Hope from Despair

I did not write this sermon. It was written by Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber and published online in her blog "The Corners" on June 14, 2020. I thought that it fit this age of coronavirus so well that I wanted to share it with my congregation. Since it was originally preached in a women's prison, I have edited it in just a few places to make it more appropriate for my congregation. I thank Rev. Bolz-Weber for her willingness to allow her sermon to be shared!

Ok, here we go: In this reading from Romans (5:1-5), Paul says that hope does not disappoint. Which I honestly have a hard time relating to; since I, maybe like many of you, have had a lot of hopes which have started out great, but then ended in disappointment. So sometimes it’s easier to not hope at all, rather than to risk starting with hope and ending up with disappointment again.

It all reminds me of that story at the end of Luke’s gospel when a couple days after Jesus’ death, two of his disciples were walking the road to Emmaus trying to make sense of what just happened. And as they discussed all of this, a stranger walked up (spoiler alert – it was Jesus), and they didn’t recognize who was walking with them; and so they told him the story of Jesus’ life, ministry and death, at which point they then speak what are maybe the three saddest words in scripture: they said: We Had Hoped. We had hoped Jesus was the one to redeem us and defeat our enemies. Instead, Jesus is dead and it is we who are defeated. Those two disciples started with hope and ended with disappointment, which I can relate to.

We had hoped.

We had hoped that our parents would stay married forever.

We had hoped that by this time in life we would be married, or we would have a meaningful career, or at least we wouldn’t be living in our parents’ basement.

We had hoped that our children wouldn’t make the mistakes we did.

We had hoped that the pandemic wouldn’t turn out to be as bad as it has been and that people would wear masks and socially distance and make better choices.

We had hoped that no one in our family would catch COVID-19.

We. Had. Hoped.

So this all makes me wonder if maybe hope is not the healthiest starting point. I mean sure, if we are going to take our cues from inspirational posters or motivational speakers then by all means, let’s use hope as a starting point.

But church, we are not a people of the inspirational poster or a people of the motivational speaker.  We are a people of the GOSPEL.

So while, in our reading from Romans, Paul speaks of a hope that does not disappoint, let’s be clear: hope is not his starting point…suffering is.

Which can also feel a little sketchy…connecting hope and suffering.

I’ve said it before, but whenever I am in a real mess of pain and some well-meaning Christian says, “Well, when God closes a door, he opens a window,” I immediately look around for that open window so I can push them out of it. Which is to say, I don't find ignoring the difficulty of life in favor of blindly cheerful optimism to be hopeful … I find it to be delusional.So, yes, hope can be risky as a starting point, and connecting hope to suffering can be sketchy.

But this week I started to think of hope not as a starting point, but as that which is left after everything else has failed us. After we have tried optimism and virtue and piety and denial and just trying harder and none of it has worked, then what is left is hope. And that kind of hope is an Easter hope. It’s the kind of hope that is still standing after first being dragged through Good Friday. Easter hope is the kind that is still standing after first being dragged through a global pandemic and economic collapse and lock downs and systemic racism.

And when it comes right down to it, as cynical as I am, I still want hope. I just want a hope that doesn’t disappoint. I want a gritty hope - a hope that can only come from a God who has experienced birth and love and friendship and lepers and prostitutes and betrayal and suffering and death and burial and a decent into hell itself. Only a God who has borne suffering themselves can bring us any real hope of resurrection.

And I believe that faith in this kind of God doesn't produce cheerful optimism, it produces a gritty, defiant hope that God is still writing the story, and that despite the darkness a light still shines, and that God can redeem us, and that beauty matters, and that despite every disappointing thing we have ever done or that we have ever endured, that there is no hell from which resurrection is impossible. To borrow from Bruce Cockburn, this kind of faith is one that kicks at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.

This kind of faith kicks at despair, until it bleeds hope.

So keep kicking, dear ones. You’re not alone. We are all kicking together.