Trusting God is to commit your life on the assurance that God’s love, wisdom, and presence are more real and lasting than anything else. Trusting in God will feel like rest in the midst of exhaustion, being upheld when you have nothing left to give.

Faith or Trust: This distinction is critical.

Many of us are often tempted to trust in our own strength of mind, or will, or the promises of the world. We profess that we believe in God, but where do we place our trust? Is it in wealth, political or social power, reputation, or security?

Jeremiah reminds us that these are fragile foundations. Like shrubs in the desert, they may provide a momentary sense of stability, but they cannot sustain us when life’s chaos, heat and drought come.

Trusting God is like being a tree planted by water, its roots stretching out toward the stream. It is here, in this deep rootedness, that we find what it truly means to live in resurrection hope.

To be rooted in God is to cultivate practices that connect us to the stream of divine life. These practices nourish us, sustain us, and equip us to bear fruit for the sake of the world. Psalm 1 offers us an image of this rootedness: “like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither.”

Paul writes in Corinthians that resurrection is the central truth of Christian faith: “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.”

Participating in Resurrection is a holy revolutionary transformation in how we live in the here and now. Resurrection reveals that God is constantly at work bringing life out of death, hope out of despair, and possibility out of impossibility.

Matthew Fox describes this as participating in the Cosmic Christ  the divine presence within all creation that continually brings forth renewal and transformation. Resurrection is more than simple hope; it is a dynamic creation and recreation process, inviting us to align our lives with God’s ongoing work of justice and renewal.

To practice resurrection, is to live here and now in a transformation that is already active. It is to root ourselves so deeply in God’s love and trust that we become living witnesses of the Gospel.

This does not suggest ignoring the painful challenges of the world in which we live. Rather, it is calling us to confront them with the unshakable assurance that God’s love is stronger than hate, that life triumphs over death, and that justice will prevail.

One of the most profound ways to deeply ground us in God and practice resurrection is through the gift of Sabbath Practice.

Fox describes Sabbath as both deeply personal and cosmic—a sacred rhythm woven into creation. More than a day of rest, Sabbath is an act of trust and resistance, offering resurrection amid life’s chaos and moving us toward the Beloved Community.

Sabbath practice affirms that our worth is not in what we do but in who we are as God’s beloved. It is a countercultural, calling us to step away from chaos and remember that God and creation, not humans, is in control.

In the Beloved Community, Sabbath becomes a rhythm of rest, renewal, and justice-centered living, where all especially the marginalized, experience liberation and joy. Biblical Sabbath is not simply personal rest but collective restoration.

In MLK’s vision of Beloved Community, it is an act of resistance, reclaiming time as sacred and relational. It echoes God’s command to free the Israelites from forced labor, calling us to a society where no one is overworked or excluded from rest.

Sabbath connects us to resurrection—entering the rhythm of death and renewal, releasing human striving, and trusting God to bring new life. It is shared within the Beloved Community, extending beyond humanity to all creation. Whether in worship, meals, ministry, or time spent together, we remind each other we are not alone. We bear witness to resurrection as a collective reality a foretaste of the Beloved Community where all are restored.

Our commitment to Keeping Sabbath embodies the trust Jeremiah describes. We cease relying on our own strength and rest in God’s sustaining love. In a world that feels like a parched wilderness, Sabbath invites us to drink deeply of God’s shalom.

Imagine a world where Sabbath is practiced as resurrection and trust. Where communities, rooted in God’s love, find rest amid chaos and share it with others. This is what it means to be trees planted by streams of water—bearing fruit for the healing of the world.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus paints a picture of what it means to live in the way of resurrection. “Blessed are you who are poor,” he says, “for yours is the Beloved Community.” These blessings and woes turn the world’s values upside down.

They challenge us to see that the Beloved Community is not built on wealth, borders, power, or comfort but on love, justice, and mercy.

We are at a time in human history when the message of Jesus could indeed save us, but it can no longer be heard above the noise of the civil destruction in our midst.

Let us remember that Jesus was penniless and itinerant. Yet his gospel is now attached to some of the richest and most powerful individuals on earth. The good news has become bad news for the poor. Captives are not released; they are warehoused. The blind do not see; rather, the sighted wear blinders. The oppressed are not liberated; they have become scapegoats.

Both Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7) and Luke’s Sermon on the Plain include Jesus’ radical call to love enemies, turn the other cheek, and give generously. Both conclude with the parable of the wise and foolish builders illustrating that faith and trust is built on practicing Jesus’ teachings.

 

Consider this: in today’s gospel there is not a single word about what or how to believe, only instructions about how to act. It is a behavioral manifesto, not a propositional one.

 

 

Sabbath Time invites us to embrace this upside-down vision. When we immerse and rest, in sacred time, we reject the world’s chaos and the demands to produce and achieve, rather we align ourselves with God’s vision of justice, mercy and restoration.

We declare that the poor, the hungry, the refugee, and the weeping are invited and welcome at the center of the Beloved Community, and we recommit ourselves to embracing with love that vision.

Imagine a world where communities of faith live as trees planted by streams of water.  Imagine communities of faith that radiate hope in the face of despair, courage in the face of fear, and love in the face of hate. This is what it means to practice resurrection. A way of life rooted in the eternal stream of God’s love.

When we root ourselves in God, trusting simply in God’s active presence and love, we begin to bear fruit. This fruit is not for us alone, but for the healing and flourishing of the world. It is the fruit of compassion, justice, and hope—the fruit of resurrection.

Jeremiah’s shrub in the desert side by side to the tree nourished by living water challenge us to the choice before us: to trust in human will, empire and governments or to trust and root ourselves in God.

 

Resurrection invites us to live not in fear but in the delight and hope of new life. Trusting God is to experience resurrection.

Stretch our roots deeply into the living water of God’s love, sustaining us through every season.

Live as beloved people in community bearing fruit, offering shade, sharing hope and nourishment to a world longing for new life.

Practice Sabbath, resting in the midst of human noise and chaos and trusting in the God who brings life out of death.

Go forth into the world, practicing resurrection, practicing resistance, trusting in the One who is our stream of living water.  Amen.

10am Service