Soon after our Lord’s resurrection, St. Paul wrote a powerful and provocative letter to a growing community of Christians in the City of Rome. In the fifth chapter of his letter to the Romans, he tells them:
“Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have obtained access to the grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God” (Romans 5:1-5).
Throughout his entire letter, St. Paul repeatedly declares – with absolute certainty – that no matter what they face, no matter their trials and tribulations, those Christians in Rome have grace, and they have hope.
I want to talk briefly with you in this little homily about hope and grace. And I want to begin with telling you about something that happened to me recently that brought hope home to me in a personal way, and then I’m going to briefly touch on a dangerous attitude that works against hope and grace, and, finally, if you’re still awake, I want to say one thing about hope and grace applied to your current dilemma – to whatever Waterloo you’re staring down today.
By way of personal application, I was recently invited to speak to a small men’s group of mostly retired a-types that meets quarterly for the purpose of sharing lunch followed by a little Q and A. They bring in two invited speakers who represent substantially different perspectives.
The topic of the day was religion. They invited an atheist intellectual from Tampa, who had a Ph.D., and they invited me (what’s so funny?).
It was largely enjoyable. Towards the end, however, I must confess that I was wearing a little thin. My fellow presenter kept gesturing to me when he spoke, saying things like “religionists believe this” or “religionists think that.”
But I didn’t yield to anger. As he grew more and more frustrated with what he called “religion,” hope hit me more personally than it ever has. As it turned out, I was asked to make the final remark, so I stood up, in a moment of deep conviction, and I said:
“Please don’t associate me personally with what you’re calling religion. I don’t want to be labeled a “religious” person. I want to be a relationship person, because I’m in an eternal relationship with the Living Lord Jesus. And I can tell from your body language, and the body language of many of you here today, that you also want to be in that relationship, because I can tell many of you lack the grace and the hope that I have in full-measure every single day.”
I felt like Billy Graham on crusade, so I just kept going:
“Gentlemen, many of you would never admit it, but you feel like things are falling apart in your life right now, and all the things you’ve put your trust in have let you down. What you’re really looking for, and what you need more than anything else, are the things only Jesus can give. You can have the forgiveness of your sins, you can have the removal of guilt, and you can have a way to make sense of your own mortality.”
God used a fella’ from Alabama, with no Ph.D., to bring grace to the graceless and hope to the hopeless.
Viktor Frankl was a renowned Austrian psychiatrist who survived the Nazi death camps during World War II. In his most popular book, Man’s Search for Meaning, he said:
“Life in a concentration camp exposes your soul’s foundation. Only a few of the prisoners were able to keep their inner-liberty and inner-strength. Life only has meaning if we have a hope that neither suffering, circumstances, nor death itself can destroy.”
Christians have that kind of hope – and we have today – because our hope isn’t contingent on some future wish that things might work out some day, if we’re lucky. Our hope is a present reality, because our hope has a name, Jesus, and He’s left the graveyard, folks. And He’s prepared an eternal place for you and for me.
Remember genuine hope today – remember it smack dab in the middle of what’s going on all around us.
What I’m suggesting is, of course, easier said than done. Remembering hope – making it present in all circumstances – is a tall, tall order.
And one of the reasons it’s a tall order is because of a wide-spread, dangerous attitude. And it’s often found lurking just below the surface in many, many so-called religious circles – think parish churches, parochial schools, Christian universities, etc.
In his book Trust In An Age of Arrogance, Bishop Fitzsimmons Allison explains this attitude with the story of a woman who resisted Christianity most of her life, because she was convinced that Christians were taught “to avoid hell and attain heaven one must acquire merit…and to acquire merit one must obey all the rules and the law.”
Now, you probably won’t find people saying openly what she thought, but I’ve known people in every corner of the world who actually believed they were capable of living as she thought. And they are self-righteous and puritanical and pharisaical, and they are utterly miserable.
Any teaching – any worldview – that places our confidence before God upon our own merit hijacks hope and ransoms grace.
And, I’m here to tell you, an arrogance and misplaced confidence in one’s self and ability is the gateway drug that leads to all sorts of subsequent spiritual disaster and suffering – all the way to prideful self-reliance, which, ironically – and tragically – leads to self-destruction.
And all this comes home to roost in a very real way when we’re facing our Waterloo, when our own strength and merit turns out to be utterly insufficient.
Do you remember the old “honkey tonk” country singer Stonewall Jackson? In 1959 he sang the truth: “Waterloo, Waterloo. Where will you meet your Waterloo?”
It’s not actually a dark song, if you’re a hope-filled and grace-filled Christian.
I want to suggest that if you feel like you are nearing the end of your rope today, it’s not all that bad of a place to be.
In fact, it is in that precarious – yet precious place – where we discover grace and hope made most manifest. The old saying really is true: “God’s office is at the end of our rope.”
And I’m convinced that it’s at the end of the rope, never the beginning, where we finally recognize that in God’s economy “brokenness is met with warmth, not condemnation” (John Zahl, Grace In Addiction).
And you know – and I know – that moment changes everything.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Charleston D. Wilson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
Trinity Sunday
16 June 2019