Romans 15:1-13 “Boundless Hope”

Elie Wiesel, the holocaust survivor, author, and Nobel Prize winner, once spoke these words: “Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future.”

To talk about hope is to talk about the future. So, in the church in Rome were Jews that had come to accept Jesus as the Messiah as well as gentiles who might have been worshipping the old Greco-Roman pantheon of gods. Paul is trying to move these folks from simply looking at their disparate pasts to realizing a future together as Christians. This is the hope. Yes, the long term hope of our faith is to one day be with God in heaven, but the more mundane commonplace hope is that we can all share in that same faith today on earth. Paul is trying to summon the future of the church, in essence creating what we are today.

The bible text tells us about the boundless hope that we have in Jesus Christ, that is the salvation that has been offered to us. It speaks to the realization that the circumstances of the early church were so bad that hope was very much all they had left. A majority of the early Christians in Rome were slaves, underfed, overworked, and on the swift edge of persecution by the state. Those that had already been arrested by the Roman authorities faced circumstances similar to the Jews of the Holocaust. They faced a certain death at others’ hands. If they could envision any future at all, it would be in the hope of the Lord’s coming, their salvation, and being at peace with God in heaven.

Here it is the New Year once again. Already we have spoken our resolutions, our hopes for our futures in 2025. What did you say you hoped for this year? I called my friend in Los Angeles this last week to see how the family was fairing in the wildfire catastrophe. I asked my friend John what his hope for 2025 was: “Just to breathe,” he replied. Right now smoke fills the LA skies.

Do you recall a few years ago we were in the midst of the Covid lockdowns, and all we could hope for is that our world would become normal again. So, now the crisis has passed. We are normal again. Our hope was realized. Yet, today “normal” is not enough for us–is it? We look at the world and our lives and think conclusively that if things keep going on the way they are now, then we are doomed indeed.

On Wednesday I got, as we all did, the alert on our phones from the County that Avian Influenza (bird flu) has been detected on Kauai. My thoughts went right back to whether we would need to mask up and close down worship again here in the church. I started hoping for normalcy again.

A Swiss colleague of mine, Andrea Marco Bianca, wrote a book during Covid “Signs of Hope in times of Crisis” “Hoffnungszeichen in Krisenzeiten.” He sold a fair number of copies of that book that shared beautiful pictures of nature and poetry as well as scripture showing that God will see us through the worst of times. What happened to that book? Oh yes, we are not in crisis anymore, at least not collectively. So, maybe we are not looking so much for signs of hope from God anymore. We have maybe forgotten about hope.

The text for today states that we are to have “abounding hope.” Not just regular hope! Not just hope for normalcy. Christian hope is supposed to “abound.” The word in the Greek is “perissos” which is translated in so many different ways from one bible version to the next. It means to flow over the rim literally. It denotes abundance and may be translated as excelling, excessive, overflowing, and surpassing. I love the idea of having surpassing hope. This is not just the optimal hope to get us by in life but rather a hope which surpasses regular human hope.

I want to lift up something unique in the culture of Paul’s day: Back then, more was always better. They did not have such an idea of optimum as we do today. “Optimal” is kind of a modern concept for the masses. We are having the “Jesus in the Hood” ministry after worship today, so let me ask you what happens if I fill your car tires with more air than is indicated on the sidewall? The tire pops. You will have to buy new tires. What happens if I overfill your motor oil? The head gasket pops and you get to purchase a new engine. Same if I overfill your transmission. What happens here in the church if I put an extra 300 volts through the electrical wiring? You see, 110 is optimal. We live today in a technical world that favors optimization. But, in the times when Paul was writing to the church, more than enough was still great! Today we settle for just enough hope, when Paul is really talking about excessive hope: a tsunami of hope, a hurricane of hope, so much hope that you simply trip over the hope when you come into church. This is the abounding hope that Paul wants for the church in Rome.

I like to look at this as a rebounding hope–not just abounding. When the youth at the Ed Center are playing basketball and shoot, sometimes the ball does not drop into the net but bounces off the backboard. The ball is caught on the rebound and another shot is taken. If that fails, once again the ball is recovered and on it goes until the shot is actually successful. This is our rebounding hope.

Most of you know that in my life I have had the opportunity to live in different countries and to visit many cultures. One of the questions I am asked all the time is why Americans are always so happy and smiling in photographs. I have been asked this so often that I have come up with a pat response: “Americans are always hoping for better days ahead.” In America we still hope for a better future for all. We have a hope that surpasses hope.

Paul says at the beginning of our text that “because we are strong” we have to put up with others. It is nice to think that we are strong. I do not think being a weak Christian is to anyone’s advantage—not to Christ certainly. The strength to which I refer is of course strength in hope. Did you ever think that there is strength in hope?

When I think about being strong in hope, I think about the Prophet Job. You will recall the story of how his life was stricken. He had nothing left to live for except his hope in God. His friends came to him and told him that he should just curse God and die. Yet, Job was steadfast and strong in faith even when his body was weakened by disease.

Job says openly to the Lord in prayer (Job 42:2), “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful to know.” Ah, but to have the strength and faith of Job! We still say this all the time.

Be strong in the hope of Jesus Christ! Be like Paul and the others who in the First Century put it all on the line for their faith in Jesus. Remember Paul himself gave up his seat in the Sanhedrin, the ruling religious body. He faced imprisonment. He was laughed at. He was scorned. He was brought in chains to Rome. His faith was strong enough to stand up to all. Now he writes: “Because we are strong, we should put up with the weak.”

Paul talks about the idea that the church in Rome can have one voice, literally one “stoma” or mouth. Paul asks for harmony in the church. To be sure, he is not saying that we are all supposed to be singing the same note for the same duration. But, Paul does not want the people in the church to be fighting either. They do not have to be in lockstep with one another. They do have to learn to get along.

I have been asked why it is that we sing in the church? The New Testament is not really showing Jesus worshiping in song