Living Hope-

1 Peter 1:3–9 ESV

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Living Hope

—> Things that are living need nourishment.

—> Easter is awesome.

—> Sunday’s are great.

—> We need more.

—> Things that are living are in relationship with the environment around them.

—> not grown in isolation

—> nature/nurture argument

—> give and take

—> Things that are living re-produce.

—> a living thing isn’t just living for itself

—> a living things objective is to produce more things like it.

—> we are engineered to preserve life and to continue on.

I hope everyone had a great Easter. My hope and prayer is that Holy Week was a special time, that lead to a powerful Easter Sunday experience and that you still remember today, a week later, that we are an Easter people. We are FOREVER changed by the resurrection.

Today we are going to talk about what changes in us after the resurrection. According to

1 Peter 1:3

1 Peter 1:3 ESV

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

We have gained a living hope because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So what is a “living hope”?

I know this is a question that has significance at my house right now because we were dealt a difficult blow this week with the Gov. notice about the closure of schools this week, and while our state and parts of our nation are moving forward other parts are not. So to really get at the heart of this subject I want to break “living hope” down into 2 parts. “living” and “hope”. First lets look at what it means for things, ideas, people to be living, particularly in this context.

First, living things need nourishment. I know this may appear to be pretty obvious but we are going back to basics here folks. Living things need basic things to support their life cycles. Humans need water, food, oxygen to sustain life at a basic level. These 3 things will get us by day to day. This is basically true for all forms of life. There are bottom line necessities that we have to have to simply survive. Remember we are not talking about thriving right now we are just talking about basic needs of survival, things that keep us basically living.

I remember at one church I worked at I had a co-worker who had office plants. She had 3 or 4 around her office various kinds of plants, but the one thing they all had in common was that they were all very hardy, sturdy plants, that could withstand a lot of, how do you say abuse. They would go weeks with no water and I would walk in and simply ask the question when they looked a little droopy, “ hey when’s the last time you watered your plants?” and she would take whatever random cup that had water in it off her desk and water the plants. A day or two later they would go from brown and droopy to green and bright without fail.

Our hope NEEDS basic sources of nourishment to keep going. Lent and Easter are usually a big source for that. A focused time of thoughtful, prolonged reflection that ends with a celebration on Palm Sunday followed by a deep dive into sacrifice and repentance during Holy Week, that ends with an Easter Celebration! Let’s be honest. As best we tried we got a somewhat muted version of that this year. Instead of deep breaking the ground and preparing it with pre-grow and fertilizer, we got the sprinkler one day a week.

That brings us to point number 2. Living things are in relationship with the environment around them. There is a give and take. A cause and effect. Noting ever lives in isolation. Even in labs the scientist are a force acting on the subject. Living things are acted on and act on the things around them.

At our house our environment is held together by food. If we go too long without eating the environment starts to become unstable. We call this the “hangry factor”. It applies to all of us, even the dogs. When lunch or dinner is late we know it. People start getting angry and annoyed because of their hunger. Plants and animals need more water when it is hotter. Some plants and animals have specially adapted features to live in harsh environments. cactus have deep and extensive root systems to soak up every precious drop of water in the desert. Polar bears have learned to cut holes in the ice to fish for their food.

This is true for our hope as well. Right now our nourishment is being acted on as I said before by the things in our environment. Covid-19 has disrupted our environment. We are no longer able to function as we have been and that means we have to adapt. Unfortunately it isn’t as easy as throwing some chicken nuggets and fries in the air fryer if you are at my house, and most of us aren’t in the cactus family even though we may be a little prickly. We have to adapt how we give and receive spiritual nourishment in our ever changing environment.

The last thing that helps us understand living things is that living things re-produce. All living things have a built in drive to reproduce. Whether we are talking people, animals, or plants its always there. Nothing is engineered to be the last of its kind, everything wants to reproduce. That’s why I have spent so much time on verse 3 today. When we talk about our hope in the resurrection it is a living hope that wants to grow. Living hope is not simply a gift but a calling, it isn’t static but ever changing both in our own life and in the world around us.