Overflowing in Hope Romans 15:4-13
A city slicker moved to a farm and bought a cow. Shortly after, the cow went dry. A farmer, who got word of this, expressed surprise. The city man said he was surprised too. “I can’t understand it, for if a person ever was considerate of an animal, I was of that cow. If I didn’t need any milk, I didn’t milk her. If I only needed a quart, I took only a quart.” The farmer then had to explain to the city fellow that the only way to keep milk flowing is not to take as little as possible from the cow, but to take as much as possible.
In today’s epistle, Paul tells the congregation in Rome to take as much as possible of fresh hope. “May the God of all hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may overflow in hope.”
We however do not always overflow in hope. Because of our sinful flesh, we are more ready to be disappointed, agitated and perplexed. In fact, our sinful flesh delights in being this way. That is, only taking some of what God has for us, when our need is for more hope to flow out to us, overflowing. Paul says this abundant hope comes from believing. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.”
Often the world gives us other sources of hope. It tells us it will only come when Bin Laden is captured; when the economy is on the rise once again; when and if we get well. It would not suggest waiting for anything but rather to run from here to there – to a new job, a better location, a different doctor, a different church, or no church, better behaved children, a better spouse. Where is your source of hope? If it only keeps you on the run, rather than maybe waiting, you have something to think about.
Martin Luther reminds us “not in works, not in any other thing, but purely in hope the heart of man rejoices. The one who seeks to find joy apart from this hope will labor much but will labor in vain.” Then Luther goes on to remind us of the Bible story of the woman who went from doctor to doctor for 12 years, spending all she had until she met Jesus. Luther adds: “this happens also to those who run here and there with their troubled
conscience, now consult these folks, then consult those, now do this, then do that, and try everything in order to quiet their heart but do not seek the hope which gives rest to the soul and which they too could have within themselves.”
Our hope is not to be found in running from place to place or in smug resignation to the evils of life, but rather in belief and trust in God’s word. As Paul says at the beginning of this reading: “Everything that was written in former days was written for our instruction, that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”
Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path, the Psalmist reminds us. In ancient times it was the oil lamp that became a symbol for Christian education that has at its center the study of God’s Word. “Let there be light,” is the theme of the University of California,” with the oil lamp depicted on coffee mugs and sweatshirts. But in order to have hope, this same lamp ought to be emblazoned on our hearts and minds. It is a precious thing, this lamp, this Word especially as it is offered to our young in our Christian Day School and in our Sunday school. Think of it. We’re just offering kids hope, in a world that they’re finding out much sooner than we ever did that can never offer them hope. Thank God for this lamp of truth that burns ever brightly telling us of Jesus of Nazareth, the promised Messiah sent by God to redeem us from the slavery to sin, death and hopelessness.”
Paul found power to hope in the Scriptures. But for Paul, this meant only the Old Testament, for that was all there was at his time. Think how fortunate we are then to have not only the Old Testament, but also the New. Herein we find the assurance that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him, shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Sometimes as I read or teach the Bible, I think that it is only information or history. Yet we are told that this Gospel, hinted at and promised in, the Old Testament and revealed in the person of Christ in the New Testament is ‘the power of God unto salvation.’ There can be no other source for our hope and encouragement in the darkness and despair of this world than the Word of God to us.
The other day I was in a small department store. Off in the corner of my eye, down an aisle in the store, I noticed two young three and four year old girls, beating on the head of a plastic three foot Santa, calling out to their father, “Look, Dad, this isn’t really Santa.” “He’s not real.” Just seeing that plastic Santa there wasn’t enough. They had to physically beat on him to prove it to themselves. To them however, there was a real Santa, but they knew this one wasn’t it.
So often we place our hope and trust in what isn’t real. We should go up and examine it; take a closer look for what it is, especially in the light of the Scriptures and prove it for ourselves. It might even help us, like these little kids, to call out to someone close to us, that what we’ve found isn’t real. Is this ‘shell of a thing’ worth placing my hope in? As the hymn writer says it” “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness, I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus name.”
In my second year of seminary in a preaching class, I quoted that same verse in a practice sermon I’d been assigned to write. The professor, who must have been in a foul mood that day wasn’t real happy with the sermon and pulled out that quotation by way of example, with it’s seemingly archaic expression, “the sweetest frame,” and asked me to explain what I intended to mean by it. He did not subscribe to the practice of simply quoting in their entirety, Bible verses and random hymn verses here and there in one’s sermons. At the time I wrote and quoted the line, I wasn’t thinking of anything in particular, but when he raised the question, I thought and replied, as well might any single fellow in their early twenties in an all male school, “the sweetest frame? Well, how about a pretty girl?” Now a few years after I’d left seminary, our church body came out with a new hymnal to replace that old red or blue one published 60 years ago. I noticed that the little line had been removed and isn’t there anymore in the new hymnal. The line: “I dare not trust the sweetest frame,” was replaced with ‘no merit of my own I claim, but wholly lean on Jesus name.’
Of course, both lines are fine and express excellent theology. But the question needs to be asked, ‘around what are we structuring or framing our hope?’ Is it between the covers of the Bible or some other covers? Between getting more sleep, or rising a little earlier, by way of our Lord’s example, to begin the day with prayer and devotion? Is my hope in the pages of the Good book, or the pages of my ‘day-timer’ planning calendar? Am I structuring my hope and strength around the vertical lines of the cross through which I am on right terms with my God above? Am I correcting the harsh angles of my life in the simple horizontal line of that same cross and in the forgiveness of sins, by which I am reconciled to my fellow man at my right and on my left?
How valuable this cross and the one who hung upon it is in giving us hope and reconciliation. A pastor once wrote of a brother and sister he knew who used to fight each other an awful lot when they were children and it was pretty mean and ugly sometimes. But on Christmas Eve they would sit side-by-side and even arm in arm before the Christmas tree in rapt attention as father began to give out the gifts.
So, it can be for us. Our minds and hearts are focused on Christ and the gift of himself in his coming at Christmas. This is what we wait for and joyfully anticipate in this hopeful season of Advent. But, we also hope in Christ’s triumphant return to earth to raise us to life eternal. Then, and only then will be the time when we will no longer need hope. For the Bible tells us, faith and hope are for this life only, but in heaven, these will not be needed. We will see and know and love Him as surely as we are known and seen and loved.
But in the meantime we must have hope and live in hope. For the opposite of hope is despair and this is what Christ came to deliver us from. We can overflow in hope as it is delivered to us fresh daily in Holy Baptism and God’s living and abiding Word. And we can even envision hope.
What does hope look like for you? I can’t really answer that, but for me, “Hope is seeing a towering banana tree plant and a palm tree in your own neighborhood on a cold, dreary, rainy day, and being glad you get to live in California, because it won’t last.”
Hope is looking up at the sky to see a jet contrail high off in the distance heading southeast and just imagining to yourself where it might be going.
Hope is opening up a map, and just losing yourself as you visit as long as you want places you’ve been to, and never been to in the mind’s imagination.
Hope is practicing moving your head to the left a little more often like the person waiting at a bus stop, waiting and looking, to physically remind you there’s always something on the way; don’t stop waiting, watching and looking.
And now in the closing words of our text: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
