Can We Have Hope?

Romans 5:5-8- Real Hope for Real Life

^“5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. ⁶ You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. ⁸ But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Hope. Everybody likes it. It might be one of the few Christian words that the world still appreciates. I came to understand that in a new way when I was first starting Hope Lutheran Church in Tigard. I would tell people, “I’m here to start a church that’s all about hope.” And inevitably people would say something like, “Wow, our community needs more churches like that.” At some level, people still grasp a need for real hope.

I think that might be especially true now, given the world’s recent history, the country’s recent history, and even the recent history of my neighborhood- Progress Ridge. You start with pandemic, continue with racial injustice, follow through with an accident that ends in death on our street, a body found in the creek, and now a season of mass shootings. And how many things have I left off this list? 

I wonder if this question is on hearts these days: Can we have real hope? 

Can we hope that things may get better? I think that’s an easy question to answer. Yes. We can appropriately hope. We can hope that the measures that can be taken to move towards more security and safety will be taken. We can hope that those measures produce results. But can you put real hope in those measures? Is that safe?

Maybe not. Every time I read the new headline, I pray that I’ll never have to read another one like it again, and then I do. Again and again we’ve seen how the brokenness that causes people to do evil things will still endures, how sickness still causes people to get sick, how senseless violence never goes away, and how death stills claims everyone. 

So, can we have real hope? 

Normally, we think about hope as a wanting for something to be true in the future. We picture hope as a flower that blooms out of a crack in the cement. We hope that in the future there will be less death, less senseless violence, less pandemic, less racism. The list is long. I hope for those things. But I know that only too so soon, my hope will be disappointed.

There is real hope, though. That’s why I’m writing today. To tell you that real hope exists. And it’s different from any other kind of hope. Know that. It’s different. The hope that Jesus offers is a hope that is based not on future expectation. It’s a hope based on past action- Jesus’ action on the cross. When Jesus was put on the cross, he made sense of every senselessly violent act- because since he died, he secured the truth that death will not be the final word for those who believe in him. When he sacrificed himself, he took the punishment that every evil thing deserves- so that the brokenness that causes all this evil could be made whole. And when he rose, he proved that the wildest hopes that we could have- that there will be perfect life after death- are real hopes.

Jesus did these things. Because he is a God of hope. Because he knew that we could not go on like this. He did these things so that there would be a perfect future for his children. He did these things so that when we reach heaven, he can wipe every tear from our eye. 

So what do you do today? Fill yourself with hope. Put your trust in the God of hope.