Romans 5:1-11
Luke 8:43-48
February 14, 2016
Costly Hope
Today as we come to the beginning of the fifth chapter of Romans, we
move on to what it’s fair to call Part 2 of Paul’s letter. Just to relocate ourselves
before we move forward, let’s recall that after his introduction in the opening
verses of chapter 1, Paul gave us the theme of his message in chapter 1, verses
16-17:
I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to
everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the
righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, "The
one who is righteous will live by faith."
The whole letter is really Paul’s explanation of what he says here, of why his
message about Jesus is such good news. And in Part 1 he has given us two
powerful reasons:
First, he says that the news about Jesus is such good news, because the
bad news about the world is so bad. Paul patiently spells this out in the first three
chapters – how humanity failed to honor God or give him thanks, how we have
turned to gods of our own making and pursued our own desires. As he puts it in
chapter 3, verse 23, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” And as
God “gave us up” to do as we please (Rom. 1:24), the world became caught
up in a mess of our own making.
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But the second reason why the news about Jesus is so good is because
although God could have left us there, he hasn’t. In his righteousness—in his
faithfulness and justice and love—God has done for us what we couldn’t do for
ourselves. To use Paul’s word, God has justified us through the death and
resurrection of Jesus. Through Jesus, who offered himself as the perfect sacrifice
that made atonement for our sins, God has acquitted us in the court of his
justice, and he has set us free from our bondage to the power of sin and death.
And Paul emphasizes that this is a gift that comes to all who trust him and
receive that gift by faith.
Now, when we come to Part 2—which includes chapters 5 – 8, Paul begins
to spell out on another level why this message about Jesus is such good news.
He will show how embracing God’s gift by faith changes us—or can change us –
and the world -- if we live that faith.
Here in chapter 5 Paul introduces two new words into the conversation.
The first word is “peace.” He says, “Since we are justified by faith, we have
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The story we read this morning
from Luke gives us a wonderful picture of that peace. The woman we meet in
the story is caught in a horrible bind. In this case it’s nothing of her own doing,
but an illness which has afflicted her for twelve years. She has tried everything
she can, but the physicians of the time could do nothing for her except help her
empty her bank account.
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Luke adds to this picture of her physical, emotional, and spiritual distress
the noise and chaos of a crowd pressing in all around Jesus as he tries to walk
through a village. But when the woman pushes through that crowd and
touches Jesus, her body is healed, and her distress is replaced by a calmness, a
serenity, as Jesus says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace."
(Luke 8:48) Through faith, Jesus does the same for us. He cuts through our
distress, he reconciles our broken relationship with God, and gives us a new
beginning.
The second word Paul brings in, which is the one I’d like to focus on, is
“hope.” He says, “We boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.” This is one
of those phrases that might need a little unpacking. “Boast” is a word that has a
lot of negative connotations for us—it brings up images of football players
strutting around after they’ve sacked the quarterback, or politicians bragging
about how great they are. Although it’s an accurate translation of the word
Paul uses, it doesn’t really capture the spirit of what he’s saying. A better word
might be “celebrate.” Paul is expressing a combination of the joy and
confidence that we have in Christ.
He says we celebrate “our hope of sharing in the glory of God.” Hope is
always something that looks forward. And our best clue to what this “glory of
God” will look like can be found by peeking ahead to the end of Part 2, into
chapter 8, where Paul speaks of creation being set free from its bondage to
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decay, of our humanity being fully redeemed and restored. This is what we
have to look forward to.
After this big set up, Paul seems to throw us a curve. He continues in verse
3, “but we also boast in our sufferings.”
In his famous book, The Cost of Discipleship, the great theologian and
pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer coined a phrase “cheap grace,” to describe a kind
of Christianity in which people say the right words and go through the motions,
but doesn’t actually change them. And he then talked about costly grace that
calls men and women to take up their crosses and follow Jesus.
Well, I would like to suggest this morning that when Paul talks about hope,
he isn’t talking about “cheap hope.” He isn’t talking about some sort of sunny
optimism that sees good in everything, because as we’ve seen—even here in
Romans—Paul has a very realistic view of human nature. And so I would like to
suggest that when Paul talks about hope, real hope, to him it is “costly hope.”
The hope we have in Christ is costly in two ways:
The first has to do with how we come to experience this hope. Paul writes,
“[W]e also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,
and endurance produces character, and character produces hope…”
Paul teaches that hope comes at the end of chain that begins with
suffering. And he seems to indicate that there are no shortcuts. Real hope, the
hope that can sustain us through the really dark times, is costly hope.
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And that hope begins with suffering. If we think back to that woman in the
eighth chapter of Luke, her suffering strips away her dependence on everyone
and everything but God. And the same is true for all of us. Only when we reach
the end of our power can we begin to open ourselves to trust fully in a power
greater than ourselves.
The endurance we learn through suffering is another seedbed of hope.
Hope is a long-term thing. Hope is about fixing our eyes on the light at the end of
a long dark tunnel and trusting we will get there. And the endurance we learn
through suffering equips to live for the long term.
The word translated “character” comes from a word that means to be
“tried and true.” As we develop endurance, the ability to persevere through
suffering, it becomes part of our nature. And it gives an inner strength that sees
us through suffering and struggle, and can help us bring other people along with
us, even when their hope is weak.
Hope—the costly hope that is forged in these fires--isn’t a naïve optimism
that everything will just be alright. It’s a realistic hope that knows that there will
be setbacks, that knows that it might take years to receive the healing or
wholeness we seek, or for broken relationships to be reconciled. It is a hope that
knows that it might take decades or generations or centuries for the world to
change. But it never loses sight of the glory that lies ahead.
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Gaining this hope is costly for those who yearn for it. But lest we forget—
and this is the second point—this hope comes to us at a tremendous cost to
God. Paul continues to say:
God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for
us … For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through
the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we
be saved by his life.
We have this hope, because while we were God’s enemies, God bridged the
gap. Jesus gave his life to give us hope.
Where do we see this costly hope? We see in the witness of those who
through great endurance and character continue on through great suffering. I
know that I haven’t experienced that sort of suffering, but I’ve seen it in others.
I’ve seen it in individuals who have persevered in their lives against great odds—
though illnesses and economic hardships. But we especially see it in the
experience of peoples who have passed through long periods of hardship and
oppression. I’ve been reminded this week as I’ve reflected on this passage of
Nelson Mandela’s decades of imprisonment in South Africa, and of the
experience of African Americans.
I’ve also been drawn to a song that expresses this all eloquently. It’s
actually in our hymnals, number 729, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which is often
called the “black national anthem.” It tells a story of struggle and hope—not
only for African-American people but for the entire nation. I’d like to play a
video clip for you. I’ll offer a disclaimer in advance that it contains some
disturbing images, but it captures a sense of what costly hope looks like.
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[This is a shortened version of a video which can be found at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyS3HPInHtI ]
Lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven ring,
ring with the harmonies of liberty;
let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies,
let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
let us march on till victory is won.
Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet
come to the place for which our people sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered;
we have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
thou who hast, by thy might, led us into the light,
keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee,
lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee;
shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand,
true to our God, true to our native land.
Through God’s gift in Jesus Christ, we have peace with God, and he invites us to
look forward with confidence and joy, he invites us to live in hope. Amen.
Rev. David Spaulding
First Presbyterian Church, Dixon
February 14, 2015
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