Sermon: "A Community of Hope"

First in the "A Community of Light" series.
Delivered November 27, 2005 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6

Series: God has called us to be a community that is the light of the world. In this series we look at how our hope, peace, joy and love are part of that light to the world.

Theme: What we hope for shapes how we wait. As Christians, what do we expect? We expect a future where God is going to be the center of all things. We await a future where God is going to judge right and wrong and every human being is going to be accountable to God. If we believe that's the future, are we concerned that our lives can stand God's scrutiny today?

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Well when I got involved with this congregation, one of the things that struck me early on is that there are a number of families in this body that have adopted children and particularly in the last year I got a chance to be closer to a family that was going through the adoption process and I was just amazed at how difficult it is. You first have these orientation times and these meetings where they explain to you what you are getting into and you kind of make the decision of "do I really want to go through all of this? Is this the kind of way that we want to build our family?" Naturally in a process like this there is all kind of money that has to be paid, fees that have to be paid, and paperwork that has to be done. It's legally quite complicated at times and you have to go through this very carefully and then you get to the point where they start doing interviews with you and background checks and finally it all comes to a point that somebody comes and visits your apartment and checks out your refrigerator. It's not an easy thing to do. You have to really be determined.

But once you get to that point and you are approved and you get on a list and you're there. You're just waiting now. You don't know perhaps your baby's name. You don't maybe even know its sex. The baby might not even be born yet, but at that point you are approved and your hope that you have been holding on to at that point now becomes a firm expectation. You don't know when. You wait everyday for the hope that maybe today you will get the phone call and while you are doing it you paint the room, you buy the stroller, but you wait. You wait in confidence because you know that the baby is coming. At that point in the adoption process the hope that the parents have is similar to a biblical hope, because a biblical hope is not like the hope they have early on where they don't know even if they will be approved to be a parent. It's more like that firm expectation that the parents have at the end of the process when they know the baby is coming, but they don't know when.

Well we are now in Advent, and in Advent we think about what it means that God has already come to be with us in Jesus Christ; that in Jesus Christ God has already done decisive things that will change human history forever and will change our lives forever. And so we think about that: what it means that God came to earth as a human being. And at the same time, unlike an adoption, the baby in the story that we celebrate is only the start; well it really isn't an adoption but a start of the life of the family together, but even more in the church what God has done in Jesus Christ starts something that will be completed sometime in the future. So even as we look back at Jesus Christ coming as a baby and living as a human and dying on the cross for us, we also look forward to the fact that Jesus will come again to complete what he has begun in the world and in the church. That's the hope that we have as a church and I want to read a passage now that talks about hope. It's from the Book of First Corinthians, Chapter 1 and I am going to begin on Verse 3.

"Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way-in all your speaking and in all your knowledge- because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful."

Let's pray: God we thank you for your word and we pray now that you will help us hear, help us respond in faith and then obey your voice in our lives, for we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

These are wonderful words that Paul writes here about how much thanksgiving is in his heart for the lives of the people in the church in Corinth. When we read words like this it's easy to think that the people in Corinth were a spectacular group of Christians. Paul is overflowing with thanksgiving because they are so great. But anybody whose has actually read the book of Corinthians a few times recognizes that quite the contrary: the people in the church of Corinth were among the most immature and troubled of any church at any time in history. So when Paul gives his thanksgiving, why is he so thankful? It can't be because the church is going so well. In fact, the letter that he is writing is specifically to deal with all the problems that he sees in the life of the church. In fact, the things that Paul gives thanks for: their speaking, and their knowledge, and the spiritual gifts that they have, all of these things are actually problems in the life of the body gathered together in Corinth. And so as Paul gives thanks for them, it's got to be because he has his eyes on something more than just the lives of these Christians. Paul gives thanks because he is hopeful and Paul is hopeful because his eyes are on God.

