The Anatomy of Hope, Week 2: The Heart

Genesis 18:1-15

Romans 5:1-8

Lately I have become aware of one of my personal flaws. I like efficiency, probably a little too much.

I like things that are scheduled. Starting things on time. And ending them on time. Although I have to admit that session meetings often run too long. But I try to be on time. As if my life depended on it. As if the schedule were the most critical thing.

But this story of Abraham has got me thinking about this, questioning this. Because what is time, really? To our God, what is time?

Last week I heard someone say: “We serve a wildly inefficient God.” This is true.

Efficiency was not God’s concern in the story of Abraham and Sarah, was it? As we heard last week, God waited until Abraham was 75 years old before calling him out to a new life. And in the story we hear today, Abraham is pushing 100. For 25 years God has been telling Abraham and Sarah, who are well past the normal age of parenting, that God will bless them with many descendants. Is it any wonder Sarah laughed?

Who could blame her? Certainly not Abraham, for he also laughed at God just a bit earlier, when he was informed by the Lord that 90-year-old Sarah would be blessed with a son, that “kings of people shall come from her.” Hilarious. Abraham fell on his face laughing at that one.

Clearly, they did not believe any such thing could happen. The idea was absurd, of course. But also, the idea was painful for them. For two people approaching the end of their lives, who have suffered the pain of childlessness this long, maybe it felt as though God was taunting them with false hope. 

And so they laughed. Abraham and Sarah laughed at the promise of God. Which is something that might seem blasphemous to us – until we realize that we do it too. When it feels as though God’s promises are so far off from the reality we live with, we might laugh.

Some years ago, I offered a prayer in the congregation for peace in the Middle East. And after worship a member walked up to me and asked, “Are you dreaming? How can you say that with a straight face?” And he laughed.

Just last week, in a discussion about Genesis, one person laughed and said, “How is any of this relevant to parents who are struggling to feed their children?”

It is a particular struggle of a faithful life to sustain hope when there is no sign on the horizon that God will be true to God’s promise. In painful times, especially, hope is hard. But such times are also when hope is most needed. 

In the verses we read today from the letter to the Romans, Paul patiently explains it all to us. “Affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame.” Or as other translations have it, “hope does not disappoint.”

If we can only hold on to it, for as long as we need it.

You and I would like to move as quickly as possible from affliction to hope, skipping over endurance altogether. Yet, we are faced with the fact that faith and hope are not about efficiency. 

And so, the question we wonder about today is, how do we sustain hope in times of affliction and suffering. How does the heart hang on in the long walk of faith – faith in things yet unseen?

In our exploration of the anatomy of hope, today we examine the heart, because when it comes to matters of hope, the heart is inevitably involved.

Think of Abraham and Sarah. God’s word had to have seemed inscrutable to them. Their years have been filled with uncertainty, threat, danger, disappointment. Although we have no idea what their lives were like before God called them on this journey, we know what the story tells us about the journey. During these years of wandering they have traveled through treacherous territory, where they felt threatened. They have suffered disputes over their herds and land with Lot, Abraham’s nephew – which became bad enough that they had to part ways. 

There were battles Abraham got involved in, negotiations he was tasked with. Life has been relentlessly hard for Abraham and Sarah. And through it all, God kept returning to Abraham to tell him all the good things that were in store for him and Sarah. Every time they heard the promise reiterated, they had to have wondered. 

There were plenty of moments of doubt. The times they laughed at the promise. There were even moments when both Abraham and Sarah tried to take things into their own hands – to become their own source of hope. Most notably, this happened when Sarah hatched the plan to give Abraham a child by her servant Hagar. This child, Ishmael, would be the promised descendant, they thought. It might have seemed like a good plan, but it wasn’t God’s plan.

And so, once again, they reoriented. Once again, they turned toward the promise they had been hearing for so many years, reopening the wounds of their hearts. They let themselves hope – a little bit. Not that much, maybe. But enough to keep them on the journey. 

This is important: They weren’t perfect, but there was enough hope to keep going, even through their suffering.

One thing we learn – from the great story of the Bible, as well as from our own lives – is that a life of faith does not eliminate pain. Every Christian has experiences of grief, heartache, disappointments of all kinds. And the truth is, the Christian path opens our hearts to even more pain. Compassion for others is a hallmark of discipleship, a quality that Jesus modeled for us, a gift of grace. 

