Scripture: Ephesians 1:15-23; Hebrews 11:1; 1 Thessalonians 1:2-3; Matthew 12:21; John 5:45; Isaiah 25:6; Revelation 22 Series: 2022
Launching a sermon series on hope, the preacher distinguishes shallow, wishful ‘Hollywood’ hope (illustrated by the film Hope Floats) from the biblical, theological hope described in Ephesians 1:15-23. Drawing on Greek word study (elpis/elpizo), the absence of the noun in the Gospels, Aquinas’s four conditions, and Paul’s letters, he argues that hope is active rather than passive, open-ended because our future with God cannot be fully comprehended, and is given through images rather than contracts. Hope is both verb and object: the kingdom and the Spirit present here and now. Like his wife who saw God’s call on his life despite his poverty, believers are invited to have the eyes of their hearts enlightened to see and live God’s hope in the present.
Illustrations: alina-saw-hope-not-circumstances, tiny-apartment-no-microwave, grandfather-beat-smithville-football, hope-floats-movie, aquinas-four-conditions-of-hope, house-closing-paperwork, feast-and-lion-with-lamb
July 31
What is Hope?
“Since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, this is the reason that I don’t stop giving thanks to God for you when I remember you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, will give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation that makes God known to you. I pray that the eyes of your heart will have enough light to see what is the hope of God’s call, what is the richness of God’s glorious inheritance among believers, and what is the overwhelming greatness of God’s power that is working among us believers. This power is conferred by the energy of God’s powerful strength. God’s power was at work in Christ when God raised him from the dead and sat him at God’s right side in the heavens, far above every ruler and authority and power and angelic power, any power that might be named not only now but in the future. God put everything under Christ’s feet and made him head of everything in the church, which is his body. His body, the church, is the fullness of Christ, who fills everything in every way.” Ephesians 1:15-23 CEB
My wife and I, Alina have been married for 10 years. It’s going to be 11 in December. When we met, my amazing and brilliant wife was a PhD student at UT and a high school English teacher. I was a part time administrative assistant at a church in Austin. Now, church’s don’t run without administrative assistants, but an exciting career path was not something that I had. I lived in a 350 square feet apartment in Austin with my dog, Bunbury, who is still with us. There was no furniture except a table and bookshelves. I didn’t have a microwave. I reheated coffee on a stove. Despite all of that, we met and fell in love. She did not see the material things around me. She saw something else. And we got married. When we were married, a little deeper fire came into me about finishing the ordination process in the Methodist church that had been stalled for various reasons: many of them out of my control, some of them in my control. But after two years of marriage, I finally got an appointment as a local pastor to a two point charge. I was pastor at a very small church in Winchester and I was an associate pastor in a town called Smithville. I say all that because we had never heard of Smithville before receiving the call to serve there. A few members of my family had heard of it before. When I told my grandfather, John Huebel, he said he remembered Smithville because he beat them in football. He was the high school quarterback in Columbus back in the thirties. He told me, “Yeah, Smithville were a good football team until I played them.” Despite my grandfather’s athletic prowess, the most famous thing about Smithville at the time we moved there was a movie from the nineties with Sandra Bullock called Hope Floats. In order to learn more about this community that we were about to enter, Alina and I watched Hope Floats. If you haven’t seen it, the movie is about Sandra Bullock’s character, named Hope, who goes back to her small town, Smithville. The movie is set in Smithville. It’s about Smithville. They take some liberties with the size of the community. I think there’s one scene where Sandra Bullock’s character has this kind of walk of shame, but it goes on for hours and you cannot walk for hours in Smithville. Like you can walk for 15 minutes and you’re one side of town to the other. It’s fine. The point of the movie is how to maintain hope through these challenging situations. It’s a super surface level metaphor. Or how do you hope when your life falls apart? How do you keep hope? These kinds of ways? and hoping in a kind of generic Hollywood sense?. It’s like, you know, you kind of hope for things. “Gosh, I hope it will rain tomorrow.” It’s like predictions that you would like to happen. Good natured predictions. Maybe your bucket list is a list of hoped for activities. But this is not the hope of the Bible. This is not the hope of Jesus Christ. This is not the hope of Paul in Ephesians. So what is hope?
My friends, we are starting a new sermon series on hope. We are going to dig a little deeper into this theological virtue at the center of what it means to be a person of faith, to live into hope today, we are starting with the most basic question. What is hope? There are a number of passages throughout the Bible that articulate hope clearly. The one I want to focus on today is from the beginning of Ephesians. But before that, I want to look at one of my favorite passages in the Bible: Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11 starts with this great definition of what faith is: Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. Okay. So, ‘assurance,’ that’s really important for faith. ‘Things’. I think we understand what a thing is, but what is hope? The word for hope in Greek is elpis or elpizo. It doesn’t have the same valence as the word does in English. In fact, one of the curiosities of the Bible is that the noun form of the word, elpis, never occurs in the Gospels. It occurs 53 times in the rest of the New Testament but not in the Gospels. Instead, the verb form, elpizo, is used. For instance, in Matthew 12:21, which quotes from Isaiah, “In his name the nations will put their hope.” Or in John 5:45, when Jesus is explaining who he is, he says, “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set.“ When Jesus speaks of hope, he uses the verb. Hope is an action. Paul uses the noun form of hope as well as the verb. He uses it in such a volume that when we find it in the book of acts, it seems clear that the Author of Luke-Acts was influenced by Paul’s work after the resurrection of Jesus.
