Champions of Hope

The New Revised Standard Version Results of Justification

5 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Introduction- Speed Dating

This is weird!

I used to sit over there, and let me tell you as a Presbyterian I am struggling to come to terms with the idea that my pew is gone...

Some of you in this room taught ME Sunday School!

Still, it is an honor and a privilege to be with you all today!

When you are preaching a candidacy sermon, I realize it’s a bit like Presbyterian Speed dating.

I have 20 minutes, 15 when the Steelers play the Patriots, to tell you as much about me as I can.

So I hope you don’t mind, I’ve sprinkled some personal information through this message.

Including an extremely important question at the top:

Hope

Are the Penguins any good this year?

I mean, part of me thinks they are doomed to fail, because they are essentially the same team they’ve been for the last two or three years and they’ve never made it out of the first round of the playoffs.

But then I keep coming around to this thought, that as long as they have Sid and Geno, they’ll always be contenders.

There will always be hope.

Hope is such an interesting topic, isn’t it?

In my almost 20 years of professional ministry, I’ve come across some people who are quite allergic to hope:

“Don’t fill me up with that hope mumbo jumbo pastor.”

“I’m too hurt right now to think about hope.”

I’m not talking about hope until I’ve had my third cup of coffee.

And yet, I can’t think of many things that are more central to the Christian faith than this idea of hope.

So I think we ought to start with what hope isn’t.

What Hope Isn’t

Hope isn’t optimism

I think by and large I’m a pretty optimistic person.

But don’t we all know those people who are just a bit too optimistic?

Like they’ve had too much sugar or something.

“I know the building is on fire, but at least we have marshmallows to roast!”

The source of all knowledge in the universe, Google, defines optimism this way:

“confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something.”

By itself, I’m pretty ok with that!

I dream of deep success!

But I think we’ll discover if that’s all we have, we’re going to have a hard time building on that foundation.

Sometimes failure happens.

Sometimes you try an experiment and it blows up in your face.

Sometimes you say things that will offend someone.

That’s just life, it happens.

And if you’ve built your life on optimism, you realize that it’s just not that sustainable.

In fact, I think optimism is dollar bin hope.

It kind of sort of looks like the real thing, but it just can’t hold up.

Hope isn’t programable

It would be particularly helpful if I had a 5 point plan for how we were going to be a hopeful church, particularly if I wanted to be your pastor, wouldn’t it?

Charts, graphs, the whole deal.

But the truth is, hope doesn’t like to follow a plan or a program.

Hope likes to follow the Spirit, and the Spirit is WILDLY unpredictable.

Tongues of Fire

The blind seeing

The lame walking

Presbyterians clapping in worship!

I mean, you just never know what the Spirit is going to be up to next!

There’s no Three point plan for the Spirit, and as I’ve come to learn that Hope is one of the Spirit’s closest allies.

Hope isn’t free of pain

There is a particular breed of Christians that will use hope as an aspirin to numb people’s pain.

A while back, a mother came to see me who had lost her son to an opioid overdose.

I don’t have words to imagine the kind of pain this woman was struggling through.

But she came to my office because they had held her son’s funeral at a different church up the road, and through her tears the pastor there kept saying that she needed to have hope. She needed to stop crying. She needed to get it together.

My friends, hope is not allergic to pain.

In fact, Paul says, it’s born in it.

This world is full of suffering, but if we manage it well suffering can lead to endurance.

Endurance, if we aren’t afraid of it, can lead us to character.

And character, if properly cultivated, can give us hope.

Paul would tell us that you can’t hop on the train mid ride.

Some of the deepest, most hopeful people I know happen to be the ones who have suffered very deeply.

Hopeful people take suffering seriously, because we know that suffering is taking us somewhere.

The enemy of hope: cynicism

Some might think that doubt is the opposite of hope, but I’m coming to believe it’s cynicism.

Cynicism is the belief that things can’t change, or maybe even worse...

Cynicism is the direct opposition to any kind of change.

I hope you understood that I was kidding at the beginning about my pew being gone.

Of course it is!

Of course Beulah is not the church it was when I left here at the ripe old age of 19.

Of course this church has undergone some deep and profound changes, stories that I can’t wait to hear, both in unbelievable victories and spectacular failures I’m sure.

All of that has caused you all to get to where you are now, so whether those changes were beautiful disasters or accidental successes, Paul would tell us that God works all things for the good for those who believe in him.

And I am no where near the same person I was all those years ago.

For one thing, I’m a lot bigger and a lot harrier....

But I also hope that I’m more mature.

I hope that I’ve let the suffering of life build endurance, character, and hope in me.

And I hope that I’ve grown even more and more in love with Christ.

The Christian life is all about hope, and hope is all about moving forward.

What Hope Is

Marko’s definition

A friend and mentor of mine literally wrote a book about hope.

And he gave hope such a great definition that I’ve been stealing it for years, royalty free.

He said “Hope is the faithful confidence that God is authoring a story that leads us from vision to action.”

Oh, that’s good!

