December 22, 2013
Romans 8:18-25
Matthew 2:6
For your Christmas enjoyment, here is a little humor. A man walked into a jewelry store to
buy his wife a Christmas present.
The clerk showed him a number of nice pieces of jewelry, and he said, those
are all very nice, but can you show me something cheaper? She selected several other pieces and,
once again, he said, can you show me something cheaper? Selecting several more peaces he was
again dissatisfied with what he saw and said can you show me something
really cheap? She held up a
mirror.
What are the essentials of life? What is absolutely necessary for people to live? Food, water, shelter, clothing – there
are some very tangible items needed to sustain life, but there are some
intangibles as well. One of those
is hope.
Having hope is not easy these days. Political campaigns promise hope but fewer and fewer people
seem to have hope. In 1999, 85% of
Americans said they were hopeful about their own future and 68% said they were
hopeful for the future of the world.
A few years ago only 69% were hopeful for their own future and only 51%
were hopeful about the future of the world (from a CNN opinion poll). It’s probably dropped even more since
then.
There is a trinity of values in the Christian faith – as Paul
describes them in I Corinthians 13, they are faith, hope, and love, none of
which we can live without.
Hope, we must note, is much more than wishful thinking. We might say I hope the
Steelers win the Super Bowl this year.
I hope UK wins the NCAA this year.
I hope UofL doesn’t win anything this year.
1. Hope is an affirmation of belief in
God’s promise of the future.
It is the belief in that promise that compels
people to continue to move forward.
The Hebrew people had the hope of the Promised Land. For centuries they endured slavery in
Egypt, but they had hope in the promise of the future that one day they would
not only have freedom but a home as well.
That hope is what enabled them to endure through the many years of
struggle and despair.
Job, a towering figure when it comes to hope,
clung to the hope that God was with him and had not turned against him. I read several passages daily and one
of them is Job 13:15, which says though he slay me, yet will I hope in him. Nothing could cause Job to lose hope,
not even his friends who came to him and encouraged him to give up. They saw no reason for hope, but Job
did.
The early church had hope for a future free of
persecution. As the mighty Roman
Empire put many to death in horrific ways – as fodder for the animals and the
gladiators in the Coliseum, as human torches lighting Nero’s gardens at night,
and in countless other types of persecution – instead of losing hope their hope
grew and with it grew the church.
When Paul writes of hope he is writing from
very deep experience. It’s not an
academic treatise; it’s real life.
Paul suffered in so many ways – he was arrested and beaten (II Corinthians
11:13-29), people sought to kill him, and he was eventually executed – this was
a guy who really understood hope.
In the midst of his greatest trial – awaiting execution – he writes the
letter to the Philippians and they are beautiful words; they are words of hope.
2. Hope
is what allows one to look at the terrible circumstances of the world and say things
can be better.
Hope is what allows us to face our struggles,
to look them straight in the eye, and say I
can do this; this is possible; the Spirit of God will provide the strength to
endure and His promise of a better future is true.
Victor Fankel learned that hope. He was a prisoner in a concentration
camp, and at the entrance a sign bore the words abandon all hope ye who enter here, which is Dante’s inscription on
the entrance of Hell. He lost
everything. Every possession was
taken from him, and he suffered from cold, hunger, brutality, and the constant fear
of death. While in the camp he
lost his father, mother, brother, and his wife.
He later wrote of one of his darkest
moments. He was digging in a cold,
icy trench, and at that moment felt the
hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the
enveloping gloom. I felt it
transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a
victorious “yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate
purpose.
At that moment a light was lit in a distant
farmhouse, and upon seeing that light, hope was kindled in him, and his words
at that moment were et lux in tenebris
lucent – and the light shineth in the
darkness. John 1:5 says the
light shines in the darkness.
We read that verse last week in our Scripture reading.
Hope is the light that shines in the darkness
of life. It is a light that
illumines this life.
Christians have been accused over the years of concentrating so much
on eternal life that the problems of this life are overlooked. But genuine hope never forgets this
world. In fact, C. S. Lewis says
that it is when Christians have most thought of the next world that they have
worked to improve this world.
(Mere Christianity, p. 118)
3.
Proper hope, then, becomes something that moves us to make a difference in this
world and in this life.
Hope changes things in this life. Proper hope does not ask people to simply endure this life
while they are awaiting the next.
A hope that sees something beyond this life sees how things should be,
and when we see how things should be we work to make them that way. That’s why most of the great social movements
in history have come out of the church; because the church saw how things could
be and should be, and they worked to make it so.
Hope, then, makes all the difference. One of my favorite stories of hope is the story behind the
great hymn It Is Well With My Soul. The hymn was written by Horatio Spafford, who was a lawyer
in Chicago in the mid 1860s. He
had a very successful career, but in 1870 a series of tragedies befell the
family, beginning with the death of their four-year-old son from Scarlet
Fever. A year later almost all of
the Spafford’s real estate holdings were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire,
causing Spafford to lose his life savings.
In 1873 his family planned a trip to England,
but at the last minute Spafford was called back to Chicago on business. He sent his wife and four daughters on
to England, anxious to see them enjoy a trip to take their mind off their
tragedies. But tragedy struck on
the trip, as their ship collided with another, and sunk in only twelve
minutes. Spafford’s wife survived
but their four daughters perished.
Spafford took the first ship out of New York to
meet his wife, and during the voyage the ship’s captain called Spafford to the
bridge. The captain explained they
were passing the spot where his daughters had perished. Spafford returned to his cabin and
wrote the hymn, which included these words – when peace, like a river, attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea
billows roll. Whatever my lot,
Thou has taught me to say, it is well, it is well, with my soul.
When hope exists, people can survive even the most
desperate of circumstances. As
Emily Dickinson writes in her poem Hope,
Hope is the thing
with feathers,
That perches in
the soul,
And sings the tune
– without the words,
And never stops at
all,
And sweetest in
the gale is heard;
And sore must be
the storm
That could abash
the little bird
That kept so many
warm.
I’ve heard it in
the chillest land,
And on the
strangest sea;
Yet, never, in
extremity,
It asked a crumb
of me.
May
hope live in us always.
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