Courageous Hope
Part 3 of Courageous Character for Contemporary Christians
2 Chronicles 30:6-9; 1 Peter 1:3-9, 13-21
Delivered at Central Presbyterian Church, Mobile, August 19, 2007

The Screwtape Letters is a collection of fanciful letters by C.S. Lewis featuring the relationship between a junior tempter named Wormwood and his Uncle Screwtape, a senior temper among Satan’s minions.  The book’s about how we wrestle with various aspects of life and temptation in God’s quest for us to move from weakness to maturity in our faith.  In one of the letters Uncle Screwtape addresses the importance of hope.  Satan’s cause is lost, he tells Wormwood, when the believer, “no longer desiring, but still intending, to do God’s will, looks round upon the universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he as been forsaken, and still obeys” (The Screwtape Letters, 39). Destroy hope, and you destroy faith.

Obviously Lewis isn’t talking about our hope for delightful dalliances such as a raise, romance, a nice vacation, or to make it down Airport Blvd. or Dauphin St. without having an accident.  What Lewis is describing, and what our scripture focuses on today, is the courageous hope that defies all odds, that sets its face against strong opposition and proves victorious in the long run.  It’s the hope that shatters the world’s notions of quick fixes, like when people are surprised when a star returns to drugs and prison after a week or two of rehab.

Each of us faces a point in life when eventually we must make a choice. Either we continue to hope against all odds that in Jesus we won’t be defeated, or we give up the fight and yield to circumstances that overwhelm us.  In his book The Case for Character Nabers reminded me of a movie called “The Shawshank Redemption.”  The movie is about the redemption of hope in a hopeless prison.  One of the characters named Red is sent to the prison for a murder he did at age 19.  Andy, the main character, goes to the same prison for a murder he didn’t commit.  Red had lost all hope for parole and freedom by the time Andy gets to the prison.  Andy tells Red early on in the movie, “There’s something inside that they can’t get to, that they can’t touch, that’s yours ... hope.”  Red chastises Andy for his hope.   “Hope?” he retorted.  “Hope is a dangerous thing.  Hope can drive a man insane.  It’s got no use on the inside.  You’d better get used to that idea.”

Andy ignores Red’s criticism and hopes on, because secretively he’s chipping away at the wall in his cell to escape.  After nearly two decades, Andy realizes his hope and escapes to a Mexican town along the Pacific Ocean.  He leaves a note for Red, encouraging him to cling to hope.  “Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”  Red comes to life again after seeing this note, and he gives himself permission to hope, hope to find Andy and hope to begin a new life.  After another several years, Red is paroled, and the movie closes with these profound words.  “I hope I can make it across the border.  I hope to see my friend and shake his hand.  I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams.  I hope.”  When hope is redeemed, we live again.  When hope dies, our faith dies, and so can we.

Viktor Frankl spent two-and-a-half years in a concentration camp during World War II.  He tells the story of a man who in February 1945 dreamed that on March 30 they would be liberated.  This gave the prisoner hope because he thought it was a prophecy.  Frankl writes, “But as the promised day drew nearer the war news which reached our camp made it appear very unlikely that we would be free on March 30.  On March 29 the man became ill with typhoid fever and on the 30th, when no liberation occurred, the man lost consciousness.”  On March 31st the man died, and Frankl, being a psychologist, concluded that the man died not from typhoid fever, but from the loss of hope (Man’s Search for Meaning, 83).

God’s promise to us in Isaiah 40:31 is that if we wish to live we must retain our hope in God.  “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”  In the New Testament Paul encourages believers who face tough times that “God will make all things work out for good for those who love God” and remain faithful to Him (Romans 8:28).  1st Peter was written to a community of Christians undergoing persecution for their faith, even to the point where some were going to lose their lives.

To this community that needed hope, the once-fickle Peter wrote that cultivating a living hope is the foundation for persistent faith.  To this persecuted community, Peter asks them to consider who it is or what it is that they’re leaning on to get through the hard time.  It’s a consideration appropriate for each of us.  Do you have the courage to hope in a God who promises us that He’ll bring all things to justice in His time?  Do you have the faith of a child whose patience lasts as long as the morning dew, or a mature faith that will wait on the Lord Whose timetable is not our own?  Hope and faith go hand in hand, and without hope there can be no faith.

