led worship and preached. A rich service…Sermon “Building a Muscular Hope” below:
Building A Muscular Hope
Rev. Vicky Hanjian
Chilmark September 6, 2026 Psalm 13 Luke 19:41 Mark 15:34
I want to begin with a brief snippet from a children’s book by Judith Viorst – – maybe you have read it to
your children or grandchildren – – It’s from “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad
Day” :
I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there’s gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this
morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water
was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good , very bad day. At breakfast
Anthony found a Corvette Stingray kit in his breakfast cereal box and Nick found a Junior Undercoverof 2 6
Agent code ring in his breakfast cereal box, but in my breakfast cereal box all I found was cereal. I
think I’ll move to Australia.
It WAS a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Nothing at all was right. Everything went wrong,
right down to lima beans for supper and kissing on TV.
What do you do on a day like that? Well, you may think about going to Australia. You may also be
glad to know that some days are like that for other people too. 1
There’s no doubt about it. Alexander was having Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
If we were to read a little bit more of his story we would discover that not only did he wake up with gum
in his hair and suffer the disappointment of no special toy in his cereal box, he also got scrunched up in
the middle in the back seat of the car – – and felt carsick – – and when he complained that he felt sick, no
one even answered. Australia was looking better and better.
This is a classic bit of lament – – of crying out against experience of injustice – – and of feeling like no one
is listening.
Perhaps the most well known prayer of lament is the one we hear Jesus cry out loud on the cross – –
words excerpted from Psalm 22 :
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
and by night but find no rest.
The Message Bible, an approximate paraphrase by Eugene Peterson, reads this way:
1-2 God, God . . . my God!
Why did you dump me
miles from nowhere?
Doubled up with pain, I call to God
all the day long. No answer. Nothing.
I keep at it all night, tossing and turning.
Like Alexander – – the Psalmist cries out – and complains that no one is listening – – but the Psalmist
doesn’t have the option of moving to Australia. Each in their own way give voice to despair.
A few months ago, I signed up for a series of podcasts called “Hope Portal” – – offered by Krista Tippett
who hosted the On Being series on NPR for a number of years. The sermon title comes from her guiding
question: How do we build an enduring and muscular hope as we move through a time of almost
unbearable pain and injustice?2
1
Judith Viorst Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible,No Good, Very Bad Day Simon and
Schuster, New York, NY. (c) 1972
Krista Tippett in the introduction to the Hope Portal Series – – words in italics are from her 2
various comments in the series.of 3 6
She began the series by naming what we are living with – – simultaneously – – our ecological fragility and
environmental degradation – – chaotic weather patterns – – an almost cultivated ignorance of scientific
evidence for climate change. – -and what we may experience as political chaos and dysfunction. Her
series was completed just before the passage of the Great Big Beautiful Bill. That bill might well have
been included in her litany of the dangerous and traumatic losses we are living with on a daily basis.
In conversations with a variety of wisdom teachers, the Hope Portal series invites us to consider this
reality that: at a very cellular level, we are affected by the pain being inflicted both on the planet and on
us and our fellow human beings. In the some 30 trillion cells in each one of us there is the capacity to
experience the pain of humankind and the pain of the planet. At any moment, at the cellular level – –
humankind and indeed, this beloved planet, are having a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day – – –
Sadly, moving to Australia won’t change that.
So what are we to do with that amount of pain?
The Hope Portal Conversations invite us to understand that the first step is to acknowledge the pain in all
its intractable immensity, to look it full in the face. We’re invited to sit in our bodies and allow ourselves
to feel the depth of the pain and sorrow going on at a cellular level as we hear the news from Gaza – – as
we see the flood images coming in from Nepal – – even as we try to understand the pain of a very public
trial on the front page of the Globe almost every morning. It is a Herculean challenge to even begin to
integrate in consciousness the far reaching ramifications of legal decisions that permit and legitimize the
infliction of all kinds of pain across the human spectrum in this country.
The scriptures invite and challenge us to sit in these fragile human bodies and feel and acknowledge the
pain – – and, further, to allow ourselves to grieve and to mourn – – to feel our helplessness against it,
perhaps in spite of our best efforts at resistance – – even to actually cry out against it all – – even to give
voice to our doubt that anyone is listening – – -perhaps to give voice to a profoundly reasonable despair
and hopelessness.
When we choose to embrace a time of lament – – we are taking on a serious and heavy task in a
profoundly loving service to the planet and to humankind. In some way, the pain of the world needs to be
given a voice – – and that voice may be ours..
The awful truth of the matter is, that if we choose to love this world, to love our fellow human beings – – to
love at all – – we are going to feel pain. Profound love and deep pain are two sides of the same coin.
Not long ago, Rev.Cathlin Baker introduced me to a word for the bodily manifestation of feeling the pain
that is the other side of love. It is the Greek word for “compassion,” often transliterated as
“splagchnizomai” (splag – ch – niz – o – mai) (σπλαγχνίζομαι). It is used to describe a deep, visceral
feeling of pity or mercy. It literally refers to the bowels or inward parts, suggesting a gut-level emotional
response. It’s the feeling of having one’s “bowels yearn” or feeling deep sympathy for someone’s
suffering.
