The Blessing of Hope--Sermon Preached at Open Circle at The Villages MCC-6-13-10

        

Luke 11:9-10  

 "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; those who seek find; and to those who knock, the door will be opened.

Romans 5:5 

 And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Romans 12:11-13 

Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Romans 15:13 

 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

            Christopher Reeve once said, “Once you choose hope, anything's possible.”  He said this from a wheel chair while a respirator was enabling his body to breathe.  I know that the irony of this former superman being reduced to dependence on medical apparatus and physicians was not lost on any of us—I also know that his truly heroic life was lived in his profound commitment to hope and the cause of life after spinal cord injuries.  Christopher Reeve never gave up and his hope that paralysis from spinal cord injuries would one day be a thing of the past lives on in his foundation which continues to fund research and treatment.   

Hope is one of those words that is both a verb and a noun.  Here are two examples:  When in college, my son, David, would hope to pass a test, when, in fact, a few more hours of study would have given him the hope of passing with no problem.  I, looking down at my gas gauge, somewhere in the middle of nowhere on the Turnpike, hope that I will not have to call Terri and tell her that I am on the side of the road, when, remembering to stop at the gas station would have given me the sure hope of getting home on time.  As we think about hope, the blessing of hope, and what it means in our lives, I believe that we often confuse the verb with the noun.  And so, today, I want to speak with you for a brief moment about what hope can mean in our lives and the blessing of passing on our hope to others. 

You may have wondered how the gospel reading fits today with talking about hope.  My hope comes from knowing that every time I knock, God answers.  Now notice that I did not say, every time I knock, God answers and gives me exactly what I want, when I want it, how I want it…but God answers and I continue to learn that God’s ways will truly bless me with hope when my ways will often give me only more to hope for.   Claiming and rejoicing in hope means that we must embrace those sad times, those painful times, those seemingly hopeless times. 

 Christian writer Mary Lou Redding says:  “Our hope in God pulls us into the future. Hope allows us to affirm the reality of the abundant life that is ours in Christ. Hope allows us to stand with those in pain and to hold them until they are able to feel the love of God for themselves again. Hope allows us to work to bring God's reign upon the earth even when we see no results. Our hope begins and ends in God, the source of all hope.”  Her beliefs in the power of hope must surely come from scripture such as St. Paul’s benediction to the Roman Christians found in Romans 15:  “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” 

Now before some of you begin to politely turn me off, thinking that this is just another sermon on some spiritual concept that doesn’t truly play well in the real world—let me ask you to give me a few more moments to show you that this is not the case.  I, like many of you, have suffered at times in my life from depression.  As an adolescent, I had more than my share of hopelessness and spent most of my junior year in high school holed up in my house believing that there was something terribly wrong with me—(an actually quite common occurrence among gay adolescents who don’t have the support or even the vocabulary to express how differently they feel).  My mother probably believed that it was the well-meaning, though totally out of touch psychiatrist that put me back on my feet.  I know that it was a 75-year-old voice teacher who told me that if I would just keep singing, I had the gift to make a lot of people happy.  And so I sang, mostly about God and Jesus, the more I sang, the more I believed the words I was singing—those beliefs held me through some really, really bad times and I won’t try to tell you that I was never depressed again, but I was never depressed again like that.  In those turbulent adolescent days of discovery, the most valuable thing I discovered was the presence of a God who did not give up on me even when I did.  Ann Lamott sums it up for me.  She says, “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.”  And so there have been many times when I have shown up in the dark, and just kept singing—either figuratively or literally. 

Many of you will remember Norman Cousins, of “Anatomy of an Illness” fame.  He said this about hope:  “Hope is independent of the apparatus of logic.”  Now, if you do remember Norman Cousins, you know that he did not take the concept of hope or the need for hope lightly, he simply understood that hope cannot be explained, it must be experienced.  In his 1980 autobiography he says this about living well and for me, sums up his feelings about hope even thought the word does not appear.  This is his statement:  "I can imagine no greater satisfaction for a person, in looking back on his [or her] life and work, than to have been able to give some people, however few, a feeling of genuine pride in belonging to the human species and, beyond that, a zestful yen to justify that pride."  Norman Cousins, writer and social activist knew that hope springs up when we go about the business of making things better in this world for our sisters and brothers, for those we know and, just as importantly, for those we do not know. 

Listen then to my spiritual friend, Henri Nouwen when he says:  “When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope.”  I believe that the opposite of hope is not depression, but is, rather, fear—the fear that if we step out of our despair, hope will not be waiting—alas, there is only one way to find out and that is to step.  But despair is comfortable and safe—we know what despair and fear feel like.  And so often we do not step out of our fear, and knock on God’s door.  Charles L. Allen, one-time Pastor of Grace United Methodist Church in Altanta, called us to remember that:  “When we [you] say a situation or a person is hopeless, we are [you're] slamming the door in the face of God.”
            Paul says to us in Romans 5, you just heard it, please hear it again, in light of my previous words:  “And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”  So, since hope will not put me to shame, I will step boldly up to God’s door and ask loudly. 

 But how do we pass this blessing of hope on to others?  Look  again at Paul’s, Nouwen’s and Cousins’ words.  Let me combine them into a single briefer sentence:  When we allow our despair to be changed through God’s Holy Spirit into a common celebration of hope, we give others a genuine gladness for being human along with us.  In so doing, we thereby pass along our hope. 

If you feel hopeless today, I pray that you do not walk away from this time together feeling alone.  This is the place where we come together to open the circle to bring each and every one into a place of shared journey.  And this is where we come together to refuel, to refresh, to form ministries, and to celebrate where we will take this shared journey of hope.  What greater gift do you have to give to someone who is hopeless than to give them your hope—to reach out and say “there is plenty to go around” for as we give from our own wells of hope they are wonderfully, and more surely refilled with the gift of hope from the Holy Spirit.  This is a place to come in despair and know that someone will meet your eyes and say, “I love you and I will hope with you as you step up to God’s door.”  This is a place to find and give the blessing of hope.  Amen and amen.