Christian Hope: A Sermon for 2 Easter
Many of you likely know that today - the Sunday after Easter Sunday - is known as “Low Sunday” due to its meager attendance. Low Sunday is a favorite for church copy machines and coffee makers all over the world – both of which worked overtime for the previous Sunday. The irony is, that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, today’s attendance isn’t any “lower” than any of the previous five Sundays. And the amount of work that goes in to preparing for and live streaming this service is equal to that of Easter Sunday. So the odd nature of the situation in which we find ourselves continues to manifest itself in new ways. Easter Sunday felt strange last week. And Low Sunday feels strange today in that it is not any “lower” than any other recent Sunday. Everything continues to feel strange.
But I refuse to call this the “new normal.” Nothing is normal about this way of being – whether it is from the perspective of the church, work, school, home, or the other aspect of our daily lives. Referring to this way of being as the “new normal” is not a hope-filled statement. It sounds defeatist and despairing to me. And as Christians - especially during this Great Fifty Days of Easter – we are called to be people of hope, as foolish as it may seem to others. And perhaps the Great Fifty Days of Easter is ten days longer than Lent because we need to keep being reminded of this hope that we are called to embody.
But we must remember that Christian hope isn’t akin to wishful thinking. I hope that this pandemic subsides quickly, so that it is medically safe for churches, schools, restaurants, beaches, and the marketplace to open back up to the public with no restrictions. And that is not a bad or unfaithful thing to hope for - we can and I do pray for that to happen. But that is not the hope that our scripture lessons are speaking of today.
I hope (and pray) that my family, friends, community, and parish church will thrive spiritually, relationally, emotionally, physically, and economically – now and in the weeks, months, and years to come. But again, even that is not the sort of hope that our scripture lessons are speaking of today.
Christian hope is not interested in our being happy, healthy, or successful – or anything else that we wish to happen. Christian hope isn’t about what we hope will happen to us for the sake of us. That is a self-serving, inward-facing hope.
And Christian hope is not grounded in logic, conventional wisdom, or the idol of our day – “feelings.”
In our Epistle lesson for today, the Apostle who wrote it boldly declares, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” So Christian hope is grounded in the belief that Jesus broke the chains of death - not just for himself - but for all who are foolishly wise enough to believe this to be true. And the conquering of sin, death, and evil through Christ’s death and resurrection is the fulcrum upon which Christian hope rests. And in the Apostle’s words, this new era marks
“an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading,
kept in heaven for you,
who are being protected by the power of God through faith
for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”
Now bear with me here. That is a mouthful and an earful, and only the second half of an incredibly dense, run-on sentence. But the essence of this statement is that what happened on the cross and on the Sunday that followed wasn’t just for Jesus. And it wasn’t something that began and ended during a short 3-day period in history. The great paschal mystery of Christ’s death, descent into Hell, and resurrection is, in the Apostle’s words, never-ending and unfading. And it is just as relevant and effectual today as it was over 2,000 years ago. And thus our basis for being a people of hope rather than despair – in spite of what conventional wisdom may tell us - is that we as Christians are reborn “into a living hopethrough the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” In other words, this life isn’t all that we are living for…this life isn’t all that there is.
But before you accuse me (or the writer of the epistle) of slipping into a naïve, sentimental brand Christianity that is not grounded in everyday reality, let us continue our examination of today’s letter. Immediately after proclaiming the truth upon which we Christians place our hope, the Apostle pivots from hope to the reality of everyday suffering when he writes,
“In this you rejoice,
even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials,
so that the genuineness of your faith—
being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—
may be found to result in praise and glory and honor
when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
Again, another long, dense, run-on sentence. This Apostle would be terrible at keeping his Twitter posts down to 280 characters! But he is acknowledging that his readers have suffered, are suffering, and will continue to suffer the trials and temptations of everyday life. And given the fact that we are in the midst of a global pandemic, that certainly has proven to be true today.