I think it is the bodily sort of clenching reaction I feel watching mourners carry white body bags in Gaza
or seeing the photos of young children lost to the raging flood waters. Splagchnizomai. Splag – ch – niz –
o mai.
But in the face of all the reasons for despair and what Krista Tippett acknowledges as a profound and
reasonable hopelessness, there is also a profound call to the practice of a muscular hope. Hope that is aof 4 6
muscle that can be strengthened and flexed. It is not dreamy wishful thinking or idealism or an optimism
that believes that everything will be all right in the end.
To quote Krista: “In the face of the over use and weakening and ruining of words like love and hope, we
are challenged to understand hope as an orientation – – as a way of seeing and moving through the
world – – Hope is a reality based choice, a calling, a practice in the face of profound despair – – Hope
makes a leap of imagination – – Hope looks at the world full on – – and refuses to accept that things have
to be this way.”
Krista described Buddhist teacher, Joanna Macy, “(Joanna) embodied a wild love for the world and a
fierce hope that rises irrepressible from that love. She carried and lived an important reminder to us that
when we love, we will also know pain, and we will know grief that can feel too awful to bear. When we
talk about the muscle of hope being reality-based, that means that it does not call us to be brimming with
optimism where that is not warranted. What we’re called to do is stay present.
Lamenting crying out, complaining, naming the pain is part of being present. And when you’re present,
there will be grieving to do.”
But the Psalms also show us a pattern – that the great rhythm of the lament moves from the despair
of “god, why have you forsaken me” to the rhythms of muscular hope.
Psalm 13 gives a glimpse of the rhythm and movement as the Psalmist cries out to the Living One – –
listen to the first 4 verses:
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I bear pain[a] in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
3 Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”;
my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.
And then, as Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggeman says, “There is long wait between the end of
verse 4 and the beginning of verse 5.” 3
The Psalmist has cried out in lament – – and sits with the pain – –
and something happens in the space between verse 4 and verse 5 – – and a new energy is activated as the
Psalm continues:
5 But I trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
6 I will sing to the Living One because he has dealt bountifully with me.
When Jesus entered Jerusalem near the end of his life journey, according to the text, he wept out loud
with anguish that the city – – the collective and corporate lives of the people – – did not – perhaps could
not, recognize “the things that make for peace!”
3
Walter Brueggemann in The Message of the Psalms:A Theological Commentary Augsburg
Publishing House Minneapolis (c) 1984 p. 57of 5 6
On the cross, his anguish and despair is so eloquent – – repeating the themes of lament in Psalm 22 – “My
God, why have you forsaken me?” Luke 23:46
And then there is an exquisite pause – – – – and Jesus utters the most incredible words of trust: Into your
hands, I commit my spirit…
Richard Rohr in his book THE TEARS OF THINGS shares these thoughts:
I think of two Masai warriors I met in Kenya years ago. They were given permission by their elders to
show me their “caves of grief,” where as part of their initiation journey, they had to literally cry for all
the world – plants, animals, human beings, earth itself – – before they would continue on to manhood.
Imagine! Would that we had such a ritual journey for American politicians, business people, prisoners,
soldiers and clergy.
In my experience, tears have helped me glimpse the big secret that I still only half know – – that
human beings are really made of love and for love.And we still don’t know it!We can only cry it. Until
a divine form of compassion enters the scene, we do not enjoy the deep alchemy that morphs human rage
and judgement into holy sadness. (But) you don’t think yourself into crying. You cry yourself, if you
will allow, you cry yourself into daring new ways of thinking and feeling. Because tears are a form of
allowing more than willing, they lend themselves much more easily to the language of spirit. All things
first and finally deserve tears much more than hatred, fixing, or denial. 4
The movement in the lament Psalms is from a loud and clear lament to a place of trust and gratitude – – a
renewed energy. The energy for a muscular hope is found in giving voice to the pain loud and clear – –
being present to it in all its despair, feeling the cellular discomfort of Splagchnizomai (Splag – chi -niz –
o- mai) of roiling in the gut – – Being present – – and then, again quoting Krista Tippett “making the
choice to flex a muscular hope that refuses to accept that things have to be this way – – This is a hope that
unleashes energy, intelligence, and creativity, courage and persistence behind that insistence that things
must change.
This kind of muscular hope is a virtue – – but it is one that is not meant to be carried alone. We are called
to surround ourselves with others who can carry it when it just gets too hard on our own.” When we are
committed to this rhythm of lament – gratitude – and the flexing of a muscular hope, strangely,
interestingly, kind of miraculously (and paradoxically), this increases our capacity to love and act in this
world.
And what this world need now is not only muscular hope – – but a truly muscular love.
The building of this muscular hope and love requires adequate nourishment. So, perhaps we might come
to the sacrament this morning understanding it as food and sustenance for the strength we need to keep
flexing those muscles together.
***************
4
Richard Rohr The Tears of Things:Prophetic Wisdom For An Age of Outrage Center for Action
and Contemplation Inc. Penguin Random House NY (c) 2025 p.100of