|
|
|
Last Sunday we talked about the collision aspect of family togetherness. I’ve been thinking about this. Why is it that some of the biggest disasters seem to coincide with events on which we pin so much of our hopes? The times we are convinced will be the best often turn out to be the very worst. How many big family get-togethers -- Christmas, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July -- start out fun, then turn into fiascoes? Cousin Jim still won't talk to Uncle Frank, and the stains from Aunt Margaret's pie will never come out of the carpet. Weddings are another time when bombs are regularly detonated. The number of things that go wrong on wedding days -- cakes dropped, rings lost, blazing heat, torrential rain, flowers delivered to another planet -- is about equal to the number of people who wish they had just eloped. Sometimes it seems that whenever we expect the best of times, we get the worst of times instead. What makes life so full, so rich, so wonderful is that we can never completely filter out the bad from the good or the good from the bad. There is always a little bit of both on our plate, spicing up our diet in unexpected ways. Our family's hopes for a long relationship with our two-year old dog, Tasha, ended when a car killed her on the highway in front of the parsonage in Soldotna. Yes, it hurt. And I was surprised at the depth of the hurt over a dog. But death is a part of life. We are not here to deny death, but to feel its pain, to accept its reality, to embrace its truth. And the reason we can live this way is because of the hope we have in Jesus Christ. Let’s take a look at Abraham viewed through the eyes of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Already an old man when he first hears God's call, Abraham obediently begins his long, wandering search for a home based on God's promise. Now, when God promises that he and Sarah shall have their own son, Abraham believes. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Abraham's faith enables him to "hope against hope." And out of the worst conditions, extreme old age and barrenness, God brings the best to Abraham and Sarah, their son Isaac. Michael Weisser, the cantor at his Lincoln, Nebraska, synagogue, hoped against hope. Weisser found himself the target of the local Klan Grand Dragon, Larry Trapp. It seems Trapp took it upon himself to harass and threaten Weisser with the ultimate goal of driving him out of town. When the chilling, late-night phone calls and the hate mail began to bombard Weisser, he knew where it was coming from and he was afraid. Yet, his response spoke of hope, not hate and fear. Weisser called his tormentor back and got his answering machine. After listening to its pre-recorded anti-Semitic diatribe, he calmly offered to take Trapp, who is confined to a wheel chair, out to the grocery store. For weeks Weisser kept at it, leaving recorded messages of offered help for this Grand Dragon. Finally, Klansman Trapp called him back, complaining, "What do you want? You're harassing me." But Trapp soon called Weisser with this startling confession, "I want to get out of this and I don't know how." Weisser immediately responded, "I'll bring dinner and we'll talk." His wife brought along a silver ring as a peace offering. When they met face-to-face, the Klansman and the Jew, Larry Trapp burst into tears. Trapp eventually moved in with the Weissers, who cared for him as his health declined. In time, Trapp converted to Judaism. Now do you think this situation would have turned out the way it did if Michael Weisser had not chosen hope over fear? Jesus did his best work under the worst conditions. After entering Jerusalem, Jesus gathered his disciples for one last meal together. There he revealed to them, "Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me". Then, with full knowledge of the weaknesses and treachery lurking at their table, "Jesus took bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples and said, 'Take, eat, this is my body'". On the night where all the very worst of their fears came true, Jesus gave his disciples, and all of us, the best of himself. This is the promise of the gospel. All of us, even at our very worst, are promised that God can do the best with us. It is that promise that enables us to live on in faith continually "hoping against hope." A long-term AIDS survivor (that means four or more years), Frank Sabatino, attributes his continued survival to one very powerful additive in his treatments: hope. "Hope has kept me alive, kept me taking my medications and going to my appointments, long after a physician judged that I had a 65 percent chance of being dead within three years of my diagnosis. Hope, like the respect shown to me by a clinical nurse who always called me `Frank' during a series of weekly examinations while I was in a drug trial (although the clerk referred to me as 0054, my ID number) -- sustains my spirit. And living, I've discovered, is as much a spiritual experience as a biological one." Throughout history the worst has repeatedly produced the best: On his way to death, Christian father Justin Martyr penned words of faith and love that have endured for 19 centuries. Out of his experience with a corrupted, institutionalized faith, Martin Luther re-read his Bible and breathed the air