“Losing Hope?”

Romans 5:1-5
June 3, 2007

Saint Paul United Methodist Church of Little Rock

Reverend John Fleming, Pastor

Most public places have something that they call a lost and found area. The idea is that if you have lost something, all you have to do is to go there, rummage around among the lost things, and hopefully find what you are looking for. Sometimes what you are looking for is there, often it is not.

Churches are no exception to having lost and founds. We, too, have a lost and found area here at Saint Paul. If you will go to the back of the church and look above the coat racks, you will find a box that is our lost and found.

Worshippers often leave things behind. Many people leave their umbrellas. They drop them off while it is raining and a couple of hours later, if it is no longer raining, they will forget about their umbrellas. I will have to tell you that in a pinch, if I have forgotten an umbrella and you have left one here, I will use your’s in hopes of not getting drenched. I hope you don’t mind. Bibles too, are left behind. If I know you well, I might call and ask how your weekly Bible reading is going. That doesn’t always work now because many people have multiple copies of the Bible.

The Altar Guild makes our worship space look perfect each and every week. Sometime during the week, guild members assigned to the particular week and month for that matter will come and straighten up the hymnals and Bibles. They will make sure there are plenty of offering envelopes and those small pencils. They put the attendance pads on the pews and throw away left behind worship bulletins.

Every once and a while they will bring me things that they found written on those worship bulletins. Sometimes there are notes scribbled on them. I am sure that these notes weren’t written during the sermon! Sometimes there are drawings on the bulletins. On one of our bulletins there was a note, written by one of our worshippers. It said this, “That sermon sure did grip me.” It was quite a compliment. It is my hope that the sermons I preach will reach out and grab you and leave you wanting just a little bit more. Back to the note, it seems that the note writer misspelled the word “grip.” They added an “e” at the end of it. So their line read, “That sermon sure did gripe me.” Oh well, it was still a nice thought.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to lose things. I am famous for losing my keys. When I was the Associate Pastor downtown at First United Methodist Church, I lost three sets of keys in four years. The church administrator was not happy with me. So far I haven’t lost a set of keys since then. I still have my original set of issued keys.

I do, however, misplace my keys at home. I haven’t lost any, but I have misplaced them. I wish I could have all the time back I have spent looking for my keys. Susie has put a place where we can keep our keys. It’s located near the back door. I never use it. Once Susie gave me something to attach to my key ring that when I whistled it would go off helping me to find my keys. The problem was that every time our dogs barked and every time the phone rang and every time anything happened, and some times for no reason at all, the key ring would start beeping.

Maybe your mom was like my mom and gave me a great strategy for finding things I have lost. Her strategy was a question. It was this one, “Where were you the last time you remember having it (whatever it was)?” That’s good advice. It never worked.

I have a friend whose mom told him that when he lost something, he should close his eyes, remember the last time he had it, who was around him then, and then to call them on the telephone to ask where what he lost was.

We lose things. We lose keys. We lose papers. But the last thing we should lose is our hope. Let’s use that line to lead us into our sermon for this morning, taken from Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians. These five verses are very powerful.

I would like to remind you of the things that we know about Paul’s letter to the Romans. The church at Rome wasn’t one of the ones Paul started. It was one, however, he hoped to visit one day. His hope is that his ministry among the Romans will help send him to Spain to spread the gospel there. Paul was starting another journey. He was going to Rome, but first he needed to stop in Jerusalem. Paul knew that things were dangerous for Christians in Jerusalem. He knew that many Christians had been put to death for their faith. He knew that his going there was dangerous.

And so, just in case he does not make it to Rome, Paul wants the Christians there to know important things. You might say that he is frantically hoping to teach them about the faith. Look at the lesson. five short verses Paul covers all these things: justification, faith, peace, hope, suffering, endurance, character, hope again, and finally, love.

Paul was frantic and Paul was anxious. Apparently he had good reason to be. Paul never made it to the Rome. He never made it to Spain. As it turns out, Paul’s letter to the Romans was the last letter (as far as we know) he wrote.

