"HOPE DOES NOT DISAPPOINT"

"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, endurance

produces character, character produces hope, and

hope does not disappoint us."

What a beautiful statement. Its beauty rests in the fact that the writer had a great deal of first hand knowledge about suffering and disappointments. This was not an abstract theory for Paul. He suffered shipwrecks and snake bites. He was arrested, imprisoned, beaten, and stoned. He was distrusted by the Christians because of his past and despised by the Jews because he became a Christian.

Paul knew what he was talking about when he talked about suffering and disappointments.

Often, we talk about things we don't understand...like a little boy I heard of who went to Sunday school and learned the ancient legend about how God made Eve out of a rib taken from Adam. A few days later he was out running in the backyard and got a sharp pain in his side. Panicked, he ran into the house and said, "Mom, Mom, help me -- I'm about to have a wife!"

Clearly he didn't understand what was happening...but Paul seemed to know that what was happening in his life was going to produce endurance and build character, so he faced his struggles with hope.

The source of Paul's enduring optimism was his personal discovery that even suffering could serve a purpose in our lives: suffering produces endurance. It builds strength, the strength of endurance that we're going to need for the long journey our soul is on.

Endurance produces character; the Greek word Paul uses here is a word used to describe metal that's pure. It's similar to our word sterling. That's the type of character God is trying to build in us. And character, Paul says, produces hope...and hope does not disappoint us.

Now, before we go any further, let me note that Paul doesn't say that God sent him suffering so that he might develop endurance, character, and hope. Later in the book of Romans, Paul wrote that God can work all circumstances together for our good, but that doesn't mean God sends painful circumstances to our lives.

There is so much bad theology around that gives God the credit or, actually, the blame for all the bad things that happen in life. Jesus said "The rain falls on the just and the unjust." In other words, rain comes into all of our lives. What Paul is trying to communicate -- as I told you not long ago -- is that the rain can make us grow rather than wash us away.

Perhaps, that is what Jesus was thinking in the Gospel of John. Jesus told his disciples that he had many more things to teach them, but they couldn't understand them now. However, when the Spirit came, She would lead them into all truth.

That particular teaching of Jesus came just before he was arrested and taken to the cross. Perhaps, he knew that if he tried to teach the disciples about the redemption that can come through suffering, they wouldn't be able to understand. The prevailing theology of that day attributed everything that happened directly to God. When an earthquake split the ground, they didn't know about tectonic plates that shift inside the earth. They credited God with shaking their world apart.

Today, we understand that germs, viruses, and bacteria cause infections and disease. Still, when something goes wrong in our lives, our first thought is to wonder why God is doing this to us? When we are in pain, whether emotional or physical, we tend to become self-consumed and self-focused. That's pretty normal, but the result is that it increases our feeling that we have been somehow abandoned by God. It feels as though God isn't touched by the pain in our lives. Jesus wanted to correct that impression, but he knew the disciples wouldn't understand. "Wait," he said, knowing that after the cross, they would understand just how much God was touched by their pain. Perhaps, even more importantly, after the cross, they would know that resurrection is stronger than any cross.

That's what Paul meant when he said, "Hope does not disappoint." For Paul, hope was not a starry-eyed optimism that pretends failure, death, illness, alienation, and rejection don't hurt. Hope holds to the truth that the pain isn't the end of the story.

In his book, Real Magic, Dr. Wayne Dyer said, "You can learn to be optimistic, or you can let life teach you to be pessimistic. My philosophy about this, succinctly stated, is: No one knows enough to be a pessimist. No one!"

There may be no more arrogant word in the English language than the word, "hopeless." None of us knows fully how the story ends. Even the most visionary of us are unable to see around the bend in the River of Life. We all must trust in the goodness of God.

Many people think you are born with an optimistic nature or a pessimistic one. While various factors do combine to make some of us more optimistic than others, all of us can learn to live hopefully. You see...hope is not a feeling. It's a way of living life.

Earlier in this century, Harry Emerson Fosdick was pastor of the great Riverside Church in New York. He once told of an incident in his childhood that taught him that feelings are an imperfect guide as to how to live. One morning as Fosdick's father was leaving for work, he said to Harry's mom, "Tell Harry that he can cut the grass today if he feels like it." Then, after walking a few steps down the street, he called back, "And tell Harry he had better feel like it." Fosdick said that lesson stood the test of time. "For instance," he said to his congregation, "Each week when it's time to prepare a sermon, I know I'd better feel like it."

