Hope Today we center our thoughts around the idea of our church being and becoming day by day a place of hope. Next weekend is our long-awaited Centennial celebration. Naturally we will spend some significant time looking back at all that has happened over these one hundred years. We will think of people who have been part of our lives and our history here at First Mennonite. All of this is worthy of celebration.
But at the same time we all recognize that we can't just look backwards, we also have to look ahead into the future. And whether we think about our own life, or our family, or our church, when we think of the future we want to be hopeful. We want good things to happen in the future. So this morning we focus on hope.
Now hope isn't the same as wishing, a kind of wistful longing for something to happen. Hope is more than wishing. Maybe we can think of it like this. The calendar turns to the first of December and a child begins to think of Christmas and the gifts which are coming. The little boy wishes for a truck he can run by remote control. Or the little girl wishes for a new video game. But beyond the wishing there is something deeper, and unspoken, going on. The parent's act of giving the gift at Christmas is a sign of love for the child. At a deeper level the child's longing, the child's desire, the child's great hope, is that the love of the parent, which is behind the giving of the gift, that that love will be there this Christmas, and on into the future. Hope has both this ``now'' and this on-going, sustaining quality. The sustaining hope the child feels can be rooted in promises kept in the past that give the child reason for hope in the future.
I Peter The little book of I Peter, perhaps written by the apostle Peter, was written to scattered Christians in Asia Minor, most of who were ethnically probably Greek, unlike the Jewish Peter. All of them were living under Roman law. These were new Christians, living with a marginalized, minority status. They were misunderstood, and Peter describes them as ``aliens.'' They faced hostility and persecution. They lived with the pressure all about them to exhibit loyalty to the emperor; and in the home they encountered Greco-Roman household codes which emphasized a strict hierarchical way of relating. So when they claimed that ``Jesus is Lord'' they faced opposition and worse from the state; and when they edged in a more egalitarian direction they were living counter to cultural norms. It is within this context that we read Peter's opening expression of praise, and his confident reminder of a ``living hope'' given to us by a ``new birth'' and linked to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Peter asks his readers to discipline themselves and to set all their hope on the grace that is brought by Jesus Christ. This quick glance at I Peter offers us some handles for how we might relate to the book. These were people living in difficult, trying circumstances, living in the midst of opposition that could threaten their lives. They had a definite sense of being, in terms of their beliefs and convictions, a minority people. Sometimes we too can feel like aliens, like we are always rowing upstream against the popular tide, against the accepted position. This is how Peter's audience felt as Christian believers. When you feel uneasy, when you just don't go along with everyone else, and when sometimes you are backed into a corner to where you have to literally suffer for your convictionsyou might ask, what's going to get me through? Where's the hope? The idea of hope in the Old Testament can be summed up like this: God alone is the hope for the individual and the people. Hope in God, not in anyone or anything else. Placing hope anywhere else, the Old Testament asserts, gets you into trouble. Wisdom literature instructs that wealth is not the answer. Don't place your trust there. The prophets inveigh that putting the nation's hope for security in military might won't provide a lasting sense of security, a sure hope. Idols too, of any form, are not worthy of trust. This reminds me of the mid-term elections of last Tuesday which heightened all of our awareness of the importance of politics in our lives. I think it is very important to be aware of, and conversant in, what is going on politically in our country and the world. I think it is also possible to be seduced by politics and to be tempted to put deep hope in politics. It is pretty easy to place one's hope in your political party of choice, and so if they win, then you feel more hopeful, and if they lose, you despair. I think when we dance with the powers we shouldn't do so cheek to cheek, our feet shouldn't be twirling about the floor in lock step with the powers, no matter how much we like them. Maybe it is enough just to do the twist, in the same room, nearby, but not touching. The Christian hope is in the risen Christ, the one who has broken the powers, even the friendly ones, and who calls us to respond to their evil and oppression with good. Peter's living hope is here linked to other big New Testament themes. Just in these few verses it is tied to a ``new birth'' to the resurrection, to something ``protected by the power of God'' and to the eschatological, the ``last times.'' Hope is linked to renewal, to the new birth, reminding us of Jesus and his nocturnal visit with Nicodemus. The person who has through faith in Jesus experienced renewal comes to experience a living hope not known before. And this hope can sustain, Peter implores his embattled readers, through the trials of life. Furthermore, in God's mercy, Jesus was raised from the dead, and the resurrection is directly related to the new birth, to the living