Sermon: Hope Against Hope

Hope against hope

        My absolute favorite worship service is Maundy Thursday. Even as it is about Christ’s firm and unbreakable command to love one another, there is such a vulnerability to it, it’s amazing! There are, as well, the powerful actions that take place, 

foot washing—what can be more vulnerable than exposing your feet to other people, 

communion—sometimes for the first time, 

and the stripping of the altar while Psalm 22 is wailed out!

        Psalm 22, packed with verses that let us stay in that vulnerability

—verses that bottom out, embracing failure, holding us by the very last thread, scraping bottom just to get by… and only at the ending, these verses we read today, 

only there is anything that appears to be praise

—even here a subdued praise, “The LORD has acted!”

Psalm 22, with its cries from the depths and dangers and sufferings of life and threats and experiences of death. This psalm points powerfully to that phrase Paul uses today, “Hope against hope.”

This English phrase pressurizes the longer Greek, which expands out more fully as something like “Beyond Hope and Upon Hope.” Two separate experiences compressed together

—Beyond Hope

—Upon Hope.

Prayer

  

      Beyond Hope, Upon Hope. The first a Hope that we cannot reach, that has passed us by,

the second the ground and center of gravity for our being

 Beyond Hope—Look you Abram and Sarai—names themselves barren and sterile. The first and last of a new nation, a branch upshot and withered, an inheritance passed on to nameless servants.

Beyond Hope—You Psalmists struck with awe and fear, despised, crying out, put down by your poverty, ate by your hunger, you who seek and do not find, you who sleep in the earth, who are dust and to dust you have returned, for you are dead.

Beyond Hope—Paul with the promise appearing null and void, Law made lawless, non-existence and death threatening every corner of our life.

Beyond Hope—Peter petrified, his Savior suffering, rejected and killed. Offering crosses as footsteps to follow.

Hope Beyond hope… Reading scripture through that lens, it’s all rather heavy… 

-and for some we are struck dead—“Wait?!? I have to die for resurrection to occur? For new life to take root?

This is terrifying, this reality of our life as Christians and simply as human beings… we do all we can to avoid the gloom and depths of our being and our world, but here’s the thing, it is still there, even if you look away.

-but for others, we who are perishing, this is a powerful promise… yes, when you realize, “The Word of God meets me even here? Even in the depths of my depression, at the bedside of a dying friend, at the psych unit, in the midst of shootings at school, in the grave yard and dementia unit”… God’s Word surrounds and encompasses, and speaks to that—to all of it!

Beyond hope…

Upon Hope too…

Upon Hope—Abraham, Sarah—those are your names, for ancestors, multitudes. A new nation

—laugh if you want to, that which is withered will be fruitful!

Upon Hope—You Psalmists, your awe and fear spreads out in praise and the glorification of God. 

Eat! 

Be Satisfied. 

Arise in the riches of holiness, see now the whole world seeks you out, that you might help them bow down to God! 

You who were once dead, now you live—those who have passed, arise and kneel before God, and their descendants proclaim God’s goodness in every age, and will continue to do so forevermore

—for God has acted!

Upon Hope—Paul those promises held in faith and that wrath you fear, dissolves and disappears! God is the one who gives life to the dead and calls something out of nothing!

Upon Hope—Peter did you not hear—after three days rise again… your life is more precious than the whole world! 

Living your life in authentic holiness will bring cross, yes, but it is real, and sacred, and good!

Upon hope.

Beyond hope, upon hope… 

Beyond hope—17 dead in Florida, students from around the country yet again traumatized and told they are not safe where they spend the majority of their time—in their schools. 17 dead, those kids escaping and those kids who didn’t escape… Lord have mercy!

Upon hope—did you see them… I know some of you disagree with them politically

—but did you see them! 

Standing before state legislators and governors and even the president

—transforming death into action

transforming an impossibly bad situation,

transforming their helplessness, into advocacy, into “Never Again,” opening up a debate about guns

and schools, 

and mental health, 

A debate that had been closed since we adults allowed the death of elementary school children to have the last word after Sandy Hook.

Beyond hope—have you seen a forest of pine on a mountain burnt? The whole edifice blackened, like an angry lava flow, a sheet spread over barren rock, the end of life itself, a moonscape.

Upon hope—pinecones popped open only in extreme heat, strengthened and nourished by rich black earth, new growth where there was none, a whole new forest forming before your eyes.

Beyond hope—apartments burnt in Elizabeth, over a dozen folk with disabilities displaced after a lifetime of living there…

Upon hope—a groundswell response from people of good will across central Jersey, homes found, clothing and food restored—all in the blink of an eye.

Beyond hope—the beginning of Psalm 22 and Jesus’ final cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Upon hope—the ending, that isn’t an end, but instead the gospel for us, “The LORD has acted.”

         Beyond hope… upon hope… rightly facing the reality of sin, death, and the devil—wailing while the world is stripped bare and so are we

—vulnerable there, bottomed out, held by the last thread, yet upheld by the truth that, “The LORD has acted!”

Beyond hope upon hope… hope against hope.

Amen.