Abraham Lincoln, who struggled through many failures, rejections, and losses in his life, and who probably also struggled with clinical depression, once said, "Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." I'm not totally sure about that, but I am pretty clear that most people are about as hopeful as they make up their minds to be.

Rev. Michael Piazza tells the story of a Sunday School teacher he had many years ago who was awful. "He was a good man, but he wasn't a very good teacher. He was a big guy, and I guess, they thought his size would intimidate Junior High Boys into behaving. The problem is he was too gentle and soft-spoken. Often, he would finish the lesson too early, and some smart aleck in the class would start asking complicated questions that he couldn't answer."

Mike says, "I don't even remember that man's name, but I have never forgotten the answer he gave to one of those questions. Who knows what Bible story had been the lesson that morning, but one of the boys raised his hand and asked, 'What if none of this stuff is true?' There was a long pause. I suppose he had asked a question we had all thought. But it was the answer," says Mike, "that changed my life. This big quiet man looked at us with tears in his eyes and said, 'Well, son, even if it isn't true, I'm glad I believe it because I like how believing it has changed my life.'"

In a sense, that's how it is with hope. If we had proof, we wouldn't need faith or hope. We can't prove that the end for which we hope is certain, but I know I like what hope does in my life. And I like what happens to the people I know who choose to live hope-filled lives.

Hope does not disappoint. And hope does not make disappointments of us.

Sandra's mother was the first runner up in the Miss Texas Pageant. She pledged the best sorority at SMU and married the president of the class. By the time Sandra's parents turned thirty, they were being invited to the best parties and had appeared on the society page a number of times.

Sandra grew up feeling that every time she turned around, she was disappointing her parents. They never approved of the clothes she wore or the friends she had or the music she played. They refused to pay for her to go to a private college because she insisted she wanted to be a Social Worker. Fortunately, her grades were good enough that she got a full scholarship to a state college.

Sandra graduated from college with honors, but she was really disappointed that her parents wouldn't come to her graduation. Eventually her family learned that she had taken a job working with people living with AIDS, and then they began to suspect that there was something else Sandra hadn't told them. Learning that their oldest daughter was a lesbian was the greatest disappointment of their lives; at least, that is what her mother said. Sandra had just about decided that as far as she was concerned family was synonymous with disappointment. Three years went by without her seeing her family. She tried calling, but they changed their phone to an unlisted number.

One day, she was visiting a client named Tom. He was not doing well and hadn't been able to leave his bedroom for weeks. As Sandra let herself in, she was startled by an older woman standing in the kitchen. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said, "I didn't know Tom had company." "Shoot, I ain't company," the woman exclaimed. "I'm his mamma!"

Over the next few weeks, Sandra got to know Mrs. Johnson pretty well. She was a real character. She had lived all her life in the low country of southern South Carolina. Her speech pattern was amusing, but it was Mrs. Johnson's wisdom that kept drawing Sandra back to Tom's apartment even on her days off. Tom seemed to get weaker every day, but he never lost his sense of humor or his hopeful outlook. Clearly, it ran in the family.

One day, while Tom was sleeping, Sandra asked Mrs. Johnson just how she had been able to accept her son's sexuality. At first, she thought Mrs. Johnson hadn't heard. Then, the old woman looked up and said, "Nothing to accept. My son is my son. Loving him and accepting him was never up for discussion."

"But weren't you disappointed when you found out he was gay and wouldn't be giving you grandchildren? Didn't you have hopes for him that were disappointed?" Sandra asked. "Disappointed? Hope don't disappoint. Neither does family. Tom loves me and I love him; that's all I've ever hoped for."

Sandra left that day thinking that even though he was dying of AIDS, Tom was the luckiest person she had ever known.

Except, maybe for you and me. If, that is, we were lucky enough to have a family that taught us to live with hope. The only thing I can imagine that might be better than that would be for us to be that kind of family for one another. It's about the best gift we could give or be given -- the promise that hope does not disappoint. Amen.

[This sermon was originally preached by Rev. Michael Piazza at the Cathedral of Hope M.C.C., 6/7/98]

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