June 19, 2011
Hope Against Hope - Romans 4:13-25
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadLast week almost at this very time, Governor Beverly Perdue vetoed the republican-passed budget. The republicans overrode her veto this past Tuesday. I have been a very casual observer of that debate and from what I have observed, it all came down to a disagreement over the education budget. Governor Purdue said that the republicans had cut too much from it, even though her own proposed budget was only 1.6% better. Her budget could have worked had the republican legislature agreed to the extension of a 1-cent sales tax. So actually, it all comes down to this. Actually, our national, state, and local governments all come down to this: We’re spending more money than we’re getting in. So we either have to cut spending or increase revenues. Actually any clear-minded person can see that we have to do both. But that’s not going to happen because both parties want power. One party keeps its power by increasing spending, and the other party keeps power by decreasing revenues. Therefore, the problem is that our government has become dysfunctional. And it’s clearly not sustainable. Something must, something will change. I hate to say it, but it will probably take a major fiscal meltdown before we really get the message. In short, there’s just not much hope.
America is facing some very serious challenges. We seem to be a nation on the decline. Our educational standards are well other industrialized nations. We have roughly 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s incarcerated population. Our middle class is disappearing. Our once rock-solid social and religious institutions (like marriage and like the Church) are in crisis. We’re consuming more than we’re creating. Healthcare costs are going through the stratosphere with an aging population. And I haven’t even mentioned global challenges like global warming, or unrest in the Middle East. I have not lived through other challenging times, like the Depression and World War II. So maybe I just constantly wake up on the wrong side of the bed. But it seems to me, when I read all the evidence, that we’re heading for an unpleasant future. It seems to me that there’s just not much hope.
Happy Father’s Day!!! I’m not being facetious either. The irony is that that’s exactly what most of us will do. My family is taking their dear old daddy out to eat Mexican food right after this service. Then, with burritos in our bellies, we’ll go to the pool and eat ice cream. I’ve got a good life. I like my life, and most us do. My wife and I have provided for ourselves a good life. So who needs hope? We can provide our own hope, which, in a way, is a far more dangerous kind of hopelessness than the first two depressing paragraphs of this sermon.
It’s all part of human nature. It goes clear back to Abraham. Ya’ll know that story. I preached on it not long ago. Abraham was a hundred years old. He had no children. His wife was long since barren. He was hopeless, like the first part of this sermon. There’s also some indication that he was wealthy, that he could have bought the line that he had provided for himself, too, so he could have been the other kind of hopeless. There was no future for Abraham…, until God showed up to him one day and just blew all of that clear out of the water. God showed up to him and gave him the most unlikely scenario. Abraham would have some descendants, God said, lots of them. He was one hundred years old. I’m thirty-five, and I’ll tell you that I’m descended out. There’s enough of my seed running around the world. Could you imagine starting a family (starting a whole new world for that matter) at one hundred? It was a ridiculous idea. It was laughable. In fact, Sarah did laugh…, and dad-gum if she didn’t name the son that she conceived “Isaac,” which means laughter.
Paul wants to lift up faith to us. One of the primary questions the early Church faced was what to do with Jewish law. Paul’s argument in Romans is that it was never about the Law to begin with. It has always been about faith. Do you believe that God will fulfill his promises? And, does your life reflect that? That’s where Paul lifts up Abraham. Abraham is the epitome of faith because he believed in the end, Abraham believed, against all odds, against all hope (Paul refers to it as hope against hope), that God would do what he said he would do. And that, according to Paul, is what counts.
You know all that hopeless stuff that I mentioned earlier? If you really believe all that then you need to start hoarding things, lots of things. And everybody else? Don’t worry about them. They are a means to your success. If you can sell them something, if they can be a valued customer, if you can turn a fast profit with them, then by all means worry about them. Otherwise, you have no inherent obligation to anybody. If your wife makes you happy, if she’s not too much of a pain, if she can help keep you fulfilled, then stick with her. Otherwise, I say bolt. Get out of there. You’ve got one life to live, and you don’t get to relive it. So if she’s impeding your ability to live it to your liking, then she can either shape up or ship out. Church anybody? As long as it, like your spouse, can serve your purposes, then stick with it. Otherwise, I can’t see a reason in the world why you would waste ¼ of your weekend on Church. Now that may sound a bit radical and a tad bit selfish. But if Paul is not telling the truth here, if what we say about God every Sunday is not true, then I can’t see any reason in the world why it’s not true. And let’s face it, if you think about it, hopelessness is the predominant message in our culture. And let’s also face the fact that there’s more than enough evidence to back it up.
But then we’ve got to deal with this faith that we’ve been given. Somehow, somewhere along the line, somebody told you and me something about the Gospel. Somebody said that it was God who created the world, and it was God who saved it in Jesus Christ, and it’s God who continues to work in it by the Holy Spirit. Somewhere along the line we heard about the Resurrection. Somewhere we heard about Easter. Somewhere we heard that what we see is not what we get. Somewhere we heard that even though it looks like we’re a snowball heading towards hell, that we’re actually headed towards the Kingdom of God. Somewhere we heard that there already is a Kingdom of God on earth and before we belong to anything else, we belong to it.
The choice that we have to make is whether we buy that or not. We speak a totally different language here in Church. And I’m not just talking “thee” and “thou” and singing two-hundred year old hymns. In fact, you could make a pretty good argument that saying the “thees” and “thous” makes sense because it reminds us that what we say here really is different. It’s called faith. It’s called hope. This world really does belong lock, stock, and barrel to God. God really has saved it, and us, and them in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit really is among us. And no matter what happens to the budget, or to America’s standing in the world, or your growing credit card statement, or that doctor’s report…, no matter when (not if) your image of a self-made, self sufficient-endurance machine of a man gets decimated, God has already solved the biggest problem that we ever had. Do we believe that?
The evidence, the glory, the power, the money, the prestige…., none of that is really on our side. You could make a good case that the Gospel is hot air and there’s no such thing as hope. The Gospel is as unlikely as a hundred-year-old couple starting a big family. In hope against hope, Abraham chose to believe the Gospel. My prayer for all of us is that we can, too.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