This is a four-verse thanksgiving in English, Verses 4 to 8, but in the Greek it's one sentence. Up to the start of Verse 9 is one sentence in the Greek and in that sentence of Thanksgiving, Paul again and again is giving thanks for things that God is doing among the Corinthians. So for example he says in the 4th verse, he gives thanks because of the grace given in Christ Jesus. God has given grace to this community. God has acted in mercy and has begun to change lives and so he gives thanks for what God is doing. Verse 5, "For in him you have been enriched in every way." Again, Paul is giving thanks because of something God is doing. God is enriching this community, building it up, strengthening it and so Paul gives thanks. Verse 6, "Because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you." Paul preached and shared the gospel and God responded to that. God was present in that. Lives were changed. People came to faith. Gifts of the Holy Spirit were given and so again Paul is giving thanks because as he looks back on the history of the of this body in Corinth, he can see that God had been at work. Then later is says, "He will keep you strong." Again, God is at work. God is making them strong. And then in Verse 9, "He has called us in to fellowship." So again and again Paul is giving thanks for things that God is doing among these people in Corinth.

So he looks back at the impact of his preaching and his testimony and says, "Yes, I give thanks because God was at work then." He looks at them now and says, I am giving thanks because I can see that God is still at work among you and then in the final two verses, in Verse 8 and 9, he starts to look at the future and he says, "He will keep you strong to the end so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ." So as he looks to the future, Paul has confidence because God is at work in this troubled group of people to keep them strong and blameless till the end. It all comes together in Verse 9 where Paul says this: "God who has called you in to this fellowship with his son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful." Ultimately the reason why Paul has hope, the reason why Paul can give thanks and the reason why this church assembled in Corinth can wait and hope for Jesus Christ to come again is because God is faithful. And since Paul's hope is based on the faithfulness of God it means that they way we use the word hope in talking about what's happening in a passage like this, is a much stronger word than the normal way we use hope in English.

Often we use the word hope to mean that we don't really believe something is going to happen, but we sure wish it would. For example, if you are driving home and you say I hope the dog hasn't gotten in to the garbage again. Usually it means that it has happened so many times that you are sort of expecting it; a very weak word. If we have somebody that is coming to visit us over the holidays, we say my daughter is visiting us this Christmas. But if we don't know whether they are coming and we have our doubts, we say I hope that she comes and visits us next Christmas. But the word here is much stronger than that. As we use this word hope in talking about Christians, as we use the word hope to summarize the kind of expectation that Paul had, we are talking about a strong word, we are talking about expectation: an expectation, a good expectation that shapes who we are right now and what we do right now. That's what a biblical hope is all about. So what we hope for shapes how we wait.

Now just last Friday was Black Friday. I understand its called Black Friday because that's when all the merchants know that they are going to get in to the black because they are going to sell so much. It's the big sale day that follows Thanksgiving. Now here in Baltimore, there were people lined up outside the stores beginning the night before. I said at the last two services that 2:00 o'clock people were lining up. I heard from someone else that it was 11 o'clock at Best Buy: 11 o'clock the night before. Now it was about 30 degrees or so or less that night and people are lined up outside their favorite stores waiting to get in. And the stores open many of them at 5:00 a.m. in order to start the buying frenzy, okay? Now, why are they waiting out there? They are waiting out there because they believe, they expect, that if they get inside among the first few they are going to find the things they want; they are going to find it at a good price; so they are going to get that X-box, they are going to get that cheap TV, they are going to get that toy that they know their children can't live without. And then they know that if that get those things, life is going to be better. They really believe that. They really expect that and that's why they are waiting that way and making that sacrifice. Now, if material things really do feed us that deeply, if they really do make such a difference in our lives, then we ought to line up too. 11:00 o'clock at night, 30 degree weather, let's get out there because it really performs. We can expect that this is really going to happen and you know what, when they open those doors let's push to the front of the line and if you have to bite somebody to get what you want, well some people have already done it, just join the crowd.

But is that what we expect as a Christians? Is that what we believe about life and about whether material things can perform that way. What we hope for shapes how we wait. Well we are Christians, what do we expect? We expect a future where God is going to be the center of all things, unencumbered, the glory of God covering the earth as the waters covered the sea. We expect that future. And if we expect that future where God is the center of everything, then we've got to ask the question as we wait, is God the center of things now for us?

