Sermon – Hope in Action

(I preached this sermon on Christ the King Sunday, November 23, 2025 at Christ Lutheran Church in Harrisburg, PA. It is based on Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14. You can hear the audio of this sermon at https://www.christharrisburg.org/podcast/episode/d01d4012/hope-in-action).

Today is Christ the King Sunday.
It was first declared by Pope Pius XI in 1925, at a moment when the world was sliding toward authoritarianism, nationalism, and violence. Sound familiar?  He watched European governments exalt themselves as the ultimate authorities and demanded unquestioned obedience.

Pius wrote, “When nations allow Christ to rule, society will receive the blessings of real liberty.”
And he warned that “the rulers of nations who do not acknowledge the authority of Christ bring upon themselves destruction and ruin.”

He wasn’t being poetic.
He was naming the truth: authoritarianism breeds trauma, cruelty, and collapse—and the church must proclaim another way.

Christ the King Sunday is the church’s holy act of defiance.
It says, “We see what’s happening, and we will not bow to any ruler, ideology, or system that demands our fear instead of our faith.”
This feast was born as a proclamation of hope against empire, hope against fear, hope against the trauma inflicted on ordinary people.

And that is exactly where Jeremiah speaks today.

Jeremiah 29 is a letter to people living in collective trauma.
He writes to the elders, priests, and prophets who have been ripped from Jerusalem and dragged into Babylon—people whose whole world has collapsed.

These are people who have lost homes, communities, livelihoods, and a sense of safety.
They are not just individuals in pain—they are a traumatized people.

Jeremiah had conflict with many of these leaders. Some ignored his warnings; some spread lies about him; some preached false hope.
Yet Jeremiah still writes to them. He still claims them.
Trauma has a way of reminding us that we need each other—even the ones we disagreed with.

He speaks honestly saying:
“You are in exile. Do not run from that truth.”

But he also speaks hopefully:
“Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens. Seek the welfare of the city. Pray for it.”

Jeremiah is saying:
“Do not collapse under trauma. Do not surrender to despair. Do not let empire define you. Instead—act in hope. Together.”

Hope is not a feeling.
Hope is embodied action.
Hope is a people choosing life even when power structures deal out death.

And God’s promise at the end of the passage—
“I know the plans I have for you… a future with hope”—
is not a refrigerator magnet verse.
It is a word spoken into trauma:
“Empire does not get the last word. Cruelty does not win. You will return. You will rebuild. I will gather you.”

Friends, we know something about collective trauma in this country right now.
Recent cuts to SNAP benefits hit the poorest the hardest.  The return of these benefits didn’t bring people back to where they were.  It merely stopped making the hole deeper.
Upcoming Medicaid cuts will do the same.
And people in this room, in this neighborhood, in our communities—people at our clinics—will feel those wounds most deeply. 

But it’s not just this administration.
This is a long American story.  Actually it’s a human story.  
Administrations come and go, but policies that wound the poor, immigrants, the sick, and the marginalized have been bipartisan habits.

We live in a nation where trauma is recycled, repackaged, rebranded—but still inflicted.
Jeremiah would say, “Do not pretend otherwise.”

And yet—
Jeremiah would also say,
“Trauma is not destiny. Empire is not your king. Hope is your calling.”

This is the heart of Jeremiah’s message.
This is the heart of Christ the King Sunday.
Hope is not an idea. Hope is something we do.
Together.

Hope is like water flowing over rock—soft, but relentless.
Water looks weak.
But give it time and it carves canyons, reshapes mountains, and rewrites landscapes.

This is what hope looks like in the real world.
This is what it has always looked like.

Let me share with you a few examples of hope in action.  

The Underground Railroad – The Fugitive Slave Acts—especially the brutal one of 1850—required citizens in free states to capture escaped enslaved people and return them to slaveholders.
It criminalized compassion.
It commanded obedience to cruelty.
Helpers could be fined heavily, imprisoned, financially ruined.

Yet thousands resisted anyway.
They hid people, fed them, escorted them at night, passed them from safe house to safe house—simple acts of cooking meals, opening a door, lighting a lamp in a window.
These were acts of hope more than acts of ideology.

They believed:
“This person’s life matters more than any law that demands their suffering.”
They risked everything—because hope was more important than fear.

Albert Battel – Most people don’t know his name.
Albert Battel was a lawyer, a German officer in the regular German army in 1942.
When SS forces came to liquidate a Jewish ghetto, Battel blocked the bridge into the city with soldiers under his command.
He drew a pistol on the SS and told his men to aim their weapons at the convoy.  
He ordered military trucks loaded with Jewish families and drove them away from the killing squads—saving hundreds.

He risked court martial, execution, disgrace—and he did it anyway.
An ordinary man.
One moment of embodied hope.