Paul uses it often in the first letter we think he wrote, 1 Thesillonians. From the very beginning, he writes starting in verse 2
We always thank God for all of you when we mention you constantly in our prayers. This is because we remember your work that comes from faith, a your effort that comes from love, and your perseverance that comes from hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father.
Perseverance comes from hope. This is super important. We must read and understand that this hope is different from secular hopes. Hope isn’t just a longing for another day but what offers us sustenance to persevere here and now. As the early apostle, Barrabas, wrote “For surely there is a great store of faith and charity within you because of your hope for life in Christ.”
The greatest definer of things in Christian history was probably Thomas Aquinas, the great medieval philosopher theologian and doctor of the church. He defines hope as having four conditions.
Now, in the object of hope, we may note four conditions. First, that it is something good; since, properly speaking, hope regards only the good; in this respect, hope differs from fear, which regards evil. Secondly, that it is future; for hope does not regard that which is present and already possessed: in this respect, hope differs from joy which regards a present good. Thirdly, that it must be something arduous and difficult to obtain, for we do not speak of any one hoping for trifles, which are in one’s power to have at any time: in this respect, hope differs from desire or cupidity, which regards the future good absolutely: wherefore it belongs to the concupiscible, while hope belongs to the irascible faculty. Fourthly, that this difficult thing is something possible to obtain: for one does not hope for that which one cannot get at all: and, in this respect, hope differs from despair.
Thomas has these conditions for hope. They are helpful, but ultimately, I do not find them satisfying What I think it’s important for us to understand, though, is that there is no ultimately satisfying definition of hope. It is always going to be slightly open-ended. If we’re talking about hope in a secular sense, in a generic sense, in the hope floats kind of sense, its not open. It’s like I hope to meet the man of my dreams and to settle down, et cetera. Like that’s a concrete thing, but again, it’s much more of a wishful prediction than what Paul is describing here in Ephesians one, this hope is a biblical hope. That’s our theological hope which rests in our future with God. It must, in some ways, remain open-ended because we cannot physically, intellectually, or even emotionally comprehend what that future entails. Our future with God is not articulated in the Bible like it is in closing documents for a house. To be a Christian, you don’t have to, you know, sign here, initial here, 50 pages and go through all these steps. You don’t have to sign the document that only exists because of a lawsuit in 1853 and most people forget why it’s there but it is part of the closing and you do it. To be a Christian, you do not need these things because in some part we don’t all know what is going to happen. We are not given these concrete descriptions. We are given images. God offers us images of what the life with God will look like. Images of our future with God.
It is Isaiah 25 and a feast, a party that never grows old or stale. It is Revelation 22 and the lion lying down with the lamb. Hope draws us and activates us towards what is greater than us. Our hope is in God and our future, yet that hope has effects on us now.
I can say nothing greater that what Paul already said.
I pray that the eyes of your heart will have enough light to see what is the hope of God’s call, what is the richness of God’s glorious inheritance among believers, and what is the overwhelming greatness of God’s power that is working among us believers.
When Alina met me in my sad state 11 years ago, she did not see me as the world saw me. She had the light to see the hope of God’s call on my life and that my circumstances were not my reality or my future.
This day, may you have enough light to see hope for yourself and for others. Sometimes, it can be hard to see. It can seem dark. The world can seem dry and harsh, yet may you have enough light to see the hope of God’s call. The light by which we see also comes from God, for Jesus is the light of the world. Jesus used hope as a verb because he was still with us when he spoke. For those of us this day, after the resurrection, hope can still be a verb, but it is also an object. It is the kingdom of heaven here and now. It is the presence of the Holy Spirit here and now.
Paul defines the hope of God’s call as the glorious inheritance of believers and the overwhelming greatness of God’s power working among us. Hope is not passive but active. It is not only temporally located in the past or the future but in the present. Hope is about having our eyes opened to the beauty and transformation taking place right here and now.
Paul describes God’s power in this way.
God’s power was at work in Christ when God raised him from the dead and sat him at God’s right side in the heavens, far above every ruler and authority and power and angelic power, any power that might be named not only now but in the future. God put everything under Christ’s feet and made him head of everything in the church, which is his body. His body, the church, is the fullness of Christ, who fills everything in every way.
When we are truly the church, the fullness of Christ is here. The fullness of Christ, the power of God, the hope of eternity is here this day.
God is making all things new, here and now. Your life can change here and now. Make a change here and now. Hope in the Lord this day.
Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, open our eyes that we may see the beauty of your love. Open our hearts to see the light of your call on our life and your call on others. Give us the strength to live out your hope here and now. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.