4/19 Message – “Our Living Hope”
Friends, even in these disconcerting times our lives overflow with the goodness of God. Our Savior offers us the hope of Easter not just on one special Sunday, but today and every day of the year. It is my prayer that we will claim and live in that hope.
“Our Living Hope”
In his autobiography, Just as I Am, legendary evangelist Billy Graham confesses to one of the most hurting and embarrassing moments in his life. He had been away from his family for an evangelistic crusade in Los Angeles for several weeks. During the last week of that crusade, some relatives – a husband and wife – came up from New Mexico to be with him. He noticed a child in the woman’s arms and asked, “Whose baby is this?” It was Graham’s own child whom he’d not seen in many weeks. He had not recognized his own daughter!
It is possible to be near someone and not know them, to even share a name with them but not a relationship; it’s a sad fact, but it’s true, more than one would hope. Some parents repeat the surface relationships of their youth because that’s all they know. Families are also busy with careers and individual interests.
As Christians we must be careful not to mistake respect for religion, tenure in church, and even knowledge of Bible, for intimacy with Christ. The way to remain close to Christ in truth is to see Him like Peter does in our text, as “a living hope.”
As our “living hope,” it is possible for Christ to be ever fresh and ever new to us. To live this, we must resist assuming we know all there is to know about Jesus; we must resist deciding exactly how He is leading in our lives, and about how He is working, or not working, in the lives of others. I have run across plenty of well-meaning people of faith who are experts on the presence and non-presence of God in their lives and in the lives of others. Be leery of such people and their supposed superior knowledge about the things of God. Make sure you never get to the point where you know God so well that God can’t surprise you. No one fully comprehends Christ, not yet at least. As theologian Andrew Greeley teaches, Jesus is larger than human comprehension. Jesus is larger than any category we might assign Him.
Presuming to know enough about Jesus keeps us from growing in Him and learning new things about Him. We must forever be learning new things about Him, seeing sides of Christ that we never saw before, and therefore seeing new possibilities and new visions for ourselves. For you see, to limit Jesus is to limit ourselves. On the other hand, to open the door to the “surprising Jesus” is to open ourselves to the many extraordinary ways our lives might be enhanced by Him for the better – ways we never dreamed or desired. Jesus is alive and is still able to do the unexpected. Even during a time of social distancing.
The surprising Jesus makes it possible for us to love the unlovable, “for God so loved the world” (John 3:16); to forgive the unforgivable, because Jesus said, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34); to walk the un-walkable path, because Jesus promised, “Remember, I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20). We may be able to see the un-seeable, because the just walk by faith and not by sight; and do the un-doable, because we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.
The signature song for the great Blues singer and guitarist B. B. King is “The Thrill Is Gone.” The thrill will never be gone with Jesus if we are always open to His leadership, and reject the presumption of thinking we know all there is to know about Him. The thrill is never gone with Jesus when we meet Him – again and again.
It is important, I think, to note that Jesus is a living “hope” in the eyes of Peter. Next to Judas, Peter was the disciple who seemed to lose the most hope when Jesus was arrested and tried. Peter was so shaken by what took place, that he found himself saying something he never imagined saying: “Jesus? I don’t know who you’re talking about!” (See Matthew 26:69-75.) Maybe in the moment of his denial, Peter did lose all hope in Jesus, in what had been revealed to him in the three years of Jesus’ ministry. He lost it once, but he never lost it again. Peter proclaims Jesus to be living hope – living to never die again! If there is one thing we need to live on, especially in our current times, it is hope. Hope is the thing that urges us on when we would lose courage, falter, and fall.
In our Gospel Lesson for today it is Thomas who has lost hope after the crucifixion. Thomas, one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus appeared to them the first time in the upper room. So, the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in His hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe it.”
A week later the disciples were gathered in the room again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were still locked, Jesus again came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
Thomas said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”
Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
It’s a beautiful story about an honest and devoted disciple for whom the resurrection seemed simply too good to be true. He could not believe until he saw for himself. Each time we read this story of the man who has forever been remembered as ‘Doubting Thomas’; it gives us the opportunity to remind ourselves that it’s all right to doubt. That’s why God gave us a brain. God wants us to wrestle with the meaning of life and faith.
Some of the greatest saints who have ever lived have struggled with doubt. In fact, the more committed you are to serving God, the more intensely you will struggle with the things of faith. Persons for whom faith is nominal, never struggle. That’s because they don’t really care. But, if you really care, if you’re really seeking to follow Christ, you are going to wrestle with the meaning of it all as well as the reality of it all.
In her short story “Soon,” Pam Durban writes about the life of Martha Crawford. Martha dreams and plans, but life does not work out as she expects. Still she keeps on keeping on, resisting the haunting temptation to become bitter and give up on life. Durban goes on to describe Martha at a family reunion with something wonderful welling up inside of her: hope, “percolating up through the layers of years.”
Hope in Christ cannot be stopped. Such hope binds up the pieces of our lives and makes them whole. Jesus, our supreme living hope, will not be stopped unless we turn our backs on Him.
Put your faith in the One that can deliver – Jesus Christ the Lord!
Amen.
Remember that at one time we were separated from God and were strangers to His Covenant. But now we are brought near to God through the blood of Christ. May the God of mercy, Who forgives you all your sins, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life.
Grace and Peace,
Rev. Christy Mitchell