Romans 5: 1-11; John 4: 5-42
Olivet Church, March 19, 2017
In the mid-1800s Emily Dickenson wrote:
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
Hope Does Not Disappoint Us
Our reading from Romans begins with the word “therefore,” which indicates that it is grounded
in what has come before it. Indeed our reading in chapter 5 is a bridge between Paul’s
description of what God has done in Christ in response to humanity’s plight, and the description
of how we are able to grow in faith and a new life in Christ. Paul does not stop writing at the end
of chapter 4, for justification by God’s grace through faith is not the religious equivalent of the
fairy tale ending, “and they lived happily ever after.” In the chapters that follow we see that sin
and evil continue to exercise influence in the world Christ has redeemed, and suffering remains
so acute that in chapter 8 Paul goes to great lengths to say that nothing in all creation, neither
hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword is able to separate us from
God’s love in Jesus Christ our Lord.
In that chapter of Romans Paul writes that “the sufferings of the present age are not worth
comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” And he says the whole creation waits with
eager longing for the glory of the coming of the Lord, and is groaning as in labor pains for the
birth of that hoped for new creation where pain, hunger, war, suffering, injustice, and death will
be no more. “In hope we were saved,” Paul continues, “and hope that is seen already is not
hope. We don’t hope for what we already see and know. Rather we hope for what we do not see
and we wait for it with patience.”
Yet our hope is not wishful thinking, but rather a sure and certain conviction regarding a
believed in future revealed in Christ and his kingdom, confirmed in his resurrection from the
dead, and sealed in us by the work of the Holy Spirit. “Blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ!” Peter writes in his letter to the church. “By his great mercy he has given us a
new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an
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inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being
protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”
Similarly in Romans 5 Paul writes, we have peace through our Lord Jesus Christ, knowing that
God is with us, and for us, and redeemed us and the whole creation in his Son. And we can
rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And because that peace cannot be shaken or
taken away. And because that future glory and blessedness is assured in Christ’s resurrection
from the dead; the suffering, brokenness, and pain of the present moment does not lead to
despair, bitterness, and death but rather to strengthened hope.
We know from experience that we can be strengthened, wizened, and blessed by difficulty,
hardship, and loss. “What doesn’t kill you,” we say, “makes you stronger.” Though my life has
for the most part been pretty smooth sailing, I look back upon times of rough waters, when I
moved to a new community in the middle of High School for instance, or went through the
breakup of a marriage in the middle years of life. And looking back I discover those times of
change, loss, and fear were times of growth in faith, in hope, in Christian character, in love.
Today we honor Vivian Moore on her 97th birthday. She is the oldest member of Olivet, born in
1920, a member of that generation Tom Brokaw wrote about and branded as the “Greatest
Generation.” But it was not simply being born in the decade of the 1920’s that made Vivian’s
the “Greatest Generation.” It was rather through the crucible and refining fire of difficulty and
suffering of the Great Depression and World War II that this generation was shaped in character
and became great.
Now suffering, loss, and hardship do not inevitably result in stronger, better, hope-filled
character. We know from experience that they can lead to bitterness and despair in individuals;
and conflict and tyranny in nations. Lives, spirits, souls can be diminished and extinguished
rather than enhanced and made more brilliant in the crucible of suffering.
Yet Christians have particular resources and a unique perspective that enables them, as the
Apostle Paul writes, to “rejoice in the midst of suffering, knowing that suffering produces
endurance, and endurance character, and character hope, and hope does not disappoint us
because God’s love has been poured into our hearts.”
Believers know that suffering is temporary and not part of the kingdom inaugurated in Christ and
consummated in his return when God’s will is fully done on earth as in heaven. And believers
know that suffering is not inflicted upon us by God. In our fragile, vulnerable condition humans
have always lived in fear of spirits and Gods that they needed to please in order to gain blessings
and avoid sufferings. And so misfortune and suffering were viewed as evidence of God’s
displeasure and punishment. “Who sinned,” they asked Jesus, “that this man was born blind?”
“What sin,” they asked Jesus, “had those Galileans committed whose blood Pilate mingled with
the sacrifices they were making?” “What have I done,” we ask, “to deserve this difficulty in
life?”
But in Jesus we find God keeping company with the sick, poor, marginalized, and foreigners that
good and holy people thought God to be punishing. And in Jesus we find God living a poor,
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homeless life before finally being rejected, scorned, and put to death on a cross. In Jesus we
discover in the words of John’s gospel, “God coming among us not to condemn us but save us;
God loving the world that through his son we may not perish but have everlasting life.” And so
in our suffering we do not experience God’s punishment or abandonment, but God’s presence
and peace.
And so we can rejoice in suffering because it can align and attach us more deeply and fully to
Christ and his coming Kingdom and our glorified life in him. Amidst suffering the firsthand
awareness of the sin and evil Christ saved us from, and will undo completely at the end of time,
leads us to practice endurance. And endurance leads to the strengthening of more Christ like
attributes of our character, patience, humility, gentleness, graciousness. And growth and
strengthening of that character leads to a more robust hope and anticipation of that day when we
and all things are made wholly new. Suffering for the Christian, Paul proclaims, creates a
feedback loop between the hope we have, and the hope we grow into, as increasingly we live,
breath, and pray “thy Kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as in heaven; come through me
now; and through you completely and fully and universally, as soon as possible.”
“So we do not lose heart,” Paul writes in 2nd Corinthians 4. “Even though our outer nature is
wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction
is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what
can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be
seen is eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building
from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
The director of a medical clinic told of a terminally ill young man who came in for his usual
treatment. A new doctor who was on duty said to him casually and coldly, “You know, don’t
you, that you won’t live out the year?”
As the young man left, he stopped by the director’s desk and broke down in tears. “That doctor
took away all my hope,” he blurted out.
“I guess he did,” replied the director. “Maybe it’s time to find a better one.”
Commenting on this incident, Lewis Smedes wrote, “Is there a hope when wishful thinking is
taken away? Is there hope when the situation is hopeless? That question leads us to Christian
hope, for in the Bible, hope is no longer a passion for the possible. It becomes a passion for the
promise of God.”
“Hope does not disappoint us,” Paul concludes, “because God’s love has been poured into our
hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
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