We can rejoice in the midst of the suffering, in the midst of our suffering. Not because we are in denial. Rather it is because we know suffering cannot quash our hope. It cannot quash our joy. It cannot dim the promises of God that are given to us by our God who loves us more than we will ever know.
June 15, 2025
“We Have This Hope”
Romans 5: 1-5
Rev. Dr. Heather W. McColl
Romans 5: 1-5
Therefore, since we have been made righteous through his faithfulness, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand through him, and we boast in the hope of God’s glory. But not only that! We even take pride in our problems, because we know that trouble produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. This hope doesn’t put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
We Have This Hope Romans 5: 1-5
I chose this text months ago. And if I had to do it all over again, I’m not sure I would go with this text for this particular Sunday for the simple reason, it is hard to preach hope when you don’t have hope, when you don’t feel hope. I share this not to depress anyone but rather to invite us to have an authentic, open and honest conversation about what hope is for us as people of faith. Because the fact of the matter is the concept of hope is hard to put into words. More often than not, when asked to tell of our hopes, to give a description of what hope is for us, we offer a mashup or a string of sentences, followed by a few stops and starts, only to end with a whole bunch of “I’m not sure what you are asking” stall tactics as we try to put into words that elusive concept and feeling of hope. Then when we can’t seem to come up with anything decisive, we simply say something like…Well, hope is hope. Just have hope. You know, trust in God and everything is going to be alright.”
Again, not to downplay or degrade any of our attempts or to say that any of that is not true, it is just that I realized this past week, as people of faith, we talk a lot about hope, but we can’t put into words exactly what hope is for us, what hope does for us. Rather, the idea of hope has become more like a catch phrase for us to gravitate to or cling to when the world is overwhelming us with its brokenness, hurt and hate. Rather it seems we use hope as a band-aid or a cover up to avoid naming, to avoid discussing this deep need we all have to know that no matter what, everything will be okay, that death and destruction will not have the last word, that no matter how the powers that be rumble and roar, the Beloved Community of God will come to fruition here on Earth just as it is in heaven.
The down and dirty Truth of the Matter is, as people of faith, we have this deep need for hope because we live in this here but not yet reality. The Beloved Community of God is here in our midst and yet it is not fully realized. We know that love and light will always overcome and yet, there is suffering in our world. We know God is at work in our world, bringing healing and wholeness and yet, we see the hurt and hate which fills our world. More and more, we find ourselves getting overwhelmed with it all and we wonder where God is. We wonder how in the world we are supposed to preach, to give hope, when we don’t have hope, when we don’t feel hope. Yet, it is still there, this deep need to know everything is going to be okay.
Most of the time, in moments like these, when words fail us, we turn to people who are smarter than us, people who are supposed to have all the answers, people, like authors and artists who have told us for generations exactly what hope is. They have told us that hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all. They have told us that Hope is an ugly thing With teeth and claws and Patchy fur that’s seen some [stuff], that thrives in the discards And survives in the ugliest parts of our world, that is Able to find a way to go on When nothing else can even find a way in, that hope is the gritty, nasty little carrier of such diseases as optimism, persistence, Perseverance and joy,”
Both of these descriptions are true and yet they still do not seem to capture exactly what hope is for us as people of faith. As I said, for generations, people have tried. Even our text for today is Paul’s attempt at this task. He says “We boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Sounds good right? Who are we to second guess the great apostle Paul? Yet even Paul’s explanation fails to capture exactly what hope is for us as people of faith.
To give Paul credit, in this context, when Paul uses the word boast, it is not in a prideful or “I’m better than you sort of way”. Rather, what Paul means is rejoice or exult in. You see, Paul is setting up an alternate vision to the Empire of Rome which is boasting about how they are creating peace through power and might, about how they are boasting in the strength of their armies and their conquests of communities, a type of boasting which goes against every single value of the Beloved Community of God.
In Paul’s attempt to capture just exactly what hope is for us as people of faith, he lays out a theological frame. He tells the people of faith in Rome that We boast not in ourselves. Rather, instead, as people of faith, we boast in God. We rejoice in God. We rejoice in who our God is. We rejoice in what our God has done. We rejoice in what God continues to do. We rejoice because we know no power on earth can keep us from the love of God.
Again, all of this is true, but Paul’s words still don’t capture just exactly what hope is for us as people of faith…because what I am continuing to learn is that hope is not something others can define for us. Rather, hope is something as people of faith we know. We know what hope is, not with our heads but with our hearts. We know it deep in our bones because that is where the light of Christ resides in all of us.
Which is why this morning, given all that is happening in our nation and in our world right now, all the divisions, all the hurt, all the hate, all the overwhelming soul sucking narrative of fear and worry which surrounds us, I am inviting all of us to create space to reconnect to the hope which resides deep in our souls, to reconnect to that feeling, to that moment when we knew, we knew that this world would not have the last world. We knew Hope to be TRUTH not because the preacher told us it was so but because we experienced the power and grace of God’s love in our lives, because we experienced the impossible possibility of our God in our world, because we were saturated in the goodness of God and had hope.
I invite everyone to be in a place of openness, open to receive God’s Spirit. Open to reconnect to the hope which reside deep in our souls, to reconnect to the life giving, the life transforming, but more importantly, the lifesaving knowing that “as a people of a story we can have one hand reaching back to touch the hope of the prophets and one hand reaching out to the promised redemption of the world…a hope which invites us to be open and vulnerable to the present, without the present crushing us”. I am inviting everyone to close their eyes and hear these words…
In a world so filled with brokenness and sorrow, it would be easy to lose ourselves in never ending grief, to be choked by our outrage, to be paralyzed by the enormity of suffering, to feel our hearts squeeze tight with hopelessness. Instead, this morning, let us simply breathe together as we hold our hearts open.
Breathing in as our hearts fill with compassion. Breathing out as we pray for healing in our world & in our lives.
Breathing in, opening ourselves to the transforming power of love. Breathing out as we pray for peace in our world & in our lives.
Breathing in as we hold hope in our hearts. Breathing out as we pray for justice in our world & in our lives.
May we know our strength. May we be filled with courage. May our love flow from us into this world.
Breathing in, we are the prayer. Breathing out, we are the healing.
Breathing in, we are the love. Breathing out, we are the peace.
Breathing in, we are the hope. Breathing out, we are the justice.
May we know our strength. May we be filled with courage. May our love flow from us into this world.
May it be so. Amen.
See also: Theology Tuesday for Sunday, June 15, 2025 – We Have This Hope Romans 5: 1-5.
Additional sermons are available in the Sermon Library.
Listen to the podcast.
Leave a Reply
Your email is safe with us.