hope. We internalize the resurrection into ourselves as we embrace the new birth, and as we recognize that we are and can live with a hope which is beyond ourselves. I'm afraid that all this just sounds like a bunch of wordsnew life, living hope, resurrectionjust a bunch of words, but remember, Peter is writing to a bunch of Christians, all relatively new to this Christian thing, not people who are celebrating even a hundred years of church experienceand he is saying, I know this is scary, and I know it is really tough, but this faith is something you can latch onto through all the storms. He uses a military term in verse 5 to say that this God will protect you. You don't need to fear those who would harm you, your enemies, and you certainly don't need to attack your enemies. No, Peter is saying, God is your protector. God is your living hope. This hope leads to salvation, understood both individually and communally, for both now and eternally. Reflections on hope OK, so I believe in living as a person of hope, that there is more to life than just the severe trials of the day. I believe in the resurrected Jesus who lives within and inspires me to faithful living. I believe in life eternal, that there is hope, beauty, and peace beyond death. But I'm afraid that all these words can sound like just a bunch of yada-yada-yada, just a bunch of blah-blah-blah to those who have been going to church for decades upon decades. And if you are new to it all it can sound like a strange and crazy foreign language with a bunch of code words that other people seem to get, but I sure don't. Living hope needs to become more to us than just words we have said we believed over and over again until we assume, if we think about it, that we actually do own them. We need more than that. Hope needs to be in our bones. It needs to be an experienced, felt reality. For me, one of those powerful, experiential times, is when I go to the Reedley Peace Center on a Friday night. Some of you are there all the time. I'm more of an occasional participant. Every gathering ends with the singing of a blessing song with the seven amens at the end. The evening usually has provoked some laughter, but there is often serious, sad, sometimes negative stuff. But the evening always ends with this message of hope. This great prayer of blessing, spoken to Aaron of old, found in Numbers 6: The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you,
and be gracious to you;
The lord lift up his countenance upon you,
and give you peace.
And just to make sure the point gets across, the writer goes beyond Number 6 to add an amen, and not just one, but seven of them. And when you sing that, even if you have had some angry thoughts, or you are discouraged, you can't help but think, yes, but, AMEN, I can go on, I have some hope. I have some hope because God is with me, God is present with me. The power of hope, the tenacity of hope, lies in the belief and confidence that God is ever with us, that God is ever present and faithful. People of hope don't deny the reality of evil, that people will do really terrible things, but they possess, what Catholic writer Tom Stella calls a ``sacred insanity that is willing to affirm that there is meaning in the madness. The mystery of God is in the mess.'' (Stella,A Faith Worth Believing, pp. 106-7) One lives with a profound, inner sense that God is present in the middle of it all. Last Tuesday evening a circle of us sat in the fireside room. People were talking about their lives, things they have experienced, challenges they face. We have people in our congregation who have faced, and are facing, arduous, wrenching challenges. But these folks have known new life in Christ and see hope in the now and in the future. This hope needs nurturing, and it needs nourishment, it needs reinforcing, but it is real and by the grace of God it will sustain them through whatever comes. We long for and strive for a faith that will serve us, a hope-filled faith that will withstand the test of fire, including death. There are many stories of faithfulness, of hope, right within our own congregation, in our own 100 years as a congregation. I think of how the Linscheid family has found the strength to carry on, to live as people of faith and hope, even after they had to bury their daughter Karen at too young an age. I didn't know Herman Dueck, but people have told me of what a fine Sunday School teacher he was. We see that hope sustained him. Pastor Ken tells of sitting with Harry Harder in the hospital there at the end, discussing what is to come, and then looking death in the face and punctuating the air with those hope-filled words: ``let's do it!'' Remember how Joyce Penner faced her adversities with a smile and a pleasant countenance, surely an abiding hope residing within her heart and soul. The Rogalsky family has the story of ancestors clinging to hope, crossing a frozen river into China. These accounts of living with a sustaining hope are part of our congregational story. You can certainly add to the short list I mentioned. We have long been a people of hope. We want to continue to be a people of hope as we face the future. Our larger family story, as an Anabaptist people, contains many stories of this sustaining hope. TheMartyrs Mirrorincludes the accounts of many faithful men and women who clung to the living hope, even as they faced the end of this earthly life. They were lifted up by a vision that they were part of something bigger themselves, part of a mighty kingdom that knows no boundaries, that knows no end, and that stretches from the now into eternity. Thanks be to God who fills us with hope through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
