Romans 5:1-8
I remember when I was a kid we always looked forward to getting the Sears Wish Book about this time. It was a huge color catalog filled with potential Christmas gifts for kids of all ages. We would look through the pages of toys and games, folding down the corners to mark the things we wanted. Our wish lists got longer and longer the closer to Christmas it got. My brother and I would go back and forth about what to ask for. And my mom would tell us over and over again that Santa may not be able to bring every-thing on our lists! I can’t imagine how many hours in my lifetime were spent with those Wish Books.
As kids, hope came easy. We hoped that our wishes would come true, that all those gifts we had picked out would be under the tree on Christmas morning. And, more often than not, many of them did. But something happens to us as we get older. We become more cynical, more “realistic,” and our hopes are always tempered by common sense. We may even lose the capacity to have hope for the future. In a year like 2020, hope can seem hard to hold on to. We can get stuck in the bad news: more cases of COVID-19; more deaths; more social unrest; more violence; more political stalemate; more isolation. We are separated from our loved ones, even at the holidays. Some people have experienced job loss or financial insecurity. And we might begin to ask, “Where is the hope?”
My Advent sermon series is based on an old Steven Curtis Chapman song, Heaven in the Real World. It begins with these words:
I saw it again today in the face of a little child
Looking through the eyes of fear and uncertainty
It echoed in a cry for freedom across the street and across the miles
Cries from the heart to find the missing part
Where is the hope, where is the peace
That will make this life complete
For every man, woman, boy, and girl
Looking for heaven in the real world
And I ask myself, I ask you, I ask God, in 2020, where is the hope?
Perhaps one answer is in the acts of kindness that have been taking place in this unusual and difficult year. For example, in the early days of the COVID-19 in New York, balloon artist Christina Cartagena was upset when she saw how many small businesses in her Brooklyn neighborhood were closed. So she put rainbow-colored balloon sculptures in front of seven of those shops. This simple act brought a little light into the darkness. In another part of the country, law students at the University of Michigan were alarmed by the unemployment and evictions taking place in their community. So they volunteered to advocate for housing and workers’ rights across the state, fighting to make sure that people who lose their jobs don’t lose their homes, too. In Eden Prairie, Minnesota, 10-year-old Eleanor Johnson was disappointed that the pandemic kept her from being able to celebrate her grandmother’s 67th birthday at her nursing home. So Eleanor started leaving personalized presents for seniors and children on their front porches in her neighborhood. In Plano, Texas, isolated elders are being contacted twice a week with 15-minute phone calls from city staffers. In Akron, Ohio, when COVID-19 forced public schools to move classes online, two education majors at the University of Akron organized a team of 22 undergrads to serve as homework coaches on a hotline. They offer 30-minute tutoring sessions to more than 100 kids.
But for Christians, our hope has a deeper root than acts of kindness. Our hope is based on our faith in God through Jesus Christ. Our hope is not only about this life, but about the life to come. Our hope is not unrealistic; it is hope that is born out of times of suffering. We read about this kind of hope in Paul’s letter to the Romans.
First, Paul says that our hope is in sharing the glory of God. That has to do with being in the presence of God in heaven, in the kingdom of God. But that kingdom is not just a kingdom beyond this world; it is a kingdom that is coming into being in our world. As Baptist pastor Susan M. Shaw reminds us, Jurgen Moltmann’s theology of hope tells us that our hope is in the resurrection, “not in the sweet by and by, not in a future utopia, but in the here and now in God’s in-breaking community on earth. As Moltman tells us, the resurrection is present and ongoing, and God’s kingdom is already here, erupting into our world and making all things new.” When Christians are living faithfully, following the teaching and example of Jesus, we are bringing God’s kingdom into reality on earth. We pray every week, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And everywhere we are doing God’s will on earth, we are bringing God’s kingdom to earth.
Second, Paul says that our hope is born out of our suffering: suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. There is an old saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” In many ways, I think some of us have become stronger this year. We have had to learn to do things in new and different ways, from how we do our jobs, to how we teach our children, to how we go out into the world (masked and socially distanced). We have learned to celebrate holidays without large gatherings. And we have been reminded that the church is not a building, but a group of people who can worship remotely and serve others in the middle of a pandemic. We are stronger, and more resilient than we thought.
Third, Paul says that our hope does not disappoint us. That is because God has poured out his love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. And that love was most clearly and fully revealed through Jesus Christ. God loved the world so much that he sent his son into the world to die for us. God proved his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Our hope is based on God’s love. There is no better guarantee than that! God’s love is unconditional, steadfast, and never-ending. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. And that gives us hope for the present and the future. We have the promise of heaven because of God’s love expressed through Jesus Christ.
The end of Steven Curtis Chapman’s song goes like this:
To stand in the pouring rain and believe the sun will shine again
To know that the grave is not the end
To feel the embrace of grace and cross the line where real life begins
And know in your heart you’ve found the missing part
There is a hope, there is a peace
That will make this life complete
For every man, woman, boy, and girl
Looking for heaven in the real world
It happened one night with a tiny Baby’s birth
God heard creation crying and he sent heaven to earth
He is the hope, he is the peace
That will make this life complete
For every man, woman, boy, and girl
Looking for heaven in the real world
Jesus is our hope. Jesus came to bring heaven into the real world. And now we are tasked with doing the same. We bring heaven into the real world when we embody the love and compassion of God, when we extend hospitality to those who feel like outsiders, when we share what we have with those who have less than we do, when we work for justice for all people, when we stand up with those who feel less than, when we offer food and water to those who are hungry and thirsty, when we advocate for the poor and homeless. We are the agents that bring about God’s kingdom in our world.
There is hope. That hope is in Jesus Christ. And that hope is in us. We can be the answer to someone’s prayer. We can be the fulfillment of someone’s hope. It all starts with knowing that hope ourselves.
