I recently returned from accompanying a group of undergraduate students to Belize for a service immersion trip in my capacity as a campus minister. Although there were many impactful moments during this trip, one day in particular has remained with me, and has resurfaced in my heart yet again as I’ve prayed with this Sunday’s readings, which are about hope.

On this particular day, our group traveled a couple hours outside Belize City to a community called Valle de Paz, or Valley of Peace. This appropriately-named village was established by Salvadoran refugees fleeing their country for the safety of neighboring Belize during the horrific Salvadoran Civil War in the 1980s. José, our host for the day, graciously shared his difficult story of witnessing US-funded terrorism against his community, and of having to leave his home as a child and start over in an unfamiliar place. José, with pride, showed us the village’s grocery store cooperative, library, and schools, which he was instrumental in establishing along with other refugees and Belizeans who welcomed them with hospitality, with the assistance of the UN. His family, in turn, showed our immersion group hospitality as they taught us how to make traditional Salvadoran pupusas and we broke bread together. As his story, filled with trauma and struggle, came to a close, José shared that he never lost faith in God, and that God had been with him, his family, and his community this entire time.

Later, during our evening reflection, one of my students shared how struck she was by José’s story and his faith. She reflected that so many in our world don’t find the need for faith. That choosing to opt out of faith now seemed to her to be a privilege for those who have boundless wealth and opportunity and thus don’t feel they need to rely on God. Paradoxically, often, those who have the most reason to lose hope or lose faith seem to have the strongest hope and faith.

Our readings today are all about this kind of hope: the hope that is not blind to struggle or injustice, but that knows struggle and injustice intimately and resists in the face of it, like that tree stretching out its roots toward the water, in our first reading from the prophet Jeremiah.

In our second reading, Paul responds to some members of the Corinthian community’s doubts about the resurrection. He says, “if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is in vain.” Many of our siblings on the margins of society cannot afford to lose their hope in the resurrection, because this hope is what keeps them going amidst poverty and oppression. Julia Esquivel, a Guatemalan poet, wrote the prophetic poem, “Nos amenazado de resurrección,” or, “They Have Threatened Us with Resurrection,” in 1980 amidst a violent military dictatorship whose main victims were poor indigenous people. This beautiful poem highlights the fact that hope is an act of resistance against the death-dealing forces of violence, repression, and poverty. Because Christ has truly resurrected, so can we, despite it all. When there is nothing else, there is still hope in this truth.

But this is not to say that those who suffer and grieve must sit idly by and wait for their reward in the next life. We are called to labor for the coming of the Kingdom of God now. This is why I like Luke’s beatitudes, which we hear in the Gospel reading for today. They are grounded in the bodily experience of injustice, and aren’t spiritualized like in Matthew’s beatitudes. And, Jesus speaks directly to the marginalized and sorrowful in this Gospel, centering them in his ministry. Blessed are YOU who are poor, for the kingdom of God IS yours. Blessed are YOU who are NOW hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are YOU who are NOW weeping, for you will laugh. And, on the flipside, there is a call to conversion for those of us who already live in comfort and privilege.

If we take the Beatitudes out of their scriptural context, it is easy to sit in complacency and just pray that those who are marginalized will one day receive their reward. But we can’t forget that Jesus also fed the hungry, healed the sick, and forgave the sinner ON earth in HIS lifetime. The repeated NOW calls us to continue this work NOW, in OUR lifetimes. And, if we believe in the resurrection, this work cannot be in vain.

The end of Esquivel’s poem goes like this:
“Join us in this vigil
and you will know what it is to dream!
Then you will know how marvelous it is
to live threatened with Resurrection!

To dream awake,
to keep watch asleep,
to live while dying,
and to know ourselves already
Resurrected!”

In these times of uncertainty, violence, and individualism, may we Christians act as if we believe in the Resurrection. José and his Salvadoran community showed my immersion group a model of this lived resurrection hope in their dedication to building their new home, as did those in Belize who welcomed them. They could not afford to live without hope. May this radical hope propel us into acts of compassion, hospitality, and bridge-building NOW, in our own ways, in our own communities.