A sermon on Romans 15: 4-13 by Nathan Nettleton

Hope is a major theme in this season of Advent. It is the name on the first of our beautiful Advent candles and it is probably the dominant image of the church’s proclamation and prayer at this time of the year. But it is not an easy idea to pin down. Or perhaps I should say it is an easy idea to misunderstand. You see, the word “hope” also gets used a lot at this time of year by those outside the church as they get into the swing of the summer festive season. Just think of some of the lines you hear:

“I hope the weather will be fine for our party by the river.”

“I hope someone gives me the new Kasey Chambers CD for Christmas.”

“I hope there won’t be any fights when the family gets together this year.”

When we use the word “hope” that way, it is basically the same as saying “I wish.” And I’m pretty sure that that is not what the Apostle Paul had in mind when, in the reading we heard earlier, he said that the unchanging and inspiring message of scripture fills us with hope, or when he prayed that we would abound in hope. I don’t think he was saying that we should just be a bunch of wishful thinkers or just have a more optimistic outlook on things than everyone else.

It’s not unrelated, but it’s not the same thing. The hope which Paul is calling us to does involve a measure of optimism and wishful thinking. You could say that our faith in Christ makes us optimistic about the future. You could say that we are wishing for the day when Christ will bring all things together in love and joy. But understood in that way, hope is still a fairly passive kind of thing. It remains something that just goes on between your ears and doesn’t have much in the way of implications for anything you might do the rest of the time. No matter how fervently I might hope that the weather will be fine on Saturday, it’s not going to make much difference to how I live my life between now and then.

There is another way that we commonly use the word “hope” which I think may come a bit closer to what Paul was getting at. You may hear people say things like:

“I hope to do well in my exams at the end of the year.”

“I hope to be properly prepared to run a marathon by March.”

“I hope to read the whole Bible during the next year.”

When we use the word “hope” in those ways, it means something more than “I wish.” It is more like “I intend” or “I am working towards…” or even “I commit myself to…” This kind of hope has very definite implications for the way you live. You will not do well on your exams or get in shape for a marathon simply by wishing for it. It takes more than just an attitude of mind. If you hope for such things you have to set about determining strategies to achieve the goals and following through on them. Such a hope is a desire that is expressed in a plan of action. If there was no action, then others would conclude that you don’t really hope to achieve the stated goal, you just vaguely wish you could without having to pay the price.

I think the Apostle Paul was talking about a hope that had definite implications for the way we live and the decisions we make, but I think we’d have to conclude that this concept of hope was not quite what he was on about either. You see, when the word hope is used in this way, it is primarily about things that we can make happen by our own determined effort. We are largely in control of the outcomes ourselves. We hope for something; we apply ourselves to an appropriate strategy; and if all goes to plan we succeed in bringing it about. And while Isaiah and John the Baptiser might tell us to prepare the way of the Lord, that’s still a long way from taking control of the Lord’s schedule!

The Christian hope that Paul is calling us to seems to include components of both these common kinds of hope, but still be something bigger than both. It does have something to do with optimism or even wishful thinking. We are called to imagine a day when things will be different and much better than they are now. We are called to wish for it, to yearn for it, to hunger for it. We are called to reject the vested interests that tell us that things cannot change very much and that we should resign ourselves to “reality” and not expect or agitate for anything radically different from the present status quo and the way things have always been done. We are called to imagine a new heaven and a new earth where Christ is all in all and Christ’s ways of love and mercy and peace and justice shape the reality which everybody lives in. This could be called wishful thinking because we set ourselves thinking about that which we wish to see fulfilled. It could be called wishful thinking because we express a belief that something which presently looks impossible will in fact come to be.

And this Christian hope that Paul is calling us to does have something to do with committing ourselves to a goal and acting towards its realisation. We are called to “prepare the way of the Lord.” We are called to begin to live by the values of God’s coming reign in the here and now. We are called to be reshaping our lives in light of that which is to come. We are called to do whatever is within our control to make the reign of God a present reality rather than just a vague vision of a utopian future.

But it seems to me that when Paul talks about the hope that abounds by the power of the Holy Spirit and is nourished by the steadfast and encouraging message of the scriptures, there is another essential component that takes hope beyond either or even both of these common meanings. That component is about openness or perhaps surrender. You see, that for which we Christians hope is neither simply a vague future desire, nor something we can in any way control and create. Christian hope is not so much to hope for something, as to put our hope in something, namely God. And when we put our hope in something, there is a large measure of relinquishing control. When we hope in God and in God’s future, we are opening ourselves to something which is radically out of our control. We are putting all our eggs in the one basket when we neither own the basket or have any sort of control over the future of the basket.

This still has major implications for what we do and how we live, but not in the sense of being able to determine strategies and control outcomes. Rather we are called to commit ourselves — body, soul and act — to radical openness and obedience to a God who we cannot comprehend, predict or control. To others it may look like wild trust and reckless courage, or perhaps just naive stupidity. But to those who have experienced the joyous freedom of abandoning one’s fate into the loving care of the Spirit of Christ, a Spirit which like the wind blows who knows where, it is the only path to the true freedom of a life worth living.

It is to such a hope that Christ calls us. And it is such a hope that Paul says is nourished as we listen to the witness of those whose writings have been passed down to us in scripture. For it is the stories of those who have opened themselves to such an incomprehensible and uncontrollable Spirit that will nourish our courage to do likewise. And it is to such a hope that we commit ourselves again in our worship at this time of year, as we immerse ourselves in wild visions and utopian dreamings and pray over and over, “Come, Lord Jesus, Come.”