Pastor’s Pen | July 2023
1Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5and 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. (Romans 5:1-5 NRSV)
As Christian people, we are called to profess hope.
In a world that seems hell-bent on violence and destruction and death, here we are, the people of God: singing and praying, serving and sharing all because we have hope for a world that can be better. The reason we are “harvesting hope” this summer in worship is not because I am clever, but because one of our members said to me: “the next time we describe where we’re seeing God in the world in worship, let’s focus on hope. Our world needs more hope these days.”
I couldn’t agree more, and I began to feel curious about how we, as followers of Jesus and readers of Scripture, qualify and define hope. The apostle Paul in the above portion of his letter to the Romans has helped me explore what we mean when we “boast in hope.” In my reading of Paul, hope is not the same thing as clueless optimism or premature comfort. Hope happens when things are hard. Hope happens because God loved, loves, and goes on loving us despite our or the world’s brokenness. In my reflections, I have come to believe that hope is substantive only when it is undergirded by a commitment to the care of our neighbors, especially in times of suffering. Notice the trajectory Paul names: suffering, endurance, character and then HOPE.
For Paul, it seems that hope grows out of the love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. I am eager to witness our “harvest of hope” grow and mature this summer as we write down and share the places, situations, and people in whom we are finding and experiencing hope. As Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans: hope does not disappoint.
In hope,
Pastor Beth