Hope Does Not Disappoint
A Sermon by Brent J. Eelman
Abington Presbyterian Church
June 3, 2007

Romans 5: 1-5
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast 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 that has been given to us.*

In an earlier life, I enjoyed painting in watercolors. I was not very good, but I surely enjoyed the creative release that it gave me. A friend of mine, Bob, stopped over to see me while I was in the midst of painting. I asked him, “Bob, what do you think of my art work?” (When someone asks a question like that, in all likelihood, they do not want an honest answer.) Bob looked them over, and pondered exactly what he would say and then said, “Brent, I don’t think that you have suffered enough.” It was the perfect response and kept the friendship intact.

Suffering is something that we often talk about in terms of art. We believe that it gives depth to technique and enables the artist, regardless of the medium to touch the soul of her audience. But let’s be honest: No healthy individual wants to suffer. It is something that we want to avoid. We have medications that enable us to deal with pain, both physical and psychological pain. And yet it happens. People suffer. Christians suffer. This reality is behind Paul’s message in this particular section of his letter to the Romans. There are two primary points: 1. We are justified by faith, but being made right with God is not a reprieve from future suffering. 2. Christians approach suffering and adversity differently, and ultimately adversity and suffering are the source of human hope.

I

We are justified by faith. This idea, which comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans, is one of the central doctrines of Protestantism. Simply put, it means that we are not made right with God, we do not receive salvation by anything that we do. Salvation is a gift of God, (pure grace), that we receive by faith. How does that change things? It primarily changes how we view the world and how we experience life. It does not change the events through which we live.

Faith in God through Jesus Christ is not a vaccination against hardship, disease, accident or catastrophe. Christ himself stated that the rain falls on the good and the evil. When one affirms her faith in Jesus Christ, it does not mean that her life will be easy, that it will be without its pain and trials. Too often we take a magic view of Christian faith, and believe that there is some type of cause and effect between what happens to us and our faith. We find ourselves saying: “He was a good person, a person of faith. Why did this happen to him?”

When Paul wrote this to the church at Rome, he was writing to a group of Christians that were struggling with real life events. They had faith in God through Jesus Christ, yet many of their number were being oppressed, persecuted and punished. Why was this happening? Did this mean that they didn’t have enough faith? Of course not.

In our own day, this time of year is a time when we recognize graduates and also confirm and commission young adults. As they go off into the world, they will experience difficulty and hardship. Many will encounter the lack of fairness that characterizes much of life. They will also discover that no amount of faith will protect them from these realities. But it can change their experience and understanding of them!

II

Christian faith approaches suffering and adversity differently, and ultimately these experiences are the source of human hope. This is where Paul took reality and turned it upside down! He made the utterly absurd statement: “We rejoice in our sufferings.” There is an almost masochistic bent to that statement. We don’t want to hear about suffering… and we certainly don’t rejoice in it. But Paul saw reality differently. He saw life through the eyes of the cross and the resurrection of Christ. From that perspective he developed an interesting series of four causes and effects: “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us/” Let us look at them one by one:

    a. Suffering produces endurance. When our daughter was in college, she was having a difficult time with some type of social situation and was going on and on with us about it on the phone. We just let her talk and finally she said: “Oh well, what doesn’t kill me, only makes me stronger.” She was, of course, quoting from Friederich Nietzsche. But she captured one of the hard learned realities of life: Strength and endurance are often the result of hard work and pain. Think about the manufacture of steel… In ancient cultures steel was tempered with heat and by hitting it hard with large hammers. In life, human suffering is the anvil upon which human endurance is forged.

    b. Endurance produces character. Character: that is a word that we don’t use a great deal these days. It means being genuine, being real, being good. The best description of how endurance produces character that I know is in a dialogue between two make believe characters (a velveteen rabbit and an old shabby horse, called the “skinhorse”) from the children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit:

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender…

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse.  "It's a thing that happens to you.  When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

The rabbit continued later on…

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse.  "You become.  It takes a long time.  That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.  Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby.  But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Endurance produces character. Endurance makes you real. Christian faith is not a sprint, it is a marathon.. a long haul.

    c. Character produces hope. When one is real, when one has character, when one is genuine, she experiences the world differently. The focus of life is different…. It is no longer on the things that don’t matter, the things that are peripheral. The momentary afflictions of life don’t throw you, because you have focus on what really matters. That focus is life in fellowship and union with Jesus Christ. This was at the heart of Paul’s message… The justified life in union with Christ, is focused and centered on the resurrection. The person of hope, is one who is focused on the future and the promises of God for that future.

    d. Hope does not disappoint. Hope is realistic. It is not “la-dee-da” thinking. It is not Pollyanna. There is a difference between genuine hope and wishful thinking. Wishful thinking has within it, the ability to disappoint. Genuine Christian hope is built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ’s resurrection and hence it is something that endures all things.

I recall again my friend, looking at my artwork, and remarking: “You haven’t suffered enough.” His comments were entirely appropriate and more profound than the humor he intended. Within art, suffering produces depth and gives the artwork character. The Christian life is indeed an art:  the suffering that we experience produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope… and Hope in Jesus Christ will never disappoint. This is the Good News. Amen.

*The New Revised Standard Version Bible, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers) 1989.

Abington Presbyterian Church, Abington, Pennsylvania,  www.apcusa.org