Acts 8:5-8, 14-17; 1 Pt 3:15-18; Jn 14:15-21 (April 27, 2008 – Fifth Sunday of Easter)

In the last few weeks, Jesus Christ has been inviting us to hope. He has been calling us to have faith in him and to remain in his love. In the face of all the pains and tribulations we go through, why should we still hope? For those who have suffered for many years, the question becomes, what is the fruit of hoping all these years? Our Christian hope is not foolish hope as some of my skeptical friends think. Our hope is not a pie in the sky as Karl Marx will think. It is not an illusion or at consequentially, a delusion as Sigmund Freud will argue. The temptation is that when we hope and hope for many years and nothing seems to change, we begin to believe that our hope is delusional.

In the last few months, there is hardly a day that goes by without using the word “hope.” For a friend who has just lost a loved one, I say “hope;” to a parishioner that has just been diagnosed of cancer, I say “hope;” to a class mate who has just been laid off because their company is moving over to Taiwan, I say “hope.” It is not uncommon to hear these people ask me, “Do you really believe that things will be better?” I do believe that things will be better. Why do I believe that things will be better? That is what I want to share with you today.

St. Peter tells us in the second reading of today that we need to have an explanation ready for anyone who asks us why we hope. My skeptical friends want to know why I will continue to hope in the Lord after letting my brother and sister die in accidents. Let me tell you, after going through traumatic or difficult circumstances in your life, it sometimes become difficult to remember why we hope. My job this morning is to remind us why we Christian people hope and to give you reasons why we should hope.

We hope because God is truth. He is always faithful to his word. He does not deceive us. Again and again throughout scriptures, he blessed those who hoped in his promises. The story of Abraham in the book of Genesis, is a story of hope. Abraham hoped that the promise which the Lord has made to him would be fulfilled. Biologically, it was impossible for him to become the Father of all nations because his wife Sarah had reached old age. He mistakenly thought that, that promise was to be fulfilled through Haggai, his slave woman. God still made it known to him that, it was Sarai that would fulfill this promise. He believed and because of his hope in the promise of the Lord, St. Paul tells us in Galatians 3:6 that he was credited of all righteousness.

We hope because we are children of Abraham. Through Jesus Christ, the singular descendant of Abraham, we too are sons and daughters of Abraham. The promises and blessings of Abraham are also rightfully ours. This promise from the Lord is of good and not of evil. In Deuteronomy 28:12-13, the Lord makes a promise to us, “The Lord will open up for you his rich treasure house of the heavens, to give your land rain in due season, blessing all your undertakings, so that you will lend to many nations and borrow from none. The Lord will make you the head, not the tail, and you will always mount higher and not decline …” It may be difficult to see how this promise would be fulfilled in your life if you are going through difficult circumstances. The promise of the Lord, is his promise, how he will fulfill it is not for us to decide. I remember what Mike Huckabee use to say in the campaign trail, “I am in the business of miracles and not Math.” Our science cannot explain how God will bring to fruition these promises. Job, the righteous man must have been wondering how God will bring about a change in his life after going through those years of tribulation in his life. His friends had all given up. He was even persuaded to curse God and die, but he stayed firm in the Lord. His response is found in Job 42:2, “I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be hindered.” As we see at the end of the story of Job, his situation was turned around. Job 42:12 tells us that, “The Lord blessed the late days of Job more than his earlier ones.”

We hope because hope does not disappoint. St. Paul in Romans 5: 4-5 says that we can now boast of our afflictions. We boast of our afflictions because they produce endurance, and endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint. It is hope that brings you here every morning, it is hope that makes you go to school, it is hope that makes you go to work. If you have no hope, you can do nothing. In Ezekiel 37, we have the prophecy of the dry bones. God asked the prophet Elijah to prophecy so that these dry bones will come back to life. He says that these dry bones are the house of Israel, their hope is lost and they have been cut off. God asked Elijah to prophecy that their graves will open and they will rise from them. He will put his spirit in them and they will live. He concludes that, “I have promised and I will do it.” We have become like dry bones without life in them. We have been buried in our problems and difficulties, but God has made a promise he will keep. He will open our graves and we will have life and live.

How is he going to give us life? He says to us in the gospel of today that, I will send you the Holy Spirit, the helper, the comforter. Help is on the way. On Friday, the President told us that the treasury department will be mailing out our stimulus checks beginning this Monday. That is help on the way. It will be foolish to sit down and hope that the checks are not coming. We know they are coming. In the same way, Jesus has told us that help is on the way, the Holy Spirit is coming to help us, it will be foolish to stop hoping and believing that help is not on the way. If we do that, we are making Jesus Christ a liar.

We hope because of what God has done in Jesus Christ. He sent him to come and set us free. What greater witness there is, for us to hope? If we believe that Jesus Christ died for us, then we have no option than to hope. His death and resurrection, guarantees everyone of us a place in his father’s kingdom, where as Revelation 21: 3-7 tells us, there is no pain and suffering. We must keep our eyes on this eternal prize. As St. Paul exhorts us in 2 Corinthians 4:16, “we are not discouraged by this momentarily light affliction … we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen, for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Let us not give away our greatest and only weapon, hope. If all fails, the one thing we must hold unto is hope. The moment you let go of hope, your life will become meaningless. It is hope that will bring us successfully to our kingdom. I live you with the words of the prophet Jeremiah in 31:17, “There is hope for the future, says the Lord.”