Hilton Head Island, SC – February 3, 2013
The Chapel Without Walls
Romans 5:1-5; Romans 8:18-25
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? – Romans 8:24 (RSV)
The burden of hope: how can hope be a burden? Hope isn’t a burden; it’s a blessing - - - isn’t it? Isn’t hope what we rely on to go forward when we have nothing else upon which to rely?
I never think of the topic of hope without thinking of the words of my favorite poet, Miss Emily Dickinson of Amherst, Massachusetts.
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
It’s true, isn’t it? Hope comes to us unbidden, filling our souls, raising our spirits, giving us something to hang onto when we thought there was nothing. Hope feels irrepressible, invincible. It is an anchor in the storm, a rock in the quicksand of life. Without it, we might be completely unable to move forward. Sometimes hope is the only thing which enables us to do that.
In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul wrote two extensive passages about the nature of hope. In Romans 4 he talked about the most important doctrine of Martin Luther, and perhaps also of Paul, namely, justification by faith. At the beginning of the 5th chapter, Paul said this justification gives us peace, granting us the hope of sharing the glory of God. Then he wrote one of those magnificent, soaring, poetic utterances which characterize Paul’s style of writing: “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (5:3-5).
It’s like the end of Gone With the Wind, when we see that the irascible and infuriating Scarlett O’Hara shall somehow come through all her trials still on her feet and plodding ahead as she always has managed to do. She has hope. Tomorrow is another day, as she tells us. It is the Puritan settlers in Massachusetts Bay, braving the cold of winter, barely surviving their desperate straits, but seeing ahead of them what John Winthrop called “a city set on a hill.” They had hope. It is Frank Sinatra’s persistent goat: “No one could make that ram scram; he just kept butting that dam --- ‘cause he had high hopes, he had high hopes, he had high apple pie in the sky hopes.”
“Hope does not disappoint us”: is that always true? Does everything we hope for come to pass? If so, hope cannot be a burden. But if our hopes are not always realized, then hope can seem like a beautiful dream burst apart like an ephemeral bubble, disappearing into nothing.
“For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope….For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:20,24-25).
I will never forget the first time I preached from our sermon text for this morning. It was the Sunday before Christmas in 1965. I had been the pastor of my first congregation in Bayfield, Wisconsin for less than a year. A week or so previously I had received a call from my father, saying that my brother had been injured in a parachute jump. He was the commander of a unit of airborne troops in the Army, training to go to Viet Nam. As he was about to land, having safely exited from the aircraft after the other soldiers had jumped, Ray was caught in a freak crosswind, and he was flipped upside down in his harness, landing on his head. Dad did not indicate how serious the injury was, but it didn’t sound good. Nevertheless, in that sermon I expressed the personal hopes of our family that Ray would be all right. We of course couldn’t know, but we hoped he would soon recover. Later that week, a few hours after the Christmas Eve service, I got a call from my sister-in-law saying that Ray had died just before midnight. But, as Paul insisted, hope that is seen is not hope.
No one knows which team will win the Super Bowl tonight. At this point, all anyone can do is hope. Ravens fans hope for the Ravens, 49ers fans hope for the 49ers, and everyone else hopes for a good time, watching the Sandy Hook singers and the exorbitantly expensive commercials and the always-spectacular halftime show. If anyone knew for certain who would win, it wouldn’t be as interesting, would it? After all, we all live in hope. We always live in hope. However, as long as the Packers aren’t there, I don’t have especially high hopes either way, and whatever happens is okay with me.
I have been attending a six-week Lifelong Learning course on music taught by Jane Sine. Jane was a professional bass player with various orchestras, and the manger of various musicians through the years. Her knowledge of composers and music history is both encyclopedic and outstanding. I urge all of you who can to participate in Lifelong Learning classes. There are three “semesters” each year, and they are very good for stimulating the cerebral cortex. And stimulating the cerebral cortex is very good for anyone who is growing older. Which is everyone.
Jane Sine was talking about Brahms. She mentioned the circumstances under which Clara Schumann, the composer Robert Schumann’s wife, died. Schumann died in 1856. Later, Clara became associated with Johannes Brahms, and Brahms loved her as he loved life itself.
In 1896 Brahms happened to be performing in Switzerland, when he received a telegram that Clara had died. He took the first train he could for Bonn. He hoped against hope he would get there for her funeral, because she meant so much to him. In Frankfurt he missed his connection to Bonn, and when he finally got to Bonn, the funeral was over, and his hopes were dashed. Brahms lived only six months longer, but during that period he composed his beautiful and intricate Four Songs, perhaps in memory of Clara. Could it be that his crushed hope issued in those singular compositions?
The burden of hope is that sometimes what we hope for doesn’t happen. But the beauty of hope is that when it is dashed, even better things can happen if we don’t allow ourselves to become morose over our obliterated aspirations. God goes with us through every experience of our lives. I believe He controls events rarely if ever, but He guides us through events if we acknowledge His intention and His will to do so. He is not an intrusive God, but He is most certainly an inspiring God.