The Danish Resistance – During the Nazi occupation, the Danes refused to be broken.
When the order came to round up Danish Jews, word spread through churches, fishing villages, and kitchen tables.
Neighbors warned neighbors.
Fishermen hid families in their boats at night.
Ordinary citizens ferried nearly 7,000 Jews across the sea to Sweden.
Simple acts: opening a door, offering a coat, rowing a boat.

Hope as collective action.
A nation resisting trauma by insisting on humanity.

The Baltic Way – In 1989, two million people in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania joined hands to form a human chain nearly 400 miles long.
They stood in silence.
They stood in unity.
They stood in hope.

The Soviet authorities could not arrest two million people at once.
Empires fall when enough people remember they are not alone.  Just over two years after this, the Soviet empire collapsed.  

And here—right here in this building—every one of us participates in the long history of hope-as-resistance.
What happens in this church is nothing short of a living commentary on Jeremiah 29.
A community in trauma choosing to build, plant, seek the welfare of the city, and act in hope together.

The Medical Outreach Clinic

Open every weekday.
Yes, there are bandages, socks, and over-the-counter medicines.
But the deeper offering is this:
We see people’s humanity—especially the people society works hardest to erase.
We look trauma in the eye and answer with dignity.
Every day, we are water on rock—slow, steady, unyielding.

The Dental Clinic

Open three days a month.
More than extractions and fillings.
People walk out with reasons to smile—some for the first time in years.
We serve people who have nowhere else to go, people systems of cruelty prefer to forget.
We give them hope.

Healthy on the Hill

One day a week, our nurse offers far more than exams and check-ins.
She offers dignity.
She offers a human connection.
She offers hope.
Healing, even simple healing, has a way of reminding people they are beloved.

The Weekly Meal After Worship

We feed people every Sunday.
We don’t just fill bellies.
We fill spirits.
We remind people they are seen, heard, valued—that they are not alone.
And when people know they are not alone, we can act.

Power to the Hill

This movement is about far more than registering voters or teaching civic engagement.
It is a holy reminder that people’s voices matter—especially the voices empire would rather silence.
It restores hope and reminds people we are not powerless.

Changing the Conversation

In this space, hard stories are told.
We process trauma, confront injustice, and envision a different future.
These conversations heal.
They interrupt cycles of silence and shame.
They tell us:
“Our story matters. Our pain matters. Our healing matters.”

Fit on the Hill

These classes are not just about movement or exercise.
They are about reminding people that our bodies are good, beautiful, capable, worthy.
In a world that says poor bodies don’t matter and marginalized bodies are disposable,
Fit on the Hill proclaims:
“We are God’s creation. Our bodies are not the property of any empire. We deserve health and joy.”

This Worshiping Community

We are not just singing songs or reciting memorized lines.
We are confessing how much we need Jesus.
We are hearing God’s Word that inspires us to act.
We are sharing peace in a world that does everything it can to avoid it.
We are sharing the Lord’s Supper.
We are praying together that God’s kingdom will and does come.
We are being blessed by God to go out into the world and share that blessing with others.
We are encountering the living God in our midst who is active, alive, and will not stop loving creation, people, and community.

Other Community Events and Partnerships

This church hosts countless acts of hope.
Every program, every meeting, every workshop says: “We will not bow to trauma. We choose life. We choose community. We choose each other.”

Empires and tyrants depend on isolation.
They want people to feel alone, powerless, small.
Because no one person can overthrow an empire—but a people can.

And here, at Christ Lutheran Church, we are discovering that we are not alone.
We are claiming our voices, our bodies, our stories, our hope.

And when empires fall—
When tyrants collapse under the weight of their own cruelty—
No one mourns them.
People cheer.
They cheered when tyrants of WWII died off.
They cheer when modern tyrants are toppled.
They cheer when destructive laws and policies lose their grip.
They cheer because hope was never just a dream.
It is an expectation lived out in embodied action—together.

This is what Christ the King Sunday proclaims:
Jesus reigns—not the tyrants, not the systems, not the cruelty.
Their power is temporary.
Their trauma is real, but not eternal.
They always collapse. Always.

But hope endures.
Love endures.
The reign of Christ endures.

And the reign of Christ is not abstract.
It is embodied in us.
Hope is embodied in us.
Jesus is embodied in us.

So hear Jeremiah again:
“I know the plans I have for you… a future with hope.”

Not a future without pain—
A future through pain.
Not a future without struggle—
A future in which struggle is not the end of the story.

We are exiles with a calling.
We are a people shaped by trauma but not defined by it.
We act in hope—together—because Christ is King, not fear.

And here is the emotional truth:

Jesus is alive in this worship.
Jesus is alive in this neighborhood.
Jesus is alive in the clinics.
Jesus is alive in the meals we serve.
Jesus is alive in every act of resistance against cruelty.
Jesus is alive in every moment we choose compassion over fear, dignity over despair, hope over authoritarianism.

Empires fall.
Tyrants fade.
But hope—embodied hope—remakes the world.
One act at a time.
One person at a time.
One community at a time.

Christ is King. And in Him, a future with hope is already rising.

Thanks be to God.