Hooked on Hope

Hope on the End of a Hook
A Sermon preached by the Reverend Peter De Franco, Interim Rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, New Jersey on August 12,2007

Every once in the while, even while we enjoy the beauty of summer, events crowd together that erode the joy of the season we all want to enjoy. News from the mine in Utah is pretty grim as efforts to reach the trapped miners comes up with little hope. Yesterday, three churches in Newark conducted funeral rites for three young people gunned down in what appears to be a senseless robbery gone bad. On Friday night as many of us tuned in the late night news, we heard that the New York City police stepped up security measures in search of a dirty bomb that an Israeli website claimed would be brought into the city.
Such events make us pause and reflect on the deeper pattern at work in our world.
Is there any reason that we can assume that things are getting any better? Sometimes we feel tempted to give in to that tugging sense of despair that borders on hopelessness. It is at times that these, when caves fall in and we can hear no sound from the outside, when promising young people are gunned down, when the threat of violence knocks on our neighbor’s door, it is at such times that we come upon a set of readings that lift our hearts and give us reason for hope.
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Do not be afraid, little flock. In those opening lines to today’s Gospel, Jesus invites us yet again to surrender our fear of the events that seems to indicate that the world is falling apart and look deeper into the world to see that God’s hand is creating, even in the midst of disasters, a new world, the place we call the kingdom of God. We can hone our ability to see God at work in the midst of disasters when we hope. When we look beyond the crisis at hand to the hand that is leading us out of the crisis, then we are learning the skill of hope.
At the start of today’s reading from the letter to the Hebrews, we heard these words: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Faith in the assurance of things hoped for.” When I heard many people talk about faith, they speak about the beginning level of faith: they believe in the existence of God. For many of us, our faith consists in believing in God, in affirming that a reality exists that lies deeper than our experience of the world we see.
For most of us our faith lies in the second part of the definition of faith we heard in today’s second reading. Our faith is about the conviction of things not seen. We believe in God, even though we do not see God. We are convinced of the presence of Jesus even though our eyes do not behold him. We are sure of the presence of the Holy Spirit as sure as we are of the love that is in our hearts. We are convinced of things that we do not see.
But faith is more than that. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” “Faith is the Assurance of things hoped for.” There is energy in faith that directs us to look into the future, to seek what lies ahead, to long and pine for a reality that God is preparing but is not yet in front of us. I think that such a desire is implanted by God in our hearts so that we can move to that place where God is working and where God is establishing the city in which we will dwell: the reign of God which ever lies before us.
I recently read a story about Harold Russell. When he heard about the attack upon Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Harold signed up with the US Army on December 8th. An accident turned around his dream to fight for his country. He didn’t know that the an explosive he was handling for a training film had a defective fuse which went off as he touched it. When he woke up on his bed after surgery, both his hands were missing. All hope seeped out of his heart. His entire life seemed to me nothing more than a tragedy. He was filled with despair.
At that moment, he received a visit from Major Charlie Mc Gonegal who also lost both his hands in an accident. Charlie encouraged Harold to conquer his greatest enemy: his own fear, his own bitterness, his own hopelessness. “How can I get along in life,” Harold asked, “as a cripple?” “You’re not a cripple,” said Charlie, “you are only handicapped.”
Harold was fitted with two hooks for hands and went on to Boston University.
While studying, he was featured in an army film, Diary of a Sergeant, about soldiers recovering from loss of limbs. Director William Wyler saw that film and cast Harold as a recovering soldier in his movie, The Best Years of our Lives. Harold won the academy award as best supporting actor.
Such is the character of Christian hope; God creates a new world where we thought the old world had fallen apart. As we pray this day for the dawn of God’s kingdom among us, let us go to those places in our heart where we find the circumstances of our lives challenging our faith and pray that our eyes may be opened to behold the new city that God is creating for us to live in. For God is always at work creating new possibilities. We only have to open our eyes to behold God in all God’s creative work.