We stand in God’s grace, Paul says in the letter to the Romans, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is where we find the gift of faith, and hope. This is the vantage point from which we have a different view of things. We see suffering and endurance in a different light. Standing in the place of grace, we see God at work in all things.

Standing in this grace, we see ourselves connected to suffering everywhere. The world wants to tell us that all is well if we are not personally suffering. But standing in God’s grace we find that the suffering of others is also painful to us. The heart of faith has compassion for all of God’s creation, just as God does. And the way to navigate this is with hope.

And although peace in the Middle East feels so far away, there is hope. Hope gives us ability to envision it, even while it is lacking. Hope gives us the desire to work for it.

And although Old Testament story feels so distant from the concerns of suffering families in our midst today, it may give us hope. The biblical story is all about suffering families, too, but through the story we learn that God never abandoned them; hope perseveres. In hope we await God’s time.

And this is why hope demands humility of us. We cannot pretend to have the answers. We cannot know why, or for how long, someone will suffer. Hope enables us to walk alongside them, loving them, offering what support and aid that we can. 

In God’s time, a child was born to Abraham and Sarah. And once again, Sarah laughed, but this time it was the laughter of joy. All in God’s time. The right time. 

Not according to their schedule, but at the right time – our wildly inefficient God’s time. 

Good things take time, but hope will get us there, through the waiting.

Compassion for others whose lives don’t even intersect with ours, is inefficient, but faith will not let us look away and hope will see us through.

The heart will suffer – there is no way around this for a hopeful people. But hope will also keep our hearts open, and by this we will receive the love of God.

The Anatomy of Hope, Week 1: Foundation

Genesis 12:1-9

Hebrews 6:13-20

Forty years ago, when I was young and starting a family, people were worried about overpopulation. That was a big thing. China had its one child policy, which they were enforcing pretty rigidly. Only one child per family permitted, with very few exceptions. 

Among my friends, I would sometimes hear concern about whether or not it was responsible, even ethical, to bring a child into this world. What would life be like for them? What unknown challenges would they face in their lifetime? 

But while I heard people expressing these concerns, I don’t know if it actually impacted their decisions. It seemed like most of my friends were, like me, having families – two, three, even four children. And China did a total reversal of its one-child policy, when they discovered there might not be enough people to care for them when they get old. 

So I think most of us stopped worrying about overpopulation. Life went on. But now there has been another shift, a new thing to worry about.

I recently read an article by the journalist Neal Gabler in which he shared his concerns about what he sees as a sort of national depression. He says surveys show 78 percent of Americans believe the future looks dim. And maybe not only Americans.

He points to research on the worldwide decline in birthrates. It seems that the decline is not related to financial stability or how much of a support network you have, or maybe not even related to how much you want to have children. It seems that people are sharing a sense that the future is too uncertain for the lifelong commitment of parenthood. 

Which does not seem like a good thing.

But the falling birthrate is really just a symptom of a very complex problem in our world. We could talk about it all at great length and get very depressed in the process, so I’ll spare us that. But there is one thing I want to lift up, the one thing that really took my breath away: In Gabler’s words, people no longer trust hope.

That what the future holds is only more of the same disunity, disfunction, and dissatisfaction. That our values have been trampled. That truth has been so devalued that we no longer even know what is real; we no longer know what to trust.

I cannot deny these realities. Yet, when I read Gabler’s conclusion that hope has died in our world, I felt a strong resistance well up inside me, saying, “No.” It is all too possible for the hope of a people to die. But if it does, then perhaps that hope has been anchored in something that cannot sustain it.

The foundation of our hope matters more than anything. Which brings us to the story of Abram and Sarai.

The history of the people Israel begins with two persons: Abram and Sarai. In the 12th chapter of Genesis, we meet this couple who are just beginning an extraordinary journey together. Even more extraordinary is their age. Abram is 75 years old; Sarai is younger, but not by that much. I think we would agree that most septuagenarians do not embark on brand new epic journeys into the unknown, but that is what Abram and Sarai did. And the reason they did this is because God made a promise to them.

