Hope

Hope is a fundamental Christian attribute. It is one of the three virtues mentioned by Paul along with faith and love, and it is an essential part of our human existence. Yet as is prone to happen in our society, the word hope has lost its power. Often hope is associated with something like – ‘gee I hope my footy team wins’, or ‘I hope I win lotto tonight’. Hope is so much more then mere wish fulfillment or vague fantasy thinking. It is the confident expectation of a future good. It is critical to our survival as humans both physically and spiritually. Yet despite the desperate need for hope, life has a way of diminishing it. Hope is vital, precisely because of the subversive increase in hopelessness which is pervading our culture.
Unresolved hopelessness leads to depression, burnout, apathy, anger and in extreme cases, suicide. By these measures, we clearly live in a society of growing hopelessness, but as Christians we have the answer to hopelessness, and that is the hope we find in God through Jesus.
Hope can be divided into two types of Hope – present hope, which is about having hope in the day-to-day and future hope, which is the hope of a new future. I am going to focus this talk on present Hope, and I will bring the second part of the talk on future hope next time I preach. To start with, though I think its important to look at how hopelessness can take hold in the Christian life.
For Hope to be real, it must be in the midst of pain and suffering that it reveals its truth. GK Chesterton wrote – ‘Hope means having hope when things are at their worst or it is nothing. As long as matters are going well hope is merely flattery or platitude. It is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength’. As Christians we are called precisely to bring hope to people during these times and be agents of hope. Often when faced with overwhelming circumstances, hope is the first casualty.
Unfortunately, it is a rare thing to find a Christian who is full of the present Hope of God. They are out there, but it is rare and we know it when we see it. There are two outcomes which I want to focus on today, cynicism and apathy.
Hate isn’t the opposite of love – apathy is. Apathy is complete inaction and indifference; concerned only with those they care about in their immediate family and not with the suffering of others. There are many people who call themselves Christians but do not do anything that shows that they are. We are called to love and serve others. Love and service being the very essence of what it is to be a Christian – You cant lead the people if you don’t love the people, you cant save the people if you don’t serve the people! (Cornell West). When we lose sight of this, generally it is because we don’t have an active sense of hope. The apathetic Christian has become so warn down by the materialism of our society and the mixed messages this brings about life and family, that who we are as Christians is forgotten.
They aren’t providing hope to anyone and so they forget what hope is really about. It’s a catch 22 situation. Usually Christians who are apathetic had hope at some point, but were so overwhelmed or numbed by the tremendous need, incredible pain and ever present evil of this world that apathy seemed the only way out. Rather then helping out and being agents of Hope, they decided to avoid it, retreat to what was comfortable and became apathetic.
The bible says some pretty harsh things about apathy Revelations 3:16 – ‘So, because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I am about to spit you out of my mouth.’. God so despises when we are apathetic that he will spit us out, the ultimate form of insult.
The other outcome of the Christian life with the loss of hope is cynicism. Cynicism is a common result of the Christian who is passionate about social justice and works hard trying to live love through service. These Christians begin with great intentions, but after being disheartened by the constancy of human sorrow, they begin to become cynical. The drug and alcohol worker who doesn’t think addicts can recover long term, the outreach youth worker that thinks the kids they work with are all headed for prison, the social worker who has completely lost faith in all men because of the level of domestic violence and sexual abuse towards women and children that they encounter. Or the leader living in Christian communities who are so taken for granted by the community they serve that no one can see the pain in them as depression and burn out sets in. Cynicism is a result of the loss of hope. Although these Christians continue to persevere, they do it without the assurance of hope and begin to become separate from God. It is this that the loss of hope in Christian is most damaging. Both through apathy and cynicism, we can begin to hear fainter and fainter the whisper of The Spirit, until we hear nothing.
Of the two of these, let me say, it is easier to regain hope when you become cynical then when your apathetic. This is because once you shake off the pain of burnout and dissapointment you can begin to see hope in the people you serve. It is true within any type of ministry that even though the initial motivation may be to help others, we always are helped ourselves. So while we see hopelessness time and time again, when reaching out, we also come across moments of grace which gives us hope and allow us to invest this hope back into others.
We must be re-united to hope, and have faith in God that through suffering if we preserver we will have a hope that will not disappoint us. It is so easy to be sarcastic and cynical and be a critic of everyone. I have known so many people who love to tear down and break up. It is tough to create and build. We will fail, and we might never have the validation or positive affirmation for our actions that we are looking for, but hope needs to remain. It has to for the good of our souls and of others.
Hope is valuable, its not cheap like optimism. ‘When your optimistic you can stand apart to see how things are going. But when your full of hope, your in the midst of the muck. Your working it out with love power and a commitment justice.’ (C. West)

hope is seldom used in the Gospels, for Jesus, Who is the personification of hope, was present! It is Paul who most fully develops the New Testament theology of hope.
So it is us who are followers of Christ, who are now trying to be ‘little Christ’s’ as the word Christian actually means, who must be the personification of hope to our communities, each one of us.
You may be thinking that you are neither apathetic or cynical. That you are a person of hope. I pray that it is true, but experience tells me that if we look at our life of faith, we can come to realize that perhaps we haven’t been doing what God has been asking us – avoiding a call on our hearts which reveals apathy. Or that we have secretly desired someone fail at something so they would ‘learn a lesson’, as is the disease of cynicism. It is these thoughts, that lead us away from hope and ultimately, away from God