The message this morning is not just about Andrea Pitts. It comes from Andrea Pitts. I bring no eulogy, but rather a report, a report that proclaims the truth of Christ in the midst of suffering from the very lips of a woman who embraced her death and lived her hope. The words today are not so much mine as they are hers. I am merely the translator. Let me explain.
On Sunday a week ago, having learned of Andrea’s illness, my wife and I spent the afternoon with the Pitts family. When we went into Andrea’s bedroom, she began to speak about such things as wakes and memorial services and songs that she wanted sung. I stopped her. I interrupted her. I said, “Andrea, wait, you’re way down the road. Surely you haven’t given up hope, have you? You’re going tomorrow for a new medication, and it may slow or stop your cancer. Don’t give up hope!”
As quickly as her weakened condition would allow, but as strongly and as incisive as ever, she began to instruct me. She preached to the preacher, which is always a good thing. Andrea’s word was, “There are different kinds of hope.”
She went on to explain, as if that thought had been turning in her mind for some while. “There are different kinds of hope”.
I
The first, she said, was the hope for healing. There is always that possibility. But Andrea did not linger long on that aspect of her hope. Instead she spoke of being blessed. She said, “God has been good to me.” In a most pointed and definite way, Andrea insisted that even in her suffering, she was blessed. Not an easy thing to get your mind around, but there it was, and she was definite. “I have been blessed, but, no, I AM blessed, right now.” She said it over and over again, as if it were a new idea that she wanted to savor: “I AM blessed, no doubt about that.” It could not have been said more clearly if it had been a thunderclap. “I am blessed right now.”
I could not begin to unpack all that she meant, but it sounds very much like what the apostle tells us in the Roman letter, that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. This sort of hope strengthens, even when the suffering intensifies and the illness deepens. This sort of hope reaches out for answers and expects to find them, even though the questions multiply. This sort of hope, this hope that comes from character, is built over months and years of thinking about your life and of living out your convictions.
The Andrea Pitts who advocated for the poor was honing a character that would be formed in suffering and would endure into hope. The Andrea Pitts who had worked with dying children and had compiled their stories into a lovely booklet was delving into the deeps for truths beyond our normal perception. The Andrea Pitts who would think things through and give her energies to causes she knew to be right, though often inconvenient, was growing a character that would be tried in the crucible and would be refined into wholeness. Andrea lifts up for us the kind of hope that sees blessings, even in the most dismal of circumstances, and does not give up. She had that kind of hope – a hope born of suffering, endurance, and character, a hope for the moment of trial.
II
But that is not the only sort of hope. No, I have to go back and remember that Andrea said she had a different kind of hope. It was for more than healing, for more than feeling better, for more even than knowing blessing. Andrea went on to point out to me the second kind of hope she knew. She named her daughters and said that they embodied hope for her. “My girls are another kind of hope. They don’t really need me any more.” Andrea knew she had poured into them her very heart. She knew she had given them all that they needed to be capable and self-sustaining young women. But Andrea hinted that she had never quite turned them loose. Like many of us who have young adult children, we feel as though they still need us. They may still be babes in the woods, you know, even if they do have degrees in chemistry or in law! They may still be naïve to the ways of the world, you know, even if one of them is married and is the mother of three children and the other has found her soul-mate! But Andrea had come to terms with her need to be needed by her children, and by that Sunday afternoon had come to see them in their maturity as signs of hope, the sign of hope that Paul describes as sharing the very glory of God. “We boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.”
Nikki and Mack, we know that you are people of faith. Yes, you have taken a path that is different from that of your childhood, and we need not hide the fact that at the outset that was a point of struggle for your mother. But she came to see you and your family, filled with faith as you are, as part of the glory of God for her. You are part of her hope, for she left you a legacy of intellect and spirit, and she trusted you to make your choices with integrity. You are part of her hope of sharing the glory of a God who is greater than any of us can imagine.
Erin, we who saw you grow up around this church as a skinny little twig have some difficulty with the very concept that you are a fully credentialed and practicing attorney. But you are. And you are practicing in an arena that provides help to those who are disadvantaged, you offer support to those who are the victims of discrimination. You are your mother’s daughter, and you are a sign of hope. To your mother you are a part of her hope of sharing the glory of an empowering God, a God of justice. You are part of her hope.
And my brother, my good friend, whom I have always called Wellington, but whom your soul-mate called Tyler, her love name for you – may I presume today to call you Tyler? For I want you to know that you are cherished. You too are part of Andrea’s hope. Do you remember how on that Sunday afternoon she spoke of waiting for you? “Place my mortal remains wherever you wish,” she said, “to wait for Tyler.” Ah, good friend, that is a word of hope too. For your life is not over. Your heart will find strength. You will live and will live productively and hopefully. She trusted you during the years of your marriage, and she trusted you at the end. She will wait for you. My brother, my friend, you too are part of her hope of sharing the glory of the God who brought you together in marriage and who will sustain when death do you part. Wait, Tyler, and wait in hope.
III
But Andrea is not yet finished with us. There is yet more. For on that incredibly difficult Sunday afternoon, when all of us knew without saying it what was coming – we just did not think it would be so soon – on that Sunday afternoon, she instructed us yet more. “There are different kinds of hope.” She spoke of the hope she felt because her life was blessed even during this time of suffering. She spoke of the hope she felt because her family was established, and more than simply established – her family were accomplishing hope-filled things.
But then, almost in a whisper, so much so that I had to ask her to repeat some things, she went on to say, “I have in my heart the hope of eternal life. I have not been able to open the door of Takoma Park church much lately, but neither have I closed it. I know where I belong.”
A few years back, Andrea and Wellington were enlisted to help Margaret and me organize a marriage enrichment group in this church. In them was the maturity and the communication skill needed to help provide marriage enrichment for some ten or twelve younger couples. One night Andrea came armed with handouts and wall charts and butcher paper to stick up on the walls. She was ready! I say Andrea came with all that; brother Wellington, I think you got to be the beast of burden. But Andrea taught it all, with enthusiasm. I stood aside, marveling at how she led that group. Wanda Solomon came into the room to get something she needed for another meeting. Wanda stopped and listened for a while, and then whispered to me, “There is the future of our church.” Yes, and if so, it is because Andrea Pitts brought to these young people a different kind of hope. It is because she brought to them not only the hope of wholeness right here and now. It is because she brought them not only the hope of a productive family life. It is because in her very core was a different kind of hope, a hope, a knowledge, that in the communion of saints she had found her place, and it would be her place for eternity.
There was only one other thing she said before we let her rest, for she was so fatigued that day. She smiled and admonished this preacher, “Make it short and sweet; short and sweet.” I told her that if it were about Andrea Pitts it would be sweet; short would take some work. She smiled; we prayed; and Margaret and I left knowing that we had witnessed a different kind of hope.
What kind of hope? Paul says it, “hope does not disappoint us.” An enduring hope. A resonant hope. A hope that penetrates beyond this life to a life to come. A hope that does not disappoint us, in any circumstance, because, the Bible says, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given us.”
What kind of hope, this different hope? A hope based on the very realities we celebrate this week. A hope founded in the free gift of God, won at the cross by Christ Jesus. A hope raised up and given substance from the empty tomb. A hope that is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. “On Christ the solid rock she stands; all other ground is sinking sand.” Andrea Pitts is secured and sealed by the Spirit of the Living God into this different kind of hope. This kind of hope does not disappoint us.