Go out to the land I will show you, God says, a land you know absolutely nothing about; do this, and I will make a great nation of you. And even though this elderly couple had no children at all – for Sarai, the story says, was barren – they followed the promise. They went.

And as they traveled, God led them through the land of Canaan and said to Abram, this is it, right here; I will give this land to your children. Children, of course, that they did not have because Sarai was barren. They looked at this land, and then they moved on. Because the promise was not yet.

This is the beginning of it all – the story of our faith and the faith of our ancestors. This story begins with a promise to two old folks, a promise that will set the foundation for everything that follows. And in everything that follows, we see a pattern where the people seek to follow their God. Then they stumble. They fall into a deep pit where there is darkness, where they might easily lose hope – but then they discover that God is still with them. God has not abandoned them.

It is a pattern that repeats itself so many times it becomes an expectation. Human beings will just mess everything up, such that it feels impossible to sort it all aright, to get back on track. But then, God, who does not let go of us, sets us back on track. It is a story of hope, and the foundation of our hope is our God whose promises are sure, whose love is steadfast.

The pattern repeats through the scriptures: the human tendency to fall, but as we remind ourselves in the great communion prayer, God called a people back to God’s self through the law handed down to Moses, through the prophets who spoke truth to kings to show them how they had fallen away from righteousness, and finally, through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

It is in Christ, we believe, that the promise to Abraham is fulfilled – the promise that through Abraham all the families of the earth will be blessed. It is in Christ that we get a glimpse of the glory of God, a taste of the kingdom of heaven. It is in Christ that we anchor our hope, a hope that will not fail us.

For as the writer to the Hebrews says, it is through two things – God’s character, which we know as love, and God’s promise, as old as Abraham – that we may seize the hope that is set before us. 

But we must also know that the hope is for now – not just for the next world – a kind of pie in the sky in the sweet by and by. The Letter to the Hebrews and the other New Testament epistles offer some words of comfort, but much more, they give words of guidance, encouragement, instructions for the church: how to be a community of human beings made in the image of God. How to move this world toward hope. And that is our calling.

In the early 16th century, John Calvin, the father of our Reformed faith, arrived at the city of Geneva and it was a sight. It was a sort of a wild west town, corrupt politically and religiously. It was a turbulent age, not so different from our own time in that way. But Calvin somehow managed to bring order to this place. They created a culture in which the poor were cared for, where people had a sense of their role in creating a better society. They created a place where there was hope. Even though the world was not less turbulent, their lives were shaped by hope.

In his commentary on the book of Hebrews, Calvin writes to his community about the corruption, the sin, the misery that they all knew so well, and then he asks, “what would become of us if we did not obstinately cling to hope?”

Hope gives us a clear vision of a better way. Hope stirs us to act, to become better than we were, to work for a world that is better than it was.

Yes, there are many signs in our world that despair is winning the battle. People giving up on community as we hibernate in our homes. People giving up on politics as we see our leaders unwilling to work together anymore. People giving up on the earth, because caring for it is too big a job for individuals to do. We even see people giving up on life when they decide against the possibility of bringing children into the world. 

I see despair. Even in our congregation I know there is that risk. Some of you completed the little survey I gave you this week about hope. When asked how it feels when you contemplate the unknown, some of you said that you do feel some dread, or worry, that drags you down. Despair is a real thing that looms out over us. But hope still has the power to hold us. Hope in the sure and steady love of God, the God who has a plan for us, for this world created with love. With hope, we will not give up. 

The choice for hope is a kind of resistance in this world. Although we will still feel pain, we will not be devastated by it. Although we will see the world around us choosing other ways, we will stay on the path that God has set for us, lifting one another back up when we stumble. And although we see people around us surrendering to apathy, we will choose active, hopeful engagement with our world. 

During these next few weeks, we will walk together, praying together, studying together, seeking a better understanding of the way of hope. 

Let us go this way together because, as the Apostle Paul wrote, “Hope does not disappoint.”

The Why of It

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

Matthew28:16-20

Taylor Swift wrote a song called happiness. In it she says, “There will be happiness after you. There was happiness because of you. Both of these things can be true.”

