In Search of Church II: The House of Hope

January 21, 2007

Romans 8 

     One of the things I love about mornings is a newspaper. I am obsessed with it really. Every morning before the kids come to the breakfast table, I snatch a few moments to pour over the Globe and Mail. When the paper is delayed or on the days when it doesn't come I'm grumpy. I know I can get all the news I need on my computer desk top when I go to the office. The radio is always on. But I love my paper, I've been reading it for twenty years, the columnists feel like friends.

    But lately reading the paper has begun to seem like an exercise in despair. The news is increasingly discouraging. Politicians wrangling. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq dragging on. Genocide in Darfour, daily tragedies in our communities. Global warming and impending environmental crisis. This week scientists moved the Doomsday Clock ahead meaning that we are one step closer to total annihilation. It is almost enough to make me cancel my subscription.

   Hope is a difficult commodity these days. How many of you believe that there are better days ahead for the world? How many of us believe that our children will inherit a better world? It is easy to slip into despair

  Irony, scepticism and cynicism are the dominant tone of all civic conversation. As one National Post writer recently said, “Everyone's got attitude.” Ridicule passes for comedy. Pessimism pervades politics. Crassness and ugliness are celebrated in art and literature. Hope has been supplanted by despair.

   Over against this disturbing picture of the world, Paul's encouragement to fledgling church in Rome comes as a breath of fresh air, a new word spoken as a counter point to the despair in the world. In this morning's reading he says, “For in hope we are saved.” Later in chapter 12 he is even bolder, “Rejoice in hope!”

   Remember that the recipients of Paul's letters were Roman Christians living in a world that was essentially hostile to them. They lived in the time of Nero, that mad blood thirsty emperor, who dipped Christians in pitch and set them on fire to light up his garden parties. These Christians lived in the shadow of the coliseum; they were bait for the lions, their deaths entertainment for the ruling class. Because they refused to worship the emperor these Christians were excluded from power; lost their jobs, suffered ridicule and were the subject of increasingly nasty and profane rumours. These Christians had every right to despair.

   So did they laugh at Paul? Did they dismiss him outright with rude and cynical comments? Did they mock him as naïve and childish? No. They took him at this word and they rejoiced in hope. Right there in the capital city, in the face of imperial power, they formed a community of hope. In the midst of intolerance they showed tolerance, in a hostile place they showed hospitality. In a place of diversity and difference they came together to worship. Rejoicing in hope they became the church.

    It wasn't easy. They were at odds at times, theologically and culturally very different from one another. But following Paul's lead they believed it possible to create a community of hope, a fellowship of encouragement to counter the cold, dark reality of their world.

   Friends this remains the work of the church today, our church and every church, is meant to be house of hope in a world of despair.

    Five years ago when I began my doctoral work I flew to Atlanta for the very first time. The airport is huge; there are trains that take you from one concourse to the other in order to fetch your baggage. As I left the train I found myself at the foot of the largest escalator I had ever seen, and as I came to the summit of that massive set of moving stairs I came face to face with a huge billboard that proclaimed in bold lettering, “Keep hope alive.” It was the city's motto.

     Keep hope alive, it's also the church's slogan. We exist to keep hope alive. Hope is to our spirits what oxygen is to our lungs. Your spirit dies when hope dies. Paul understood this. That's what he meant when he said “You are saved by hope.”

  If I asked you to specify the most dangerous type of person in our society what would come to mind? The murderous psychopath? A turbaned terrorist?  Some nuclear dictator? Well certainly we are menaced by these, but there are far fewer of them than the media would have us believe. The most dangerous person to have around isn't the murderer or the religious fanatic or the lunatic. It's the one who has lost hope. It's the cynic and the pessimist. They are forever sneering, “What's the use? Why bother?” The cynic's noxious breath is breathed out everywhere scorching hope and clouding dreams. Unlike the breath of God that turned dust into life, the cynic's breath turns life into dust.

