In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul says that three abide: faith, hope, and love. Perhaps few words are as precious to us as followers of Jesus as these three terms. But what do they mean? Even these wonderful words have been distorted in our culture and unfortunately by some Christians over the years. For many, faith is belief. What you believe is most important to many Christians. Their attitude is, “You must believe exactly as I do if you really are a Christian. If not, you cannot be my brother or sister in Christ.” But biblically, faith is not belief. The book of James says that the devil believes, but it does him no good. Faith is not so much belief as it is trust. Trust implies a relationship. Trust involves risk. Trust allows for growth. Belief without trust is not faith. You can believe everything in the Bible and still have no faith–no trusting relationship with Christ which results in a Christ-like life.
And what about love? Certainly everyone understands what the word love means. Or do they? We use that word so loosely. We love chocolate cake, the Colts, television, a new car. A man “loves” a woman and insists that unless she loves him back in a very physical way, she does not love him. And if she says “no” that man’s “love” quickly becomes disgust and hate. Parents often confuse love for their children with a desire to dictate their lives and future. Many people in therapy confuse love with need. I believe a large part of what is wrong with our culture is that most of us do not know what love really means. When we look to Jesus who gave himself for us we discover the depths of authentic love. We see from his teachings that the real test of love is whether we love our enemies. 1 Corinthians 13 tells us what love is according to the example of Jesus, and it’s a far cry from anything we see in Hollywood, on Wall Street, or even on many of our own streets.
But today’s sermon is about hope. I doubt if most of the world understands hope any better than it does love or faith. And tragically many in the church are not much better in their own understanding of this vital quality in our walk with Jesus. Hope is the missing piece in much of our world today. Whether people are suffering from hunger, oppression, sickness or meaninglessness, all of humanity needs a rebirth of hope. In our own society inner city teens are planning their own funerals because of the violence which threatens them daily. And on the other end of the economic scale we see rich kids who have every material thing they could want take their own lives because they do not know who or why they are. They have had everything but love and a sense of identity.
We as the Body of Christ need to recover hope for us and our world. Today’s world needs a hope-filled church – a people who look and act like they live on this side of Easter. But before we can embrace and bear witness to such hope, we must first realize what biblical hope is and what it is not. In today’s passage Paul gives some of the most profound thoughts in the New Testament about hope, and what we discover is that hope is not the easy optimism so prevalent in our society — an optimism which sees with myopic vision — an optimism which views the world through rose-colored glasses – an optimism which bypasses pain, ignores injustice, and turns its back on lives which require more than a pat on the head and a quick fix. No, biblical hope is not the shallow optimism pervading our society today.
And neither is biblical hope the wishful thinking which so often masquerades under the label of hope. “I hope I win the lottery.” “In spite of what the pathology report says, I hope Mother does not have cancer.” “I hope everything will turn out all right even though I have done nothing personally to secure that result.” No, biblical hope is neither easy optimism nor wishful thinking. And neither is it a part of our faith to be experienced only when the going gets tough. As we shall see, hope is as vital to daily discipleship as are faith and love. So, what is hope?
One definition of hope at first sounds cutesy, but on reflection, this definition expresses profound truth: “Hope is faith on tiptoes.” In other words, hope is the logical extension of faith. Now, what is faith? Faith is trust–betting our lives that God is like Jesus says and reveals. Can this God be trusted only for the past and present? If God is compassionate love, tender mercy, and gracious justice, are there not implications for the future when we worship, trust, and give ourselves to such a God? Hope is that faith – that trust – which extends beyond the horizons which limit our sight. Hope is the great nevertheless of God’s commitment to us and to this beloved creation. It’s a commitment which we feel now in our relationships, in our worship, and in our obedience to God’s realm but which must bear its fruit in the harvest of tomorrow – a harvest which makes sense of today’s and yesterday’s sacrifices and struggles. So hope is faith on tiptoes.
Another definition which relates hope to faith comes from Brazilian theologian Rubem Alves. “Hope is hearing the melody of the future. Faith is to dance it.” This definition, rather than just seeing hope as an extension of faith gives a priority to hope. Hope is the melody – the grand vision which gives direction and content to our faith. Biblical hope always has to do with the vision nurtured in God’s heart for this creation. That vision is rooted in the original intention of God as the Spirit hovered over the darkness of chaos at the dawn of creation. The vision was given beautiful expression in the prophets as they spoke of lions and lambs dwelling in harmony, swords beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, and the glory of God encompassing the whole earth. That vision became flesh in a Carpenter from Nazareth as he ushered in the Kingdom of God with its values of sharing, peace, forgiveness, mercy, and reconciliation. And that vision builds to a crescendo in the Book of Revelation as the Holy City descends and at long last heaven and earth become one.