So what is so important to Paul? Well, I will tell you this, what he writes isn’t anything he hasn’t written or preached before. He covers familiar ground. I guess that if I knew this was going to be my last sermon to you, I would want to cover the things I thought were the most important. I, too, might talk about justification and how it leads to peace.

Justification. What is that? Well justification is one of United Methodism’s high dollar words and one that we have come to build our plan of salvation on. We first talk about prevenient grace, the grace that comes before we know who we are or whose we are. And we talk about sanctification. In between those two, we talk about justification. What is justification? Justification is saying yes to the relationship God wants to have with us. Paul says we are justified by faith. That means that there is nothing that we can do and there is nothing we should do to earn God’s love. We are justified because of Jesus and what he has done for us on the cross. So God’s grace is given with no limits. It has no boundaries. It has no end. All we have to do is to say “yes” to it, as in, “Yes, I want that relationship with God.” Really, that is all there is to it.

But of course, there is more, too. Paul says that we can boast in our hope. He also says that we can boast in our sufferings. Not many people boast about their sufferings. They boast about other things, but not their sufferings. I want you to understand this, another word for boast here is to celebrate. We don’t celebrate in our sufferings, either.

It seems that there is a reason to boast and to celebrate our sufferings because suffering leads to endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.

Now I know these words are not easy to hear. They roll off the preacher’s tongue like they are no big deal. The truth is that these words, words like suffering and endurance and character, are a big deal.

I know you and I know about you. I know that some of us have walked together through some pretty tough times. I’ve walked with you through your’s, and you have walked with me through mine. And we come to the communion table today. As I give you a piece of bread and a bit of wine, I am reminded that I don’t know everything. I only know what you have shared with me. God knows the rest. God knows about your grief. God knows about your losses. God knows about your worries. God knows about your fears. God knows how some of you are near the end of your ropes. I cannot help but to think about how many of you have endured. I know your character. I think about the hope that you carry around with you that tomorrow will be better than today.

The result of all these things is that we may be better spouses and better friends and better parents and even better pastors. But no one likes the pain. God certainly doesn’t like our pain. I want to quickly remind you that God doesn’t cause the suffering in our lives. I don’t believe in a God like that. You don’t believe in a God like that, either. The challenge is to remember that when tragedy comes, God is the first one who weeps.

Paul says that we have hope and hope does not disappoint us. I think that I have shared with you before that one of my favorite movies is Stephen King’s The Shawshank Redemption. The movie tells the story of Andy DuFrane and his imprisonment for a crime he didn’t commit. Near the end of the movie, Andy writes to his good friend, Red. He writes about hope. These are his words, “Hope is a good thing, perhaps the best of things, and a good thing never dies.”

Paul would have liked that. The last thing we need to lose is our hope. A lot of folks are worried about not having enough faith. Many wish they had more faith. The Bible teaches us about faith. The writer of Hebrews includes these words, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” If you have hope, you have a place where faith can grow.

Let hope be the last thing you lose. I heard of a man who visited a child in the hospital. The child was very ill and his parents had a hard time being with him. So this man would visit the boy. His illness was terminal. The man would bring video games and books, but, as it turns out, he brought something else. A nurse wrote these words, “Thanks so much for bringing Tommy hope. You gave him the hope that in this world someone loved him and that if he stepped into the next world he wouldn’t be met by an angry God, but a loving God who already had forgiven him of his sins.” Let hope be the last thing you lose.

But if you have lost it, then maybe you should follow the advice of the mother who told her son what to do when he lost something. She said, “Close your eyes and think of the last place you had it, and the people who were around you then. Give them a call and ask them if they know where it is.” These people that we call up just might be in heaven, but that is all right. Ask them to help you find your hope.

Hope springs eternal, we’ve been told. We also know that the whole world screams into our ears and tells us to give up. Listen to this. Hope is whispering in your ears. “Try one more time. Try one more time.” Let us pray.