For the rest of this sermon, I am going to do something I almost never do: I am going to reveal a hope I had which did not come to pass, and two hopes I have for the future, which may or may not come to fruition. I do this not because these things are of any great consequence in and of themselves, but because they may help you deal with your own hopes, and their potential blessings and burdens.
Personally and professionally, the greatest hope I ever had was that I would be called as pastor to a certain church in a certain city. I had become happily familiar with that congregation during my years in seminary, and I had served on its staff for five years after I had been ordained as a minister. A dozen years later, when the church’s pastor retired, and who was the No. 1 mentor of my entire life, I flew to that city for a visit with the pastoral nominating committee of the church. It happened that a good friend of mine from seminary was on the committee. He decided not to go into the ministry, but he became a very active layman in that congregation.
In the interview, everything seemed to be going well until one lady asked me one particular question. I answered her honestly, but also badly, and I knew it, and everyone else also knew it. My friend drove me back to the airport. He gently advised me in the next interview to think through more carefully what I wanted to say, and to anticipate any curve balls that lady, or anyone else, might throw my way. But there was no second interview, and it was all over. Of such episodes are pastoral calls often either delivered or destroyed.
For a little while after the new pastor was called to that congregation, I was literally in mourning. My innards were churning. But then I decided that definitely was not good for my gizzard, and I made my peace, wisely I trust, with staying on Hilton Head Island. Besides, for all I know, a few dozen or scores of ministers came to Hilton Head on vacation while I served a particular church here, and that pulpit is what they hoped they would one day fill. (Ministers are most guilty of pulpit envy, I suspect.) And anyway, the man called to that other church did far more for it than I ever could have. In his quarter of a century as its pastor, the membership almost doubled, and it was very large when he first went there.
Here is another personal hope I shall share with you. As most of you know, I recently gave my first series of lectures as The Old Philosopher. I’m going to give another series in March, and I hope some of you will attend. But my larger hope is that this new activity in my life will give me a whole new lease on life, and that as long as I am able, I shall prepare lectures which I hope to deliver at various places on Hilton Head Island until I am no longer able either to think or to stand upright, which ever comes first. Furthermore, at least for the time being, all the proceeds from these paid lectures will go to The Chapel Without Walls Community Outreach Fund. As you can see from the annual statement from 2012, which was printed in the bulletin, last year we gave away virtually nothing. That is unacceptable for any congregation of any size and annual income. Again, I hope to generate from six to ten thousand dollars each year by means of the Old Philosopher lectures, and we thus can contribute at least that amount to the community.
The last hope I want to preview with you is something regarding The Chapel Without Walls that just presented itself in the last week. Most of you, but not all of you, know that I intend to retire as your “full-time part-time” pastor on December 31, 2014. By chance today I turned 74, by then I will be a month short of 76, and after that I do not want to be tied down to 48 or 50 Sundays per year of leading worship.
The Chapel board knows this, but I’ll let all of you in on the secret. We have been in existence for over nine years. For much of that time I have been in informal and very unofficial conversations with other ministers I know who live here or who might be convinced to move here to see if they would consider working with me as a co-pastor of The Chapel, or perhaps even becoming sole pastor eventually if you and they would agree. So far nothing has happened, but then, currently nothing has needed to happen, either.
However, someone just suggested to me a possible solution to our potential long-range problem, namely, my putting my preacher’s robe into mothballs (although, because it is a newer robe, it doesn’t need mothballs.) I cannot state this too strongly: I will be GREATLY disappointed if this congregation should cease to exist when I cease to be its pastor. My HOPE is that The Chapel Without Walls shall continue to serve this community as long as this community continues to keeps it collective head above high tide. With what is likely to occur as a result of climate change, about which I spoke in my first Old Philosopher series of lectures, I would be surprised if Hilton Head Island is inhabited fifty to a hundred years from now. I hope I’m wrong, but I think I may be right. Fortunately or unfortunately, I won’t be around to see whether or not I am correct in my supposition. In any case – and this is the main point -- I don’t want this congregation to retire when its founding parson retires.
People without optimism live without hope. Hope can be a heavy burden, if it never comes to pass, but it can be an exquisite burden nonetheless.
It cannot be over-emphasized: all of us need hope. I am certain God wants us to have many hopes. And we should nourish our hope in whatever ways we can. Maybe the words of hymns will help us. “My hope is built on nothing less/ Than Jesus and his righteousness.” “Christ of all my hopes the ground/ Christ, the Spring of all my joy.” Whatever works for you, go for it. All of us need hope! For me, this hymn text is more likely to mesh with my personal theology: “Give to the winds thy fears/ Hope and be undismayed/ God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears/ God shall lift up thy head.”
If we don’t live with hope, we don’t really live. Not everything we hope for can be realized, if for no other reason than that our own highest hope may conflict with someone else’s highest hope. But as long as hope is the thing with feathers, it can --- and will --- perch in our souls, if we allow it. Whether we nurture hope is solely up to us. Whether our hope sustains us is up to both God and us.