Lent 2 2009: Hope

Romans 4:13-25
For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation. For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”) —in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “So numerous shall your descendants be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.”
Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.


What was the last piece of good news you heard?

We’re not hearing much these days. Whenever I turn on the news on the radio or the television, I hear basically the same things: the economy is bad, it is getting worse, and the people with the power to fix it are fighting over what the best fix is. There is even talk on the news about how we should be talking about the bad news that we receive every day. Do you remember not 2 months ago when the world was watching the inauguration of this country’s 44th president? It was quite a day. Things seemed so good to me that day. Without ignoring our differences, we all seemed to be reading from the same script that day. For about 18 hours we were united again by something bigger than our parties or our politics in a way I don’t remember since the days immediately following the attacks on September 11, 2001. Joy and I were glued to the television all day. I know she’s way too young for TV, but I wanted her to be able to tell her friends that her crazy mommy made her watch the inauguration of this country’s first non-Caucasian president ever. After experiencing a campaign in which we heard the word “hope” mentioned so many times it almost because boring, I was once again filled with and surrounded by it that day. I confess that at times I was moved to tears thinking that Joy will never remember a country in which people of any other decent besides European don’t have a prayer of ever attaining an important elected office or that women are second class or second choice participants in most areas of professional life. I was hopeful because before my very eyes things were coming into existence that had never existed before.

We are 47 days into this new presidential administration, yet January 20th already seems like a lifetime away. Last weekend I heard some of the speeches made at a political convention, and it made me sad again. It made me lose a little hope. The spirit of a unified nation across party and political lines has disintegrated. What happened to the spirit of one-ness I felt just 47 days ago? A month and a half into a new era, and we’re tearing each other apart. Hope, huh?

William Sloan Coffin once said something about Christianity being unique because we really believe there is hope in a world in which hope has no business existing. That was the thing about Abraham—belief that God could make something happen that seemed impossible, hope that surpassed sanity in the case of his son Isaac. In our faith life, in our national life, in our individual lives, each of us has experienced moments of hope: belief in the possibility of things being called into existence that do not currently exist. And the one doing the calling is God.

In this holy season of Lent, we go along with Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem. It is there that he will bring into existence the hope of an everlasting life in the presence of God—something we dare to continue to hope for even now. Paul recalls the work God did in Christ by raising him, body and spirit, from the dead and showing the world that the most impossible thing we could imagine—the fact that life doesn’t end when there is no more breath in this body—is not only possible but can and will be. Paul recalls the faith journey of Abraham, begun late in his life: when he was too old to father a child, he and Sarah had Isaac. When he thought his life and legacy were long past their prime, God gave him a new life to live and a new promise of a future he never imagined possible—to be the ancestor of a great nation of people. What a journey of faith he entered when he made a covenant with God!

The good news for us today is that our faith journeys will not always be easy they will always be life changing. When it isn’t easy, when you want to give up, when you think that nothing good will ever come of this faith or your life, when everything else in the world tells us that the world can’t recover from the situation in which we find ourselves now, that is when God gives us hope for the journey. God: who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. It came true for Abraham. It is true for Jesus. It will be for St. Paul, and it will be for you.

In the name of the Hope of the World. Amen.