We await a future where it says that God is going to judge right and wrong and every human being is going to be accountable to God. If we believe that's the future, if we expect that future to happen right now, are we concerned that our lives can stand God's scrutiny? What we hope for shapes how we wait. Do we really believe that the fullest expression of life has nothing to do with material things or do we have lives that look just like the other people who have the bumper stickers that say, "The guy who dies with the most toys wins." What do our lives look like as we wait?

In Advent we celebrate a hope. We celebrate a firm expectation that Jesus Christ will come again. And when he comes again he comes to finish what he has begun already. And so what that means is that one of the realities we celebrate in Advent is that God isn't finished with us yet. We are in process. So as we look towards the completion that God is bringing, one of the things that we can relax about is the fact that we are not all we should be right now. So as we think about the grace that we have received in Jesus Christ, we are made aware that we are incomplete, we are broken, we are sinful, we make decisions that are clearly wrong sometimes and hurtful to ourselves and other people. Well our hope says that just like the Corinthians, we can still give thanks, we can still have hope because God is faithful and he is not finished with us yet. In our lives we are bound to be relating to people who end up hurting us in some way, in our families, in the workplace and even in the church. And even at times like that when you can see that the people around us aren't perfect either, that they do things that are wrong, that God is still working on them. Again, we can have hope and we can give thanks for the people around us because God isn't finished with us yet. It's what Advent is all about. As we live in this tension there are some things that God has already done among us. There are some things that God is not yet finished doing among us. And so we wait in light of the hope that we have and the kind of hope that really stirs us in the deepest part of our hearts is going to shape how we wait and our confidence is not going to be in the quality of our lives and the quality of the lives of the people around us, our confidence is going to be in God.

I want to share with you about a friend of mine, Mr. Yamawaki. Mr. Yamawaki lives in a residential facility for severely disabled people in Kobe, Japan. I was his pastor and had the privilege of baptizing him as a Christian. Now Mr. Yamawaki has never been able to walk. He's in a wheelchair. He's hunched over most of the time. His hands don't work properly. He can't bend his fingers and so he can't hold a spoon or a cup very well. He can barely feed himself. But Mr. Yamawaki always had a smile on his face. Right there he's doing, in Japan you put two fingers up and you go "cheese"; so he's giving us the I am getting my picture taken look. You always look like Richard Nixon when you are getting your picture taken in Japan. Mr. Yamawaki always has a smile on his face. He is always joyful, but he's not joyful because he expects that there is a medication coming real soon that is going to solve his physical problems. He's not joyful because he expects some kind of terrific surgery to happen that is going to get him on his feet again. Mr. Yamawaki is joyful because he experiences the care of Jesus Christ now and he firmly looks forward to a day when there will be a new heaven and a new earth, that we will be resurrected from the dead in new bodies and that on that day he will be a different person in some fundamental way. What God has begun in him will be completed.

Now Mr. Yamawaki can't speak that clearly, but we have had some wonderful conversations with him and one time in a Bible Study the associate pastor of the church was leading the Bible study and one of the things she said offhand in the Bible study was , "And of course, we don't actually get to see Jesus nowadays", which theologically I was ready to,you know, I am going to "amen" that one, but Mr. Yamawaki kind of pulled up his hand to disagree. He said, "No I do see Jesus. I see Jesus at night sometimes. Jesus comes to my bedside and he reaches out his hand and as I reach out and touch his hands, my legs strengthen, my hands work right and I step up out of bed and I am able to go and serve Jesus some tea." That's Mr. Yamawaki's dream. That is his hope. But as Christians when we think about the hope that God has called us to, a new heavens and a new earth, we can say about this that this is Mr. Yamawaki's expectation. On that day when there is a new heavens and a new earth, on that day when the marriage supper of the lamb begins and God is going around and wiping tears out of every eye, there is going to be one person that doesn't want to be served, because his dream his whole life, a man who has never been able to serve anyone anything, his dream is the first time he gets to serve, its going to be his Lord and Savior. And so right now Mr. Yamawaki waits. He waits with a smile because he waits in hope. We are a community of hope. What we hope for shapes how we wait.

Let's pray. Lord God we confess that we are still unfinished and so right now we declare our hope that what you have begun in us in Jesus Christ, you will bring to a conclusion, not because of our faithfulness, but because you are God and father, and are faithful and so we give you thanks in Jesus. Amen.

© 2005, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org