On these Sundays in Lent we are taking as our base-line the Lord’s Prayer, but using the set readings, and allowing them to suggest to us various key themes of the Christians faith. Last week the theme was FAITH. This week the theme is HOPE. Guess what the theme is next week is? LOVE. Appropriate for Mothering Sunday. So today we are thinking of Christian Hope, and it would be hard to think of a more appropriate reading than Romans 5:1-11. If we had lots of time, I would begin by handing out paper and pen, and asking you to write down your expectations for the future. Like those opinion surveys that pop up from time to time, I would ask you – on a scale of one to ten – how hopeful (how optimistic) you feel under various headings - yourself personally, the local community, the country, the world in general - where ‘one’ means not hopeful at all, and 10 means very hopeful and optimistic indeed.
If we did that exercise, I have a feeling that the answers would not, on the whole, be very positive. We grow older and not surprisingly health can be a concern. The economy is not doing well, and not surprisingly jobs and money can be a concern. The world is not a peaceful place and that, too, doesn’t fill our hearts with joy when we read the newspapers or listen to the news. I wonder what effect this has on our Christian faith? Does the way we feel about ourselves and our world affect our faith? Does our faith affect the way we feel about ourselves and our world?
Let’s think for a moment about the world of the New Testament. Those first Christians lived in a world not altogether unlike ours. Relatively stable government over most of it, but (if we look beyond our own door-step) a world also full of injustice, danger, great cruelty sickness and short life expectancy, and where human life (let alone human rights) were not highly valued at all. Moreover, Christians often faced vicious persecution, misunderstanding, opposition and the real fear of imprisonment, torture and ignominious death, such as none of us (probably) has ever contemplated.
Yet the New Testament brims over with hope. It is a message imbued with hope from beginning to end. Indeed, you can feel their hope bursting through even when they are writing about persecution, danger and death. Think of a passage like2Corinthians4:8-l0, where Paul’s words match every difficulty with an equal optimism: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed but not in despair; persecuted but not abandoned; struck down but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”
You could actually say that the reason these gospels and letters in the New Testament were written in the first place was to express the almost explosive hope the writers felt, and to convey that hope to the readers.
What is the key to this wonderful hope? The key is that they had actually seen the future - and it is great! People say that it’s impossible to see the future, but not for the Christian. The future has already arrived, embodied in the person of Jesus Christ This is a dimension of the New Testament which many miss.
In the Lord’s Prayer we say: “Thy Kingdom come”. Jesus came pronouncing that the “Kingdom of God has come near to you”. The Kingdom of God is actually confronting you in me. Look, repent and believe the good news!” In Jesus was the fulfilment of everything that the prophets had said would happen at the end-time - the end of the world and the coming of the kingdom.
God would come down and visit his people. Everything that is summed up in the Beatitudes would come to pass. Material values would be reversed (as Mary has understood at the annunciation). The poor and marginalized whom no-one valued would become the important. Those who mourn would be comforted. The lowly would be raised high. Those who longed for God to show his face would be rewarded. The repentant would see their sins forgiven. The sick would be healed. Those imprisoned by every kind of sin or disability would see the prison doors open and be set free. The oppressed would see their chains fall off.
As Jesus moved through Galilee and on to Jerusalem, they saw all this come true, as Jesus healed the sick, raised the dead, gave sight to the blind, made the lame walk, and healed through the forgiveness of sins. The future would be the Day of Judgement, and in Jesus we see what that judgement looks like.
And as Jesus faced the cross, they saw that love would overcome the power of evil - yes, good really would triumph - and (most important of all) they would witness the surest sign of all that - in Jesus - the last days had come - the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting.
In Jesus they had seen the future – and so have we. Everything that Jesus was and did and symbolised and represented, was the Kingdom of God which will come one day in all its fullness.
No wonder they could hardly contain their hope! Hope is faith in the future tense. It is faith on tiptoe! And - in the interim and with that vision - they could cope with anything. Paul again in 2 Corinthians 4: 16- 18: “Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So our eyes are fixed not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen in eternal.”
What was the most important thing that Jesus gave the Samaritan woman? When Jesus saw her approaching, he didn’t need prophetic powers to see that there was something dramatically wrong with her life. Women don’t go out to a well on their own. They go in groups - for company, for safety, because they know each other and talk about everything going on in the village and (no doubt) the latest rumour or gossip. And the sixth hour is midday. Who would go to draw water at the hottest hour of the day? This woman came alone, at a time she knew there would be no-one there (Jesus was a big surprise in every sense of the word –a man, a Jew, on his own). If other women had seen her, she would have been criticised, insulted or ignored, and possibly even attacked. She was the village scandal, and would be perceived as a potential danger to every married woman. She was hated, isolated, lonely and with no possible future other than as an outcast.
But with the spiritual water of cleansing, and renewal and health, what was the most important thing Jesus gave her? He gave her hope. The possibility of a new life, a new start, restoration and acceptance. Jesus always brings us hope, no matter what our situation or state.
I’m going to have to leave you to study Romans 5, and I hope you will, because it is one of the greatest chapters in the New Testament. But note the sequence. When we turn and put our trust for life and death into the hands of Jesus, we are accounted in God’s sight as accepted, justified through the cross, and at peace with God. Through Jesus we have access into the Holy of Holies - the very presence of God Himself. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
The resurrection of Jesus guarantees our resurrection - the Holy Spirit is God’s signature on the guarantee warrant - and so we can now cope with whatever comes our way, even if it’s suffering, because suffering builds the character we shall become in the new life.
So many of our hopes are frankly trivial, and the material ones pale in insignificance if we are building up treasure of heaven. For, as Peter writes in his First Letter (1 Peter 1:1 -4): As those who put our trust in Christ, God has given us “new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade - kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.”
Even if suffering and persecution came their way, their eyes were alight with expectation. They could see glory ahead - in fact they could glimpse it already. This was not delusional optimism, or an artificial way of keeping their spirits up, they had seen the future - the Kingdom of God in Jesus. Jesus did not simply point to the future - He is the future - the future has invaded the present - and we have seen his glory. Keep your eyes on Him and your hope will never dim.
QUESTIONS 1. How does your Christian faith affect your outlook on life - personally? In the wider context? 2. In Romans 5: 1 - 11, what do you understand by the word ‘Justified’? Also the words ‘Access into the grace in which we now stand’? 3. Sadly suffering does not always produce character. Consider experiences in your own life or the life of those you know. How can Christian Hope shine through all our experiences?4. Quotation: “We are still deeply aware that the mortality rate is 100%.” Does your Christian hope extend beyond this life? In what way?
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