Today begins a series of sermons on hope. We need to reflect on hope for these next few weeks because it is good for us to focus a while on the idea that we can have confidence that God wants a good future for us, and that we are building a foundation for that future by what we do in faith now, and as we grow closer to God today.

The lessons today remind us that whatever happens to all human beings will certainly happen to Christians. We will have mountaintop experiences and we will have deep valley experiences. We will fall in love and face the end, through dissolution or death of some relationships. We will find the dream job, and we will deal with lay offs. We will know financial stability and the financial devastation that a serious illness can cause. We are alive, and one day we will all surely die.

We are not immune and we are not without resources. We have been given the gift of hope. We do not escape the pain of grief, but we are not without hope. We are after all the church, and we have Jesus Christ, we have the risen Christ who has kept the promise that we will not be left alone, instead we will share in the resurrection:

“I will not leave you orphans”, Jesus says to us. “I am coming to you. In a little while, the world will no longer see me, but you will seem me; because I live, you also will live” (John 14. 18.19).

That promise of life beyond this life is our strength and our hope.

Hope in the Christian sense is not about wishing, and it is not about fear. It is about the expectation of something good. Because Christian hope is centered on Christ and God, it comes to us as a gift of God; it strengthens and renews our faith (Dictionary of New Testament Theology, vol.2. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976, p. 241-243).

It is a word that speaks to us now and into the future. Hope has been understood for the church as a state of mind, an attitude that helps us know that God loves us and blesses us; and that what we see is not always how it has to be. So we do we outreach to be present in the lives of people who need us and who need our helping hands; we do justice because we cannot really be in good and right relationship with people around us and remain unconcerned about what happens to them.

As we live in hope, renewal becomes possible. Because we have faith in God, hope finds a place to grow and make our spirit’s strong.

Some years ago, the contemporary Christian singer Steven Curtis Chapman wrote a song for friends who had gone through the horror of having to bury their children. He writes about the pain saying good bye to ones who left this life too soon, and he remembers them just like we remembered our loved ones last week. He speaks about the pain and loss; but he also speaks about the strengthening power of faith-filled hope.

“Nothing we can say, and nothing we can do can take away the pain of losing you, but we can cry with hope, we can say goodbye with hope, ‘cause we know our goodbye is not the end; and we can grieve with hope, ‘cause we believe with hope, there’s a place by God’s grace where we’ll see your face again…we have this hope as an anchor, ‘cause we believe that everything God promised is true…so we wait with hope, and we ache with hope, we hold on with hope, and we let go with hope” (With Hope on the CD Speechless by Steven Curtis Chapman).

Paul understood that hope strengthens and renews us. In his letter to the Romans, Paul uses those “churchy” words to describe our strengthening relationship with God. We are justified, we have been put into right relationship with God; we find peace with God, we find our shalom and our well-being with God through Jesus Christ. .

Our sacred connection is with Jesus who fills us with grace – it is the source of our blessing and it can be the source of our boasting. After all it is worth shouting about, this business that our God is a gracious and loving God. But we must be careful that our bragging about our closeness to God not lead us down the road to arrogance. We do not want to get into our spirits that God loves us and no one else. Yes, indeed God loves us, but God loves the people in that big church across town that does and says things we might disagree with. God loves us to be sure, but God does not love only us, so if we are going to boast in our relationship with God, we should know what to boast about. Such as…?

Such as, we can boast in the glory of God and boast in our sufferings, too. But that doesn’t make any sense. I want to forget those times I was driven to bitter, painful tears. I want the dis-ease and anger and anguish to stop. Boast in suffering, in bearing the horrible pain of burying a loved one, facing my failures, saying goodbye to a dream? Paul, you want me to brag about the heartache of being abused and betrayed? Why Paul? Why would anyone beat themselves up like that?

If we can make use of our sufferings – not that we enjoy it, but that we let it teach us we will see that it will help us to endure – to find the ability to hang in there in tough times to keep our eye on the prize – to stay focused personally and to live into our vision as Christians and as a church. So every now and then we can relate to the Psalm that confesses, “it was good for me that I was humbled so that I might learn your statutes” (Psalm 119.71). Today we might talk about having a reality check, knowing that we cannot really hide from ourselves. We would describe hitting bottom, that moment when we are so low that working for restored health and wholeness is our only option. We might liken our circumstance to holding up a mirror; I heard someone say a few days ago that a mirror both reflects who are and it shows us what needs to be corrected so we can show our better selves to each other and to the world.

It was good for me, it wasn’t good to me, the pain was awful; but it led me to seek the counsel I needed, it let me to prayer, it let me to remember your promise that you would never leave us alone.

Forty-two years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. stood in a Birmingham, Alabama pulpit and eulogized three of the four girls killed when their Sunday school classroom was bombed. He said that day, “at times life is hard, as hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and painful moments. Like the ever-flowing waters of a river, life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood. Like the ever-changing cycles of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of the summers and the piercing chill of its winters. But through it all, God walks with us. Never forget that God is able to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace” (“Eulogy for the Martyred Children” September 1963 in Testament of Hope – The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. edited by James Washington. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990, p.222). When we walk with God, we walk with hope.

Paul continues; endurance produces character. Character is who we are when we are all by ourselves, it is who we are when no one is looking. How are you when you are left alone with you? Are you kind and compassionate? Are you confident and self-loving and mindful that we share our lives with others? Or are you mean and selfish, self-loathing and unconcerned about others. Are you consistently who you are, no matter where you are? That is character.

Character produces hope and hope comes to us from deep in the heart of a loving God and it fills us, it is poured into us into us like water onto a drought stricken piece of land, and as we are renewed, our hope can change the world.

I heard the story this summer of a young woman who was feeling distressed. She did what she often did when she was down, she went to see her father. He listened for a while and then he got up and went to the kitchen. He reached into the cabinet and got three pots, filled them with water. In one pot he put an egg, in another a carrot, and in another he poured some coffee, he set them to boil.

After a while he called his daughter in and said to her, “tell me about the egg”. “Well she said, it went into the water soft and fragile, put it came out hard.” “That’s right”, he said. “Suffering can make us hard and tough.”

“Now, tell me about the carrot.” “It went in hard, and came out soft.” “That’s right”, he said. “Trials can make us weak, they can make us appear to be soft, as if we had no backbone. The water changed the egg and the carrot. Now tell me about the coffee.”

She said, “the color of the water changed.” He said, “it’s more than that. Look in these three pots. Notice that the water changed the egg, and the water changed the carrot, but the coffee changed the water.”

Hope calls on us to change the water around us, starting now. We have been washed in the waters of God, the love and grace of God is pouring into us, and we have been changed. And as we are changed by those waters of hope and love God pours into us, we pour our God inspired love and hope into the world.

Hope brings joy, brings trust in God, brings a sense that we can, by God, be strengthened and renewed. I say we go for renewal in our lives and in this church. We have indeed suffered loss here. But we have also endured, let’s see show the world that we have character here. Let’s make up our minds that we will hope and keep on hoping, and never, never, ever lose hope.

Hear this passage one more time, this time from the translation found in The Message:

May it be so for us all. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Dr. LaTaunya M. Bynum
Senior Pastor