By Pastor Harlan Heier
“Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.”—Romans 5:1-5
A youth group is gathered for Bible study and fellowship. The sponsor reads today’s scripture and asks, “What’s the most hopeless situation you could experience?” A young woman suggests a disfiguring accident that caused people to pity her would seem hopeless to her. A young man says he would feel the same way about being unable to take care of himself. Hopelessness for another young man is the life of his aunt who has dementia and often can’t remember who he is or even who she is. Another young lady can think of nothing more hopeless than the threat of death.
Each of the situations imagined by those young people is heavy with a load of hopelessness. No one wants to be subject to the ridicule or pity of others, dependent upon someone else, unable to make his or her own decisions, or defeated by grief because of the death of a loved one.
When I think of hopelessness, I think of something that would make me even more desperate. What if I had to face a hopeless situation absolutely alone? For example, I can’t imagine having to bear the sorrow of Shirley’s death alone. I would have had no one to shed a sympathetic tear, no one to speak a comforting word, no one to offer a supportive presence, no one to help with the countless details. I would have been desolate. In fact, I wonder how I could have endured that dark hour. The value of the presence and sympathy of family and friends when we are in any crisis can’t be overrated.
During Lent our eyes are turned in remembrance to Calvary and to the One whose situation seems hopeless as he hangs on the cross. As we watch him there we see him care for the needs of others—praying for the penitent thief and commending his mother, Mary, and his beloved disciple, John, to one another’s love and care. At that point Jesus’ own despair and need for a sign of hope overwhelm him, and he cries, “’Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” The punishment of sin and death he is bearing has wiped out every trace of hope.
Knowing what Jesus is experiencing in that moment is in itself no comfort. But you and I, as Paul Harvey used to say, “know the rest of the story. ”Even though at that moment Jesus is too overwhelmed to feel God’s presence, the Father has not abandoned his Son. Near the end of Jesus’ ordeal God’s presence in Jesus’ hopelessness becomes apparent as Jesus prays, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit,” and entrusts himself into the loving arms of the God of eternity. After Easter hope in the midst of hopelessness becomes apparent to the disciples, and through their witness, to believers of every generation, for the Crucified One, abandoned to the hopelessness of death, has been raised to a living hope.
Faith in the God who rescued Jesus from death, of course, is the answer to the question: What might make a hopeless situation more bearable? In our text Paul isn’t whistling in the dark when he writes, “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts.” Paul knows as well as we do the cycle he’s describing isn’t automatic. In some people suffering produces anger, and anger produces bitterness, and bitterness produces despair. The difference comes from the last phrase of Paul’s words, “because God’s love has been poured into our hearts.” It is in God and God’s love that you and I find hope.
That doesn’t mean we’re never going to have times when we feel abandoned. Paul admits his limitations when it comes to trying to understand the mystery of God’s ways with God’s children. Later in his letter to the Romans he declares, “O the depth and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ ‘Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’”
Nevertheless, it is the same Paul who declares the confidence with which Christians can face situations that without God would be hopeless when he writes, “For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
What Paul is describing is the peace and hope of knowing whose we are, of knowing to whom we belong. Believing in this God of love gives us a new perspective. With the author of Hebrews we can declare, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
The things that breed anxiety and hopeless in our lives are many and varied. Sickness, needs beyond our resources, responsibilities, dependency, frustration, and sorrow are a few of the things that attack our sense of well-being and, therefore, our hope.
The things that offer us hope are also many and varied. Medicines to cure our illness, additional financial resources, sharing of responsibilities, a sense of independence, and joy are a few of the things that build our sense of well-being and, therefore, our hope.
However, a problem arises when the forces of hopelessness overcome the forces of hope. In our hopeless we are driven to our knees. There we look up to the cross of Calvary and remember we witness through hope. On that cross the ultimate of hopelessness—sin and death—were defeated by the ultimate of hope—the Son of righteousness and Lord of life. We can witness in hope because we share a faith in Christ.
Now you and I, by our words and actions can announce to those around us:
“My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ Blood and righteousness;
No merit of my own I claim,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
On Christ, the solid rock I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand.”
