“Come and Be Fed … with Hope”
June 10, 2012
Pentecost 2B
2 Corinthians 4.13-5.1
“So, we do not lose heart,” the apostle Paul writes to the congregation at Corinth. Corinth was the capital city of the Roman province of Achaia, which was the southernmost part on what we now call Greece. It was a large, prospering urban center with an ethnically, culturally, and religiously diverse population. The congregation was largely gentile and mirrored that of the city. There were some people of prominence, but mostly were probably working class, both slave and free. The Corinthians had a special place in Paul’s heart because he founded the church, but had something of a love-exasperation relationship with them. Paul spoke to many issues in his letters, mostly correcting misconceptions about what it means to be a follower of Jesus, including what it means to be an apostle, one sent by God to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.
The Corinthians looked at Paul’s apostleship and his experiences as such and started to distrust his message. Why? Because Paul wasn’t “successful” like some the other so-called super apostles of the day. He wasn’t tall, good-looking, and a great orator like the others, the Joel Osteens of the day. Paul refused to leach off of the Corinthians, insisting on paying his own way. Furthermore, Paul was regularly beaten, whipped, and thrown in jail. In their eyes, Paul wasn’t representing the faith very well. Fortunately, Paul is fluent in both Greek philosophy and Jewish thought and is able to translate the ideas surrounding the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus in ways that they can understand.
Prior to our reading today, Paul tells the Corinthians that the punishment he has endured was not only for their sake, to spread the grace and good news of God. It also showed the life of Jesus Christ. In other words, we as Christians look at life differently than those who don’t see through the eyes of faith. We value those things that we cannot see more than those things that we can see. Put another way, we who follow Christ focus on different values, which in turn affects how we live. “So we don’t lose heart,” Paul says, because God is working in way that we trust but cannot see.
Although he doesn’t use the word, Paul says that we have hope. It is a hope born from the assurance that the same God who resurrected Jesus is the same God who is working in, with, and through our lives and us. Henry David Thoreau said that the “mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Yet, we who are Christians see the world differently, not being overwhelmed by all the things that can go wrong. Why? Because we have hope. As Thomas Fuller says, “If it were not for hopes, hearts would break.” Samuel Johnson, testifying indirectly to hope’s power, observed that an acquaintance’s hasty remarriage after the death of his first wife, not a good one, was the “triumph of hope over experience.”
Not everyone is a fan of hope and many are rather cynical about it, but there are testimonies to hope and its power all over the place. As I told the children, every seed planted is a sign of hope. In James Michener’s novel, Poland, Eastern Poles rebuilt their homes and towns countless times through the centuries after assaults from the likes the Russian Tatars and Cossacks, the German Prussians, and the Austrians, to name a few. Closer to home, when the community of Rushford in southeastern Minnesota was ravaged by floods, they quickly started to rebuild around the slogan, “Never, ever give up.” Martin Luther himself, when asked what he would do if he knew the world was going to end tomorrow replied, “Plant a tree.” In a more personal way, those of us who have past “baggage” (which is all of us) are testaments of hope and the power of God to transform our pasts in a way to make new meanings and possibilities. You, my sisters and brothers, by your presence here each week, are signs of hope.
This summer, we’re inviting you to “Come and Be Fed” in worship. To that end, we have designed two sermon series with supporting worship experiences to help you grow in Christ. Today, we are inviting you to be fed with hope so that, no matter what you have gone through, no matter what you are going through, and no matter what you will go through, you will know God’s presence. There are many signs of hope around us, but none is more powerful than the cross, God’s sign that things aren’t always what they seem and that God continually works to make new life. As you come the table of Holy Communion to be fed, may God’s grace feed you with hope, for hope. Thanks be to God! Amen.
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