The Apostle interprets the relationship between suffering and faith as being a means for testing the genuineness of one’s faith. To the Apostle, a faith that hasn’t endured the trials and temptations of everyday life is not a genuine, or as I prefer to call it, a “well-seasoned” faith. Here, he appears to be recalling the third chapter of the Wisdom of Solomon, which says,
“Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good,
because God tested them and found them worthy of himself;
like gold in the furnace, he tried them,
and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them.” (Wisdom of Solomon 3:5-6)
Now I have said almost every week since this pandemic began, and I will say it again – I do not believe that God sent us the COVID-19 virus to teach us a lesson or test our faith. But I do believe that God is sovereign, and that God has his hand in all things. But I also believe in free will and the implications of The Fall. As such, we find ourselves living “East of Eden,” and subject to all the human suffering that comes as a result of The Fall. And since The Fall, God’s people have always lived in the tension between sin and righteousness,
hope and despair,
faith and doubt,
obedience and disobedience,
thriving and suffering.
This existential tension in which we find ourselves – otherwise known as the human condition - is expressed in the Lord’s Prayer, when we pray for God to “Lead us not into temptation...” or “Save us from the time of trial.” These were Christ’s very own words that he instructed his disciples to pray. That is a far cry from a God that instructs us to seek out temptation, trial, or suffering for the sake of refining our faith like gold is refined in fire. And to take it a step further, theologian Pheme Perkins points out that neither does “God set up such trials as an obstacle course or entrance exam” for our faith. She goes on to observe that the next phrase in the Lord’s Prayer - “But deliver us from evil (or the ‘Evil One’)” - points to the other side of the process, [when we offer our] confident prayer that God will deliver Christians from such trials.” Therefore, it is not unchristian to pray that God will deliver us from this evil pandemic. But it is unchristian to do so only for the sake of our own material and worldly success and happiness.
Pheme Perkins reminds us that sometimes, “the Christian message is ‘sold’ with the promise that accepting Jesus as Savior will lead to personal peace and prosperity in this life. First Peter insists that such promises are false. All that counts is the ‘faith proved by trials.’” In this letter, the Apostle actually speaks of “rejoicing” in these trials. In other words…yes, we Christians will experience trials, and yes, we believe that God will ultimately deliver us from those same trials. But the true deliverance is our deliverance from the bondage of sin, evil, and death that was made possible through Christ’s resurrection from the dead. All of the hope and deliverance we speak of is grounded in our belief that this life here is not all that there is. The ultimate trial is living our life here, East of Eden. The ultimate hope and deliverance is eternal life. And that is the Christian hope that Peter speaks of in his sermon in today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, and that the psalmist speaks of in today’s psalm, and that the Apostle speaks of and his letter. These three lessons are all lessons of a hope grounded in the wisdom of God rather than the wisdom of this world.
Our current experience of the COVID-19 virus is an opportunity for us to prayerfully examine the theological depth of the Christian virtue of hope. And it is an opportunity for us to recognize that as Christians, our suffering as well as our hope isn’t unique to our very own selves. This pandemic has connected and joined humankind in our suffering and our hope – physically, socially, emotionally, spiritually, and economically. And we have the unique opportunity to be in solidarity in our suffering and in our hope with our brothers and sisters throughout the world and throughout the ages.
But we also have the opportunity to embrace, model, and share the deeper understanding of “a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
And we have the opportunity to join the Apostle in proclaiming,
“Although [we] have not seen [Jesus], [we] love him;
and even though [we] do not see him now,
[we] believe in him
and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy,
for [we] are receiving the outcome of [our] faith,
the salvation of [our] souls.”
The hope that our scriptures speak of is not sentimental or logical. The hope that our scriptures speak of is none other than a matter of salvation. As such, let us join the psalmist in proclaiming “My heart, therefore, is glad, and my spirit rejoices; my body also shall rest in hope.”