Hope Keeps Us Alive and Curious

July 11, 2021 • 7th Sunday after Pentecost
Reading: Romans 5:1-5
Pastor Jeff Wells

[You can view the worship video recording, including this message, at: Facebook.com/churchofthevillage/videos.]

How can we continue to experience vibrant living? How can we have energy, excitement, and enthusiasm for life in the face of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and other oppressions, in the face of already occurring disastrous effects of climate change, in the midst of terrible economic and social inequality, poverty and homelessness, in the context of the ongoing global pandemic, or even in the face of disease and chronic pain that we and our loved ones suffer? We’ve gotta have hope.

Hope is a strange thing. Hope is able to survive repeated disappointment. It can live on with very minimal or even no realization of the thing hoped for. Hope can exist without a specific focus – with simply the desire that tomorrow be better or less painful than today. Hope can live on gratitude that simply being able to take our next breath or live another day is a victory. 

Early this week, before she knew that I planned to preach on hope today, Diane shared with me an opinion piece from the New York Times titled, “Everything I Know About Hope I Learned From My Dog.” The author proclaims that “the true master of hope is the family dog.” I can attest to that from the behavior of our own puppy, Sadie, whose first birthday is coming up on July 24. Sadie loves to chase chipmunks and squirrels – and even has the ambition to catch a deer. She’s never come close to catching any of them, but she continues to hope in the possibility. She continues to hope that one day we won’t notice or won’t mind as she eats the delicious dinner we’ve prepared for ourselves that sits on the kitchen counter.

You might think Sadie is naive. Yet, when it comes to hope among humans, I am talking about naive optimism. Having hope does not mean I believe everything will somehow work out for the best or that I get all that we wish for. We know from experience that is not true. Yet, hope may be the most valuable asset we have, especially when our circumstances are at their worst – when it would be easy to fall into despair and depression. Hope is one of our chief tools for survival, as well as a main motivator for living vibrantly. Hope is what gets us out of bed in the morning and keeps us working for a better world when confronted with massive challenges and obstacles. 

In the passage Dwight read from the Letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul asserts that hope is a byproduct of suffering. That’s a popular idea among Christians. It is also very wrong. Perhaps he did not intend it, but his words serve to glorify suffering as a means to improve our characters. There is no denying that suffering is a part of every life. Some people suffer much more than others – in part by chance, though often because of intentional harm inflicted on them. Yet, Paul’s claim that suffering builds endurance and endurance builds character, which in turn teaches us to hope, misrepresents reality. Yes, we may grow in endurance and resilience in the midst of suffering, but severe and prolonged suffering also can cause people to lose hope and give up. 

In fact, hope is not the end result of suffering. Hope is what we need to endure suffering and to have any possibility of flourishing in its aftermath. The psychologist and holocaust survivor, Edith Eger, writes powerfully and convincingly that she and her sister, Magda, could not have survived the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps without hope. No matter how bad the conditions, for more than a year, she kept telling herself, “If I can stay alive until tomorrow, I will be liberated.” So she never allowed the Nazis to dehumanize her or destroy her moral values.

Yet, if hope does not arise out of suffering, from whence do we get this crucial element of vibrant living? Let me suggest at least three sources. 

First, we have the actual experience of seeing social systems, communities, and individuals – including ourselves – evolve and change, however slowly and haltingly. We have the experience of making our way through suffering, dangers, and risks and finding our way to a better place in our lives, our families, our communities, and our societies. We have learned that sometimes our hope is actually realized, if only in part. 

Second, as with Sadie, perhaps our inclination to hope is instinctual. I am convinced there is an impulse within every human being that moves us to hope, even in the worst situations. It allows us to continue – as long as we have breath – to strive for what might be possible, even against the odds. One of the most powerful examples I know is the ongoing hope that has made it possible for Black Americans, along with many allies and accomplices, to continue to fight for justice and equity in the face of 400 years of struggle that has not yet overcome white supremacy. Also, for example, on Pride Sunday, we mounted a banner on the front of the church building in Manhattan that proclaimed, “Love Wins.” We proclaim the power of love not because love has already overcome the oppression of LGBTQI+ persons, but because hope allows us to believe in and work toward that possibility.

Lastly, I go back to what the apostle Paul himself wrote at the end of the passage we heard: “Hope will never fail to satisfy our deepest need because the Holy Spirit that was given to us has flooded our hearts with God’s love.” We could add that the Spirit “has flooded our hearts with God’s hope” and “has flooded our hearts with God’s desire for good.” What is our deepest need? – to take that flood of love, hope, and goodness and pour them out into the world. We need to receive and share love, hope, and goodness. We can do none of that without hope. God desires the best outcomes for us and lures us toward those outcomes. Our experience of God in our lives is the ultimate source of our hope and helps sustain our hope.

Not one of us has a guaranteed future. Our beloved community of the Church of the Village has no assured future. We know all too painfully that the ability of the earth’s biosphere to sustain life is no longer assured. In fact, the outlook is pretty bleak. Yet, hope is not based on assurances, certainty, or guarantees. Instead, hope makes it possible to face a very uncertain and risky future. Hope makes it possible to believe that tomorrow (or next week or next year), things might change for the better. 

Recently, I read Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s account of how she was inspired to become a political activist. She was working in a bar, underpaid and exploited, and feeling powerless to help herself or those around her. She decided to travel to South Dakota to participate in the Standing Rock Reservation protests against the Keystone Pipeline. Here is a small part of what she wrote about that struggle and what she learned from her experience: 

“It seemed impossible at the time. It was just normal people, showing up, just standing on the land to prevent this pipeline from going through. And it made me feel extremely powerful, even though we had nothing, materially – just the act of standing up to some of the most powerful corporations in the world. From there I learned that hope is not something that you have. Hope is something that you create, with your actions. Hope is something you have to manifest into the world, and once one person has hope, it can be contagious. Other people start acting in a way that has more hope.” [1]

It is up to us to choose how we will respond to life’s challenges, pain, risks, and possibilities. For example, we can allow those in power to choose to continue on the ruinous path we are traveling and thereby allow the extinction of all life on this planet. Or, it may still be possible to forge a different path and avoid the worst possible dystopian outcomes from climate change. In the face of such uncertainty, hope gives us the opportunity and the motivation to choose life.

Hope is an attitude, an intention, a choice we make every day. We can remain stuck in our past or present suffering or we can choose to look forward, putting one foot in front of the other, and saying, “We are (or I am) not going to allow what has happened or is happening to determine the rest of our (or my) existence.” As Edith Eger teaches, “Hope isn’t the white paint we use to mask our suffering. It’s an investment in curiosity – a recognition that if we give up now, we’ll never get to see what happens next.” We can choose to move forward with hope joined with curiosity. 

As Dwight alluded to at the start of worship, the Bible is full of examples of God offering possibilities and hope to people in the midst of exile, oppression, tragedy, and loss. Many people would say that relying on hope in such visions of the possible is foolishness. I don’t care if it’s foolish or impractical or a long-shot. Let’s continue to live vibrantly into all of life’s dangers, difficulties, and possibilities. Let’s keep choosing life and love. Let’s keep choosing hope. Amen.

(c) 2021 Jeffry Wells
All rights reserved.

1. Emma Brockes, “When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez met Greta Thunberg: ‘Hope is contagious’,” The Guardian, June 29, 2019.