Hope When Things Seem Hopeless

The Second Sunday of Lent
Romans 4:13-25
The Rev. Joshua Rodriguez-Hobbs

Have you ever hoped against hope? That’s what Paul says that Abraham did. Our lesson from the Hebrew Bible this morning tells us that Abraham was ninety-nine years old when God promised a son to him and Sarah. Having a baby when you’re ninety-nine, that’s probably the definition of hoping against hope, isn’t it? Abraham hoped against hope because the God in whom he believed gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. What kind of faith does it take to hope like that? Who since Abraham has ever believed that strongly in the promises of God, never wavering, but growing stronger in faith day by day? Not me, if I’m honest. How about you?

Sometimes, I wonder if we’re not in the business of hoping against hope as a church. That’s not something I want to write on my business cards: “hoper against hope,” but there are days when it feels like that’s what I do professionally. I was meeting with my spiritual director a few weeks ago, and as we’ve tended to do during our meetings for the past year, the topic of the number of funerals we’ve had at Good Shepherd lately came up. My spiritual director shared with me that the only other church she knew of that had had as many funerals as we have lately was the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen. I want you to let that sink in. We shouldn’t be in the same ballpark as Mary Our Queen on anything, but yet we are. It sure feels like I’m hoping against hope. I don’t know about you, but that’s what it feels like for me.

We had another funeral this past week. Afterward, Arianne and I were talking, and we realized that in the past year, we’ve both memorized the majority of the burial service. Neither one of us set out to do it, that’s not one of the parts of the Book of Common Prayer that they tell you to memorize when you’re training to become a priest, but that’s where we both are. When Irealized this, my first reaction was sadness. How sad it is that we’ve lost so many members of this community. And it is sad. But as I’ve thought about it more, I think memorizing the burial service has been a large part of what’s kept me going this past year. When I go to pray, the words that come to my lips are those great hoping against hope words that we say at funerals:

As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives and that at the last he will stand upon the earth. After my awaking, he shall raise me up; and in my body I shall see God. I myself shall see, and my eyes behold him, who is my friend and not a stranger.

For to your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended, and when our mortal body lies in death, there is prepared for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens.

In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ…

This is what Paul is talking about. This is the faith we, like Abraham, have in the God who gives new life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. It’s right there at every funeral, when we, the people of God, gather together in the midst of our tears to celebrate the resurrection. When we pull out white vestments and flowers and alleluias—even in Lent!—and we proclaim that Christ is risen, and we will rise too. This is hoping against all hope. This is being the church.

I don’t just see this at funerals, for the record. If you look around, God is still calling into existence things that do not exist. Things are happening right here, at Good Shepherd. Go and talk to someone one the Outreach Committee about 1K Churches, a new ministry that is being piloted here at Good Shepherd to use our endowment to make micro loans so that people living in Baltimore can break the cycle of poverty. A year ago, this ministry didn’t exist. Not at Good Shepherd, not anywhere. But Bob Locke heard someone talking about this idea, and it made a spark in his heart, and he began to share this spark with other people, and God is calling a new thing into being at Good Shepherd. I could name many other examples of things like this: this Lent our Spiritual Enrichment Committee is partnering with other parishes to do Christian Formation together for the first time! We had more funerals in 2014 than any year in recent memory, but we also had more baptisms! God is still in the business of breathing new life into us and calling new things into existence! We are still here, and we still hope!

For the record, as much as I love the passage we heard this morning from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, Paul gets Abraham’s story wrong.Yes, Abraham hoped against hope, but his trust in God wavered, too. It wavered a lot in fact. If you read Genesis, Abraham spends as much time doubting as he does believing, if not more. Just like me. Just like you, I’d imagine. There are times when it’s hard for me to hope, but when they come, I catch just enough of a glimpse of God still at work in this world to keep me holding out hope just a bit longer. That’s what the Kingdom of God is like. Paul Tillich, a famous theologian, once said: “[t]he Kingdom of God does not come in one dramatic event sometime in the future. It is coming here and now in every act of love, in every manifestation of truth, in every moment of joy, in every experience of the holy.”

Our job, as the church, is to partner with one another in pointing out these glimpses we catch of God’s Kingdom, helping one another to hope against hope, sure that the God in whom we have believed is still in the business of giving life to the dead and calling into existence the things that do not exist.

Amen.