“WE RADIATE HOPE EVEN IN THE FACE OF DIFFICULTY"
A blind and illiterate woman lived two hours outside of
As sojourners came to visit her, she would ask the visitors to read. Over time her favorite passages became so familiar that she could recite them from memory. If her visitors couldn’t read, then she would recite them back as a kind of gift to them. People traveled from great distances to visit her. Why would they make the journey to be in the presence of this blind, illiterate and elderly widow? Because when she said “The Lord is my shepherd” or “I consider that the suffering of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us”, it resonated in a way the pilgrims couldn’t usually hear from the mouths of others.
People flocked to hear because despite her seemingly insurmountable obstacles of poverty, disability, ignorance, and age, she willed one thing in purity of heart. People flocked to hear her because you couldn’t listen to her without hoping that someday the holy words would come to mean as much to them as they did to her
radiate hope even in the face of setback and suffering. The Christians I admire most are those who burn brighter, the darker the night and the fiercer the storm. All of us have met people of faith like this, who bring the gift of hope as they only seem to shine more vividly as life tests them. In my year and a half on
In many ways, hope is the ultimate achievement.
Jesus came to fling open windows and to unlock doors into this spiritual reality. To impart hope, we best start at the story’s end, the fulfillment of God’s purposes at Good Friday and Easter. For it is only at the end of the story, through Jesus’ death and resurrection that we can begin to see clearly, face to face, as opposed to through a glass darkly. The message is this: evil may try to lynch good from a tree, but good finally wins out. Evil is to be banished. God’s dream, what Jesus always called God’s kingdom or God’s reign, will come true for all of creation.
This world will never lack the doubting, the defeated, and those in deep despair. Every day we meet people who say, “Nothing can be done about it…Why even bother?…You can’t change the world…What’s the use? Get real and give up.” Let’s be honest, we all have days when we are tempted to settle with so
little as that. On the dark overcast days, it’s particularly difficult to make the lofty sacrifices that we are called to make, to be the kind of people we know God wants us to be. But Jesus assures us that any sacrifice we make in the cause of God’s dream for the world will be more than compensated when it all shakes out. Hope is holding fast to the trust that, in the end, every sacrifice will all be more than worthwhile.
That’s where hope begins. Paul the Apostle knew a thing or two about hope what with the many sacrifices, the attacks, the jailing, the rejection and the martyrdom. As a pastor, I like nothing better than to read his words from Romans chapter 8 at memorial services of the lighthouse Christians who shine through dreary haze.
“We know that all things work together for good with those who love God, who are called according to his purpose…If God is for us, who is against us? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This luminous poetry radiating from Paul’s dark days is our theme song of hope.
I saved an article from my alumni magazine about a professor of computer science at
had them shape orthodics for my shin splints.” But Gelernter had lost part of his right hand, broken his left hand, shattered his wrist, damaged his eye, chest, and legs.
Gelernter is an observant Jew. Like many of us, he grew up on Bible stories that recount how God delivers the faithful who suffer. The source of his courage is an unwavering trust in the God able to overcome and reverse the darkest scenarios.
”So what’s the scoop on surviving a mail bomb?” Gelernter writes. “What do you learn? You learn that, at first, the past will seem only like a cause for mourning, but your job is to twist it around and make it a cause for joy. At the end of Sabbath meals, observant Jews sing Ps. 126, ‘Those that sow in tears will reap shouting with joy. Weeping as he goes, he carries the seed bag—and returns with shouts of joy’. If you focus on the big sweep of history on a single lifetime, the Psalms say, you see life as a stubborn return from sorrow again and again.”
So it seems that not all of the lighthouse persons of faith happen to be Christian.
Some are aware that I was one of the speakers at last July’s Craigville Colloquy. Unlike previous years of the event, this theological gathering of the the United Church of Christ garnered significant news coverage not only in the Cape Cod Times, but also the Boston Globe and the Christian Science Monitor. Some of you provided me these articles before I had ever seen them. Thank you.
So why were we now newsworthy? The theme was how can there be a just and loving God in a world of suffering and sorrow. That theme always gets attention, and it never gets old. Why, that is as fresh as the bad news delivered last week. But
what is that truly about except hope? We could have recast our theme: dare we hope in the face of all the abundant bad news and everyday dark experience?
I failed to say one thing at the Colloquy that perhaps I’d better get off my chest. One of the most remarkable things about being human is how surprised we are across the board by hardship, tribulation, and suffering. The truth is these darker realities aren’t at all surprising. They are virtually life’s only certainties. How goes the old aphorism? The only thing we can count on are death and taxes. Or how sings the blues master? If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all.
Cognitively, of course, that makes sense, and we know that. Experientially, as ill tidings befall us, we’re shocked and surprised. At least, I know that I am. I mean
I never expected that I would have migraine headaches three times a month for 22 years. Migraines were for other people, not me. I never expected my college roommate would be murdered. Those are far off and distant headlines. I never expected to be a divorced person. No one who marries expects to be divorced.
If hardship, tribulation, and suffering are not so surprising, let me tell you what is. What is surprising is that we have not been abandoned to our own dark devices. What is surprising is how God has intruded on and even entered human history. What is surprising is the power of love that started it all in the beginning is the same power that won’t let us go, won’t give up on us, and wants the best for us. Such surprises of grace are for me the reality even more certain than suffering.
Hope is where we end our sermon series. It is a good note because hope is so essential to praise and service. Peter Gomes writes, “hope doesn’t deny the circumstances of the present, and hope doesn’t get us out of our difficulties. It doesn’t get us out, but it gets us through.” Jim Wallis says, “hope is believing in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change.” Henri Nouwen writes, hope means to keep living amid desperation and keep humming in the darkness. Hoping is knowing that there is love; it is trust in tomorrow; it is falling asleep and waking again when the sun rises. In the midst of a gale at sea, it is to discover land. In the eyes of another, it is to see that the other understands you. As long as there is hope, there will be prayer. And God will hold you in his hands.”
I like the famous carving in the west door of the church at Staunton Harold in
“We Radiate Hope Even in the
Face of Difficulty”
Summer Sermon Series:
Firm Foundations in the Spiritual Basics
Rev. Dale B. Rosenberger
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 26, 2007