of Reformation back into the church. Stone-deaf Beethoven composed music so moving that it brought audiences to tears. Ministering in New York's "Hell's Kitchen," Walter Rauschenbusch shook up the church once more with his call for a "social gospel." Feeling called to give back some of the many gifts he had been given, Albert Schweitzer took his talents to a tiny, isolated mission in Africa and stayed on, even in the middle of war. The Salvation Army intentionally targets the very worst in society for their mission of mercy. The Good News of the gospel is this: The best has come, the best is with us now, and the best is yet to come. This "best" has almost nothing to do with our circumstances. It has everything to do with the presence of Christ in our lives. A father promised his kids he would take them to the beach. While they were getting ready, he lay down to take a nap. The children were playing but were eager to get going to the beach. The father woke up, but he pretended to be asleep and kept his eyes closed. Soon, his little 5-year-old girl came over to him, pried open his eyelid, peeked in and said, "He's still in there." Doesn't life treat us in ways that sometimes make us wonder if God is still in there? Your spouse is diagnosed with cancer and has only a few years to live. God, are you still in there? Your self-esteem is already in the gutter when you learn that you've been let go from your job. God, are you still in there? Do problems from your past continue to wreak havoc on your present? God, are you still in there? Where are you? Spencer Morgan Rice, Rector of Trinity Church, Boston, once told of how early in his ministry he was serving a small congregation in the Los Angeles basin. The custodian of the church took as much interest in those who came to pray and meditate as he did the upkeep of the church. One man in particular attracted his attention. This man dropped by the church briefly every day about 12:15. He would walk down the center aisle, stand at the chancel steps and stare at the altar for a moment. Then he would leave. After a few days, the custodian began to worry. The man was not well-dressed. He was not the cleanest. He did not always walk steady. The custodian mentioned his concern to Rice, who suggested he simply ask the man if there was anything the church could do for him. When he saw the man again and asked, the man said, "No, thank you. I just come in every day and stand before the altar and say, 'Jesus, it's Jim.' It is not much of a prayer, I know, but I think God knows what I mean." Months slipped by. The custodian never again mentioned their daily visitor. Then, one morning Rice got a call from the Mother Superior of a home for aged men run by the Sisters of the Transfiguration. These women minister to men broken by life. Rice tells the story in his own words: The Mother Superior told me that Jim had been admitted, and I said I would be out to see him. She met me at the door and said, "You know, Father Rice, he has been here for two months. He went into the most cantankerous ward we have. Every nun here has tried her best to bring some sense of joy and calm to that ward. We failed. Jim went into that ward and the place is transformed. It is a new place. I went to him two days ago and I asked, 'Jim, how is it that you have been able to bring such joy and such a sense of peace to these men?' And he said, 'Oh, sister, it is because of my visitor.'" And she said, "I know he didn't have any visitors. That chair hadn't been occupied the 60 days he has been here. So I said, 'Jim, what visitors? I've never seen a visitor.' And he said, 'Sister, every day at 12:00, He comes and stands at the foot of my bed and says, "Jim, it's Jesus!"'" Hope against hope. Isn't hope really a matter of perspective? No matter how bad life gets, it is hope that offers us an eternal perspective. A light at the end of the tunnel. A sun breaking through the clouds. There will be a new day...a day when tears will no longer flow...a day when hunger will no longer gnaw at our bellies...a day when bombs and bullets will no longer rip people apart...a day when pain and suffering will no longer exist! Kefa Sempangi was a national pastor in Africa and barely escaped with his family from brutal oppression and terror in his home country of Uganda. They made their way to Philadelphia, where a group of Christians began caring for them. One day his wife said, "Tomorrow I am going to go and buy some clothes for the children," and immediately she and her husband broke into tears. Because of the constant threat of death under which they had so long lived, that was the first time in many years they had dared even speak the word tomorrow. I hear many of you say that you live life one day at a time, and for some it is one moment at a time. And this is good. God desires us to live life fully in the present moment, soaking in all of its joys and pains. But it is also a life that hopes against hope...a life that doesn't deny tomorrow...but one that knows tomorrow will come. And so we live in the moment today, and praise God that in Christ we can speak the word, "tomorrow." |
The St. John Web Site needs your input! Click here to leave feedback Copyright © 1998-2004 Jon S. Dawson. Last modified: February 01, 2009
|
11.17.02 - Hope Against Hope (Romans 4:13-25)