We are a messianic community created by this vision. As the Body of Christ we are called to be colonizers of the future reflected in this vision as we live right now, even in the belly of the Dragon, those Kingdom values of love and peace, sharing and justice, mercy and compassion. We are called to dance to the melody of God’s future in our time and space, and the dance has already been choreographed by Jesus. So, hope is hearing the melody of the future, and faith is the courage to dance to that melody in our time and space.
A third image of hope which I have found helpful comes from the Asian Christian theologian C.S. Song from The Cross in the Lotus World. Song writes so beautifully that I would do him and you a great injustice to paraphrase his words. So sit back and drink in his interpretation of Christian hope. “Life is an act of faith. To live is to believe. And to believe is to hope. That is why we must look for light in the midst of darkness. That is why we must struggle for freedom when bound in bondage. That is why we must believe in the victory of love over hate, justice over injustice, and life over death.
Stone is hard. It is solid. It is enduring. So is human hope. That is why human beings can endure from one generation to the next despite adversities. That is why they can envision life in the face of death. As to earth’s soil, it is our Mother. It is the womb from which we are taken and to which we return. It hatches us, nourishes us, sustains us, in life and also in death. So also is human hope. Because of our Mother called hope, we human beings are not prisoners of the past; our time extends to eternity. On account of that hope, the inner space of our spirit expands beyond the space of our physical life. Hope is then the womb in which we live, struggle, travail and dream. In it we are in touch with the source of life, in communication with all that was, is, and shall be, and in communion with that power of love called God. Hope means, then, that even though yesterday is obliterated, there is still today. It assures that should today be destroyed, there will be tomorrow. Hope is that power of continuity against the power of discontinuity. It rescues human beings from the tyranny of time. It saves us from the imprisonment of space. It frees us from the enslavement of finitude. The God who saves must, then, be the God of hope. God without hope is a contradiction. It is a gross deformation of divinity. It is no longer God. It is a demon. God without hope is demonic, not messianic.”
I like this image of hope as the womb in which we live, struggle, travail, and dream. Such an image helps us see hope not as something out there in the sweet by and by. Hope is to our contemporary discipleship what the womb is to the fetus. We are being nourished by hope and being prepared for all the birthings of healing and salvation which occur in this life and for that great birthing of this creation when heaven and earth become one.
So, hope is faith on tiptoes. Hope is hearing the melody of God’s future and having the courage of faith to dance to that melody right now. And hope is the womb which prepares and nourishes us for all the birthings of our humanity shaped in the image of Christ including that final great birthing of God’s creation. And because of such hope, we are always graced with Easter horizons. With such horizons always before us, we can live right now in radically free and transforming ways.
Such Easter horizons empower us as individuals and as the church. With time and eternity before us tenderly kept in God’s hand, as individuals we are freed from anxiety and the pitiful need to impress. Because we know our destiny is the glorious freedom of God’s children, we can love and accept ourselves in ways we never dreamed possible. Because of our trust in the final consummation of God’s Kingdom, desperation and fear have no real power over us. They evaporate like mist before the rising sun.
Before such Easter horizons, as the church we are called to be a fellowship of hope. We are enabled to see others not as they were or are but rather as they shall be in the image of Jesus. And with such holy potential nesting in every one of us, we are called to a reverence and care for one another at the deepest levels. Because of such hope, we are a community in which individually and collectively we can lay down our burdens, confident that life, love, and light will overcome death, hate, and darkness. And because of such hope, we can find the strength to suffer in the long struggle against injustice and oppression as we are nourished by that Word who is the Alpha and the Omega, and beginning and the end of our existence.
So hope is not an easy optimism which is blind to the realities of life. Neither is hope a wishful thinking unrelated to our participation and contributions to the welfare of this world. And neither is hope a part of the Christian experience to be looked to only in times of crisis and need. Hope is opening ourselves to God’s future for us and all creation. It is traveling down that pilgrim’s progress toward the ever-expanding Easter horizons. It is daily choosing life over death, joy over sorrow, love over hate, compassion over apathy, forgiveness over arrogance, and justice over oppression. Hope is walking with Jesus into God’s tomorrow.