In the words of John Calvin, “Hope is nothing else than the expectation of those things which faith has believed to have been truly promised by God ... faith believes God to be true, hope awaits the time when His truth shall be manifested; faith believes God is our Father, hope anticipates that He will ever show Himself to be a Father toward us; faith believes that eternal life has been given to us, hope anticipates that it will some time be revealed” (Inst. 2:569).  Hope keeps our focus on the eternal when what surrounds us distracts us from the living Lord.

A friend of mine taught me much about hope several years ago.  He was underemployed, which meant he needed to work several jobs to keep an already lean existence going.  He couldn’t leave the area because he was in graduate school, but he couldn’t work full time either.  It was a predicament.  One day he found that he wasn’t able to afford the train fare that could get him from his apartment to school so he walked the two miles instead.  He decided to be honest about his situation with his pastor who not only gave him money to help out with rent that month, but earlier that day the church received a part time job notice from another church.  It paid more than his current part time jobs put together so he applied and was hired.  He told me that God restored his hope that day because God reminded him that He may not remove the situation but He will provide what’s needed to endure.  That’s what Peter means when he talks about our faith as a living hope.

Hope walks steadily forward even when there’s nothing reassuring on our horizon.  While I was working among victims of Katrina I was most saddened not by the loss of property, but by the loss of hope.  Conversely, what gave me most satisfaction was not in rebuilding a person’s home, but in rebuilding their hope.  One of the more profound stories came from a community near Theodore.  All sources of income had been destroyed; all homes were condemned.  FEMA had not yet come in with trailers.  People who had lived in this community for generations knew of no other path other than to stay and wait, struggling against black mold and other health concerns to survive.  One group told me that they started to work on a trailer home that really needed just to be destroyed but there wasn’t anything else available.  The person who lived in the trailer was very sick and had lost hope.  By the end of the week they had brought medical support to her and had given her trailer new walls, new carpet, and new used furniture.  In her thankfulness she began to work on her neighbor’s lot because she said the team had given her hope that everything was going to be okay.

If we continue to hope in the Lord we’re exhibiting authentic faith in Him, which is the point that the author of 2 Chronicles makes.  The Israelites had much to be in despair over.  They lost so much in their captivity: land, freedom, family, jobs, security, and identity.  They were reduced to nothing, which made clinging to things other than God very tempting.  But, this is exactly what the author suggests was the source of their problems that put them into exile.  When they had it all, they turned away from God to try to keep it all.  When they had nothing, they needed to cling to God in order to experience life again.

There are some incredible lessons for us in these words.  When we’ve got it all, isn’t it tempting to put God to the side and keep what we’ve got going lest we lose what has given us apparent security?  And, when we experience reduction isn’t it tempting to lose faith that God is with us?

Hope takes courage because it’s counter-cultural.  We live in a society that thrives on immediate satisfaction, but our faith is about keeping our eyes fixed on our heavenly home and our eternal glory with Jesus.  The world just doesn’t understand that message.  Our culture suggests that we can have it all, but our hope doesn’t rest on our earthly satisfaction.  It rests on the mysterious peace we experience in the midst of the unsettled seas of hardship and pain.  Again, the world has no idea what this type of hope is about.

Horatio Spafford was a 19th century Presbyterian and lawyer who decided to take his family to England to assist with a Moody evangelism crusade.  Now as every good Presbyterian believes, the providence of God covers all things.  We pray, however, that those times when our belief in God’s providence is put to the test would not be so severe that we would lose hope.  For Spafford the greatest test came when he sent his family ahead of him to England.  Their ship was struck by another ship and sunk, killing his four daughters.  Grief-stricken he traveled the same route to see his wife in a hospital.  When the captain notified Spafford that his ship was passing the same spot in the ocean at which his daughters had died, he wrote words that have become an inspiration for many that they may lose much that is dear, but they need not lose hope.

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way. When sorrows like sea billows roll. Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say: It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Hope isn’t the last flicker of the candlewick, it’s the flint that can ignite a blazing fire. No matter what you face, no matter what, hope in the Lord Who will never let you go, Who can make all things well with your soul, and Who will bring you into glory with Him.  Hallelujah.  Amen.