As promised, this is a sermon about hope, the second in the list of the three theological virtues articulated by St Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians.[1] Hope is such a slippery word, though, isn’t it, cheapened by easy use? How many emails have you received, which begin something like this: “I hope this email finds you well.” Though the sentiment may be genuine, the sender may also be buttering you up for whatever request is sure to follow that opening courtesy.
So what is it then that we mean by hope, or to be more specific what we mean by Christian hope? In the Book of Common Prayer, that under-used red volume in the pew rack in from of you, the very last thing in the table of contents is the Catechism, or an outline of the faith, which takes the form of an extended dialogue. The final question, the last item in the Catechism, is the one that concerns us this morning: What is the Christian hope? Here is what the Prayer Book has to say:
The Christian hope is to live with confidence in newness and fullness of life, and to await the coming of Christ in glory, and the completion of God's purpose for the world.[2]
That sounds nice, but it’s also a little vague. I think that “newness and fullness of life” is a phrase that suffers from opacity, even though we hear its echoes throughout the Prayer Book.
In this morning’s lesson from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus once again finds himself on the wrong side of the religious authorities. This time, he has affronted their sensibilities by healing a woman, who had “a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years,” and doing so on the Sabbath. This was sufficiently shocking to the leader of the synagogue that he rebuked Jesus in front of the crowd, which Jesus had been teaching.
Jesus’ answer to the charge contains a small note which should make our ears perk up. He doesn’t say, “We felt so sorry for this woman, and it is a very nice thing to do to cure her, even on the Sabbath,” nor does he say, “The law is so stringent and inflexible, how could you care about your law over the needs of a person?” No.
What he says is, “Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?”
We don’t use the word “ought” much in spoken English, but the difference between “ought” and the more common “should” tells us something about the Greek underlying this text. Whereas “should” is used to describe suitability or appropriateness, “ought” (ἔδει) is a word of obligation or necessity. It’s not that it was appropriate to heal the woman on the Sabbath, Jesus is saying; it was necessary to do so.
This is the same word in Greek which is used throughout the Gospel of Luke to explain the divine necessity of the Cross.[3] Jesus is acting in obedience to a necessity which takes precedence over all other obligations, including the Sabbath law. Healing the woman is both a miracle and a sign, a sign that the kingdom of God has broken in upon the kingdom of Satan, and which day could be better for doing so than the Sabbath. The day that God had given to Israel as a weekly release from the bondage of labor was also a weekly foretaste of the rest which awaited the people of God in the kingdom, a final release from all bondage. To liberate men and women from the reign of Satan and to bring them under the gracious reign of God was therefore to fulfil the purpose of the Sabbath, not to profane it.[4]
By rising from the dead, Jesus proclaims not merely his own victory over death, but the inauguration of a new world, a new heaven and a new earth, which are capable of being glimpsed even among the old one, now. By setting free the woman from the spirit of infirmity, Jesus demonstrates his power over the forces of Satan right here, in this world, and the woman responds by giving credit where credit is due: “immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.”
In his letter to the Romans, Paul gives a more extended meditation on hope, and here is what he says:
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.[5]
How does that sound to you? If you are thinking, “Not very good!” then I applaud your honesty. Most of what we hope for in our own lives probably is explicitly concerned with an escape from suffering, both emotional and physical.
But poor old St Paul was able to rejoice in his sufferings, not because they were lovely, but because of how even those sufferings were a reminder of the love of God, and that teaches us something about what it is to be a Christian, as opposed to not. Helena Martin, in her sermon last week, noted that the Cross and the crucifixion of Jesus was the world’s response to the love of God. Rejection. Desolation. Fear. If you think such things belong only to the ancient world, then I would encourage you to open a newspaper. But the Christian response to the existence of evil is not nihilism and despair. Christ reminds us that “in this world ye shall have tribulation,” but that sober reminder is followed by a consolation, “but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”[6]
Hope, therefore, has a genealogy. That it should emerge from suffering is not a surprise, since it is impossible to hope, if everything is fine and dandy. But that genealogy tells us also that hope has daughter virtues, namely endurance and character, which by the grace of God emerge out of our sufferings and are the enablers of hope.
All of Christian teaching, all of the practice of our faith – of churchgoing, and almsgiving, and loving our neighbor and serving the poor – all of it is a school of character, designed to turn you and me into excellent persons, into the kind of people who can face the world with the confidence that Christ has indeed overcome the world, and who can reflect in their own persons the love of God made known to us in Jesus.
If, as we discussed two weeks ago, faith is not merely belief in the existence of God but trust in God, then hope is the manifestation of that faith in our lives. A hopeful person is a person of endurance and character, a person who knows that nothing, not even the evils and depredations of human existence can separate us from the love of God. A hopeful person is a person who is confident that the measure of a man, and the measure of a woman, is not the sum of his or her lifetime economic productivity, or list of successes, but of the extent to which his or her character reflects the love of God into the world.
I heard the story of an Episcopal priest once, whose only son died tragically and young. This man – this man of God – was so heartbroken, so anguished, that he was unable to speak. He continued coming to church on Sundays, but took a leave of absence from his job to mourn. After some months of silence, at a small Bible study, or discussion group of some kind, the conversation turned to hope in the face of suffering. The group was stunned into silence when the priest spoke up. Very quietly, but without any uncertainty, he said, “I have been to the bottom. And the bottom holds.” That, my friends, is Christian hope. The bottom holds. Christ is risen from the dead.[7]
Christian hope, therefore, is not only about the future. Christian hope is about the present, about the newness of life that is available to us right here and right now. To live with confidence in the love of God, sure in the knowledge that in Christ, God has forever undermined the logic of death and decay, IS to live with newness of life, even in the face of suffering. The woman healed on the Sabbath was restored to her senses, freed from Satan’s power, and she responded with praise to God. So did that priest. And so may it be with us, this day and forever.
AMEN.