  The cynic's scornful voice asks “What's the use? What's the use of feeding people at the soup kitchen? What's the point of resisting war and advocating for peace? What's the point of teaching underprivileged adults to read? What's the point of trying to rehabilitate ex-convicts? What's the use of caring?”

  The cynic's voice is the dominant voice of the world. They are dangerous because they tell our children that they have nothing left to hope for. They tell our youth to look out for themselves because no one else will. They poison young minds and bodies with violence and drugs and lack of respect for themselves and others.

Those who have no hope would have us believe that death and taxes are all there is. Self gratification and self indulgence are the virtues of the hopeless. The cynics convince us that there is nothing we can do about anything and so we do nothing. The hopeless trick us into believing that whining, complaining, demanding are a serious means of communication. They tell us that marriage is for saps; that commitment is for losers, and faith is for the stupid. After they have finished despair is all we have left.  But I am reminded that when Dante described his version of hell, there was a great big sign over the gates that declared, “Enter in all who would despair.”

But here in the church it is different. We are different. I look out every Sunday morning I see men and women of all ages who want something different than despair. There are young couples in their early thirties with a toddler who are here for the Sunday School and this time that they can spend together each week. They are here to make sure that their daughter is exposed to good values and religious beliefs. And they are here because they want a strong marriage and friends they can count on and believe that this is the place they can find those things.

There are people here searching for hope, desperate to find a word of encouragement; something they can hold onto through illness or job loss. There are men and women here who have been through it all; death of a spouse or child, separation, addiction, cancer, tragedy. They haven't got it all figured out, they haven't all the answers, they just know that being here gives them hope.

We have people who are here because they care for the world. They are committed to mission, to making the world a better place. They visit the sick, encourage the bereaved, work at the soup kitchen.

Today we have five couples bringing their children to be baptized. Is there anything more hopeful than this? We have no idea who these children will become, what lies before them. Yet today we give them over to God, we place their futures in the hands of the divine. We pray for them and hope for them.

This place is the house of hope. This is the place where the dangerous voice of the cynic is drowned out.

Hope as seen in the bible is not difficult to define, It appears as both a noun and a verb and it always conveys the absolute certainty of future good. Because God's people know that God is in charge, sooner or later all things come to pass and God's love will prevail.

In this church, in any church, our hope is not in ourselves. Our hope is not in our programs. Our hope is not in our wisdom, or our strength or anything at all about ourselves. Our hope is in God. Our hope begins in, is sustained by and is grounded in what God can and will do in our lives and in the world.

   Hope comes from trusting God is always with us. Hope comes from giving to God that which is too large and overwhelming for us to handle. Hope comes from believing in doing the right thing and simply trusting that the future will always be in God's hands. Real hope comes from believing in God's goodness and that somehow and in someway, God's love and healing will be ours. Real hope comes from reaching out to others in the midst of their struggles and offering whatever help and support we can give them with no expectation of anything in return. Real hope comes from using the strengths and the graces that God has placed in our very soul when he formed us.

   But hope doesn't come overnight. Real hope is earned, one good deed at a time. It is earned one faithful act after another. It is found after long and exhaustive searches for its presence. It has to be experienced in our faithful and sincere responses to awful situations. Our hope is the hope that is so often built on the ashes of life's greatest losses.

The world around us is groaning and crying out. But Paul suggests that the groaning we hear is not the sounds of death but life. He says that all of creation has been groaning with labour pains-there is some kind of birth going on. Paul is trying to encourage us with this image. He says in effect that all the chaos and suffering in the world is not what it seems-there is something much larger afoot.

When our lives are in shreds; when friends have betrayed us, left us, hurt us; when we have failed ourselves and others; when life comes crashing down us, the Spirit of God is bringing something new to birth, even though we cannot always see it or feel it. That is our hope. This is the good news that the church proclaims.

  So come into the house of hope. If you wonder whether your marriage will make it, if you are worried about what your kids are up to, if you are lonely and need a friend, if you are committed to a better and just world; if you are worried that the only voice you are hearing is the voice of the cynic and the pessimist, then this is the place for you. This place exists to keep hope alive. Enter here all who would have hope.