So, I am thinking about the sentence, “Both of these things can be true.” Because as confounding as it can be sometimes, it is so often the case in life. Two things that seem to contradict each other can both be true, at the same time.

We say that God is three – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And we also say that God is one. There is one God – God alone. Both these things are true.

We say that Jesus is fully human, just like us. And we also say that Jesus is fully divine. Both these things are true.

And in the scriptures, we read that we are made in the image of God – Genesis chapter 1. And that we are made from the dirt of the earth – chapter 2, when God formed man, Adam, from the dust of the ground and then breathed life into him. We know that we are fallen, broken, earth-bound creatures and that we are little less than divine. Both these things are true.

It is true that we find a lot of things to be contradictory in the scriptures and in the language of our faith. It is not because the scriptures are sloppy, or carelessly written. It is because of the deep complexity of all of it.

But complexity and uncertainty are uncomfortable, so humans have a strong urge to simplify things as much as possible as quickly as possible. As that old gospel song has it, God said it, I believe it, that settles it for me; we sure do want things to be settled.

And so in the literal reading of Genesis 1, we hear that God created everything in six days, followed by a day of rest. And, if we are not inclined to embrace the poetic beauty of it, we can get bogged down in the details of this spare description of creation.

And worry over explanations for how there could be day and night before the sun was created. And whether the length of a day was the same then, in the beginning, as it is now. And if it is possible to mesh this first creation story with the one that follows in Chapter 2, the story of Adam and Eve in the garden.

And if we are seeking simplicity and certainty, then settling these questions is of the utmost importance. To understand this opening passage as poetry – an ode to the breathtaking beauty of creation – is not an option.

God created the world, and all that is in it, and called it good. To me, this is sacred truth of the highest level. But some find it too worrisome because we also know that we are broken by sin, and this is the problem that our faith is meant to solve, we think. Not by making us good but simply forgiven.

It is quite a bit more complex than that.

I remember participating in an intergenerational Sunday school class in which we asserted that God made us good. And there was a man in the class who was deeply disturbed by that assertion. He called it bad theology.

The class leader said, but that’s what the Bible says in Genesis chapter 1. And he said, I know, but we shouldn’t say it; it just confuses people.

Above all, we don’t want to be confused. We would much prefer to have certainty.

And so we dig into the “what” questions. What did God create first? Light. See verse 3.

And if we are really feeling adventurous, we will dip a toe into the “how” questions. Such as, how was there any light before God created the sun. The answer we might find is, God is light. See 1 John 1:5.

But the “why” questions – the richest, most meaningful and edifying questions – we might fail to ask at all.

Very young children have a habit of asking “why.” Again and again and again. Each response leads to a repetition of the same question: Why? Until eventually even the most patient adult will answer, “Because I said so.”

But today I will lean on the words of Jesus when he said we should become like children, and I will ask the question “why.”

Why did God create this good world? Why did God separate the light from the dark, the day from the night, the earth from the sky, the waters from the solid ground? Why did God create so many different species of animals and fish and birds and plants?

Why are we, in the words of the Psalm, so fearfully and wonderfully made?

There is an overwhelming amount of diversity in this world God created. Why?

The problem with the “why” questions is there is often not one certain answer. But when we start asking the questions, we start seeing many things that are true. And we can see that all this beautiful difference in the world is made to work together. Day is in relationship with night, water is in relationship with earth, humans are in relationship with animals and with other humans. When we say that God created order out of primordial chaos, we are saying that God created the potential for fruitful and blessed relationships. So,

Why did God create the world? Maybe for the intention of being in relationship with us – all of us.

Why did God create so much diversity? Maybe because this allows for so much more creativity in the world.

And why did God send the Son, Jesus, into the world to live and die and defy death? Why did the resurrected Jesus give his disciples a mission – to go out to all the nations of the earth, bringing the goodness of Christ to them? Why have we been called to reach beyond borders, to reach across aisles, across race and creed and even political preferences?

Why have we, who call ourselves followers of Jesus, been sent, by Jesus, to care for the others whose needs are such that we can hardly comprehend, whose choices baffle us, and appearance alienate us?

Because, though we are distinct and different in so many ways, we are the same – beloved children of the Lord, made in God’s very own image.

Both things can be true. Praise be to God.