Let’s break that down a little bit.

Faithful confidence

When I started in ministry I was a youth pastor.

And when you’re a youth pastor, you are often thrust into uncomfortable and difficult places.

Easily at the top of that list for me is anything having to do with rock climbing.

I am horrified of heights.

And so every time I would go rock climbing with one of my youth groups, there would be an adventure director.

I think this person graduated high school like 6 seconds ago...

And they tie this rope around me in a rather uncomfortable way.

And noting my fear and hesitation, they will say “This rope holds 2000 pounds, you’ll be good.”

To which my response was “Ok, but how much can the rock the rope is tied to hold?”

To know that, that the rope holds 2000 pounds, that’s belief.

But then there would always come a moment when I had climbed up to the top of the torture device, and I would then have to repel off.

I would have to step back, sit down, and let the rope hold me.

That’s faithful confidence.

It’s one thing to believe in Jesus.

It’s one thing to know a lot of biblical facts.

It’s one thing to know the stories.

It’s one thing to have your systematic theology worked out.

It’s one thing to believe in some kind of concept of hope.

And that’s all great and wonderful.

It’s another thing all together, in the turbulent world we all live in, to step back and let Jesus hold us.

It’s another thing all together to put faith in Jesus.

It’s another thing all together to lean in to the world view the Scripture demands of us.

It’s another thing all together to let hope hold us.

God the author

Speaking of that Jesus guy...

I believe and trust in a resurrected Jesus Christ, alive and well in the world.

I do not believe in Jesus Christ as an idea.

I do not believe in Jesus Christ as a historical moral role model alone.

I especially do not believe in a Jesus Christ that we get to use as a weapon to hit those with whom we disagree.

I believe and trust in Jesus Christ, risen and reigning, who intercedes and interacts with us on a daily and regular basis.

And I believe very very much that Jesus Christ is the author and perfecter of a beautiful story.

I believe that Jesus Christ is telling a grand story of creation, of its fall, and its redemption at his hands.

I believe that Jesus Christ is telling a beautiful story of Beulah Church, one that has a profound and beautiful history and an incredible and profound future.

And I believe that Jesus Christ is telling an incredible story in the lives of each and every saint gathered here, taking us from where we were to where we are and on to where we want to be, closer and closer to our dear Savior.

Every time, every time Jesus is asked about this mysterious Kingdom of Heaven, rather than laying out a detailed description, he reaches for a story.

We have faithful confidence that God continues to author this story…that moves us.

Belief to action

I am an avid cyclist, with a garage set up to serve as a slapdash repair shop.

One of my favorite things in the world is to wander down to the garage and pretend to know how to fix my bikes.

And it turns out I have two assistant mechanics in my boys, Joshua and Julian.

They’ve been coming down to the garage with me since they could barely crawl.

They say they’re there to “help,” but that usually ends about 30 seconds in to the ordeal when they get distracted by their own bikes or toys strewn about.

But man, do I love those times with my boys.

Are they helping me? No, not at all!

In fact, they’re usually making it worse!

But I wouldn’t trade a single second of the time I get to spend with them in the garage.

Hope moves us from vision to action.

We are being called to get in the game, and to participate in the story of God.

So one question that ought to illumine us is “where does our neighborhood need us?”

Can we be the hands and feet of Jesus to those for whom church is a relic of the past?

Can we be the hands and feet of Jesus to those who are in desperate need, who have a hard time putting food on the table?

Can we be the ambassadors of Christ to those who say that our community’s best days are behind us?

Can we pick up the work of Christ as reconcilers, in a world that seeks to divide us along racial lines, and economic lines, and sexual orientation lines, and political lines, can we be people who work to ensure that all are welcome and valued and loved?

Can we bring the hope of Jesus Christ to anyone within our reach who has lost their own hope?

We may get it wrong.

We may not be the most helpful ambassadors Jesus has ever had.

We may actually from time to time slow Jesus down and get in his way.

And we may (wrongly) start to believe that what we do is how we earn Christ’s love.

It very much is not.

In the same way that my boys have my love long before they set foot in the garage, we have Christ’s love for us.

But I also know that he treasures little more than when his dear ones join in the work of building the kingdom of God.

Champions of Hope

1 Peter 3:15 “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you;”

Peter understands a few things in this verse:

That living in this light, the light of hope, changes us.

If we carry a faithful confidence in God’s story, and if we allow it to move us from vision to action, our lives will be different.

When we set aside faithful confidence in our ability, or in our resources, or our circumstances, and choose instead to live in the grace of Christ, folks notice.

And they will be interested in living a life much the same way we do.

They may have questions.

How could you possibly live in this hope, in this world today?

And that’s why we should be ready to defend hope.

We are called to sing it from the rooftops that God is authoring a new story for us.

We are called to have an answer for how God is changing us, causing us to grow, and pushing the story forward in us.

We are called to be champions of hope.

May the God of all hope fill us with the faith to hear the story, to trust in his grace for us, and may we be moved from vision to action.

May we all be champions of hope.