Hope in Troubled Times
The Rev. Dr. Karin J. Ekholm, June 15, 2025
I am immensely grateful for the call to serve at St. George’s as your Associate Rector, particularly during these sorely troubled times.
We are inundated these days with news of violence, especially toward people who have long been deprived of dignity and the freedom to live and work in peace. This continual flood of assaults occurring globally, nationally, and locally can feel overwhelming, and more and more, I hear despair that there is anything we can do to counter these powers that corrupt and destroy.
In our baptismal covenant, we vow to strive for justice and peace among all people, but what might this look like in our daily lives? In times like these, where do we turn for wisdom, strength, and endurance? Where do we find hope?
Our second reading today comes from St. Paul’s epistle to the church in Rome during times of great political flux and social unrest. The Apostle penned the letter in the mid-50s when Emperor Claudius—who had expelled the Jewish people from Rome—was succeeded by Nero, who allowed them back and later persecuted them. Among these ethnically Jewish people, some were followers of Christ.
In addition to pressures from the outside, the early church contended with internal strife. As a new community made up of people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, they struggled acutely with questions of what it means to serve as Christ’s body and how the Spirit might work through them to restore all people into right relationship with God and each other. Much of St. Paul’s correspondence deals with conflicts and factions within the fledgling church, particularly questions about the extent to which Gentiles needed to assimilate to Jewish traditions and law.
Today’s reading comes from the very center of the epistle, and serves as a hinge between what has been and where God is calling his people to follow. The upshot of this passage is a promise of hope to those who are oppressed and hurting. The hope to which St. Paul bears witness is no naïve sentiment or Pollyannaish optimism, but rather derives from recognizing God’s loving presence in times of suffering.
Understanding what such hope looks like requires us to follow several steps of an argument. While at first it might seem unclear where St. Paul is heading, it all comes together to offer a promise of genuine hope.
In the first half of the letter, he contends that all humans—those who followed the law and those who did not—have fallen short. God’s merciful response was to send Christ to lead humanity back into right relationship. Being justified by faith means that we are brought back into right relationship through Christ reaching out to us in love.
In today’s passage, St. Paul delineates the fruits of right relationship, including our hope that we share in the glory of God. Throughout Hebrew Scripture, God’s glory is synonymous with his presence. Our hope therefore lies in the recognition that God dwells among us. Our hope is based not in striving, but in the promise of God’s abiding love.
St. Paul’s language of boasting in hope may sound odd to modern ears—after all, he has just affirmed that we are redeemed through grace, not merit. But phrases like these are a pointed reminder that St. Paul and members of the early church were persecuted people whom society continually sought to degrade and eliminate. In exhorting the oppressed to boast in what God has bestowed on them St. Paul affirms their dignity. Boasting in hope and suffering strikes me as a profoundly countercultural action, a form of resistance to more conventional objects of vaunting, like status, belongings, and achievements.
To be clear, in charging the church to boast in suffering, St. Paul never claims that God causes suffering. Rather his point is that suffering is redeemed and transformed through Christ. The word that is translated ‘suffering’ comes from the Greek term for a pressure that holds down, hems in, and restricts. The recognition that God abides with the oppressed and afflicted, is what leads us to grow in hope. This is a hope that does not disappoint, St. Paul observes, because it is rooted in God's love that has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
We read this passage today—on Trinity Sunday—because it conveys something of the threefold manifestation of God in relation to humanity. St. Paul is not presenting a doctrine—that came three centuries later--but rather he is contending with practical questions of how our understanding of ourselves and our relationship to God and one another is transformed by the mission of Christ and the Spirit.
In recent months, as I visited, interviewed, and talked with members of St. George’s, I have been deeply encouraged and filled with hope by what you’ve shared of your experiences of worship, formation, social justice, outreach, and fellowship. The Spirit is clearly at work through this community, and I can’t wait to get to know each of you and to learn how to accompany you on your journey and support you in your ministry. My sense of call to the priesthood was in large part motivated by my experience of God’s presence in a special way when people share their stories and insights into what they hear in the stories of others.
Before seminary, I spent two decades as a cultural historian with a focus in history of science and medicine, teaching undergraduates and graduate students. Though I loved my research and teaching, I could not shake the sense that I was being drawn in another direction. Five years ago this month, during the protests that followed the brutal killing of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Rayshard Brooks, I entered a period of discernment that led to my ordination a year ago today. In seminary, an especially formative time was the summer that I spent as a chaplain at Washington Hospital Center in the trauma unit and neonatal intensive care, where are large portion of the patients I saw came from economically and socially oppressed communities. It was here I came to a real understanding of St Paul’s claim that we grow in character and hope through God dwelling in the midst of adversity.
Striving for justice and peace for all people and finding hope in troubled times begins with listening to each other’s stories and recognizing God in them.
Juneteenth this Thursday marks the 160th anniversary since the last of enslaved people were finally freed, and yet, the legacy of Jim Crow and systemic racism continue to oppress and deprive their descendants of dignity.
I encourage you to observe this holiday by listening to stories that can be hard to hear. I commend the current exhibit at the Renwick Gallery of narrative quilts by black women artists that tell stories through images, words, and artifacts stitched in fabric. Closer to home, I encourage you to watch—or rewatch—members of this church courageously sharing their stories at a forum hosted by our Racial Reconciliation Committee five years ago (Linked here). Or you could start reading for the summer book club on racial oppression.
These are troubled times, and though things feel overwhelming and uncertain, do not despair for God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. As Christ’s living body, let us continue to listen to one another, and to our communities beyond church, with an ear to discern how God is calling us to participate in his work of striving for justice and peace among all people and respecting the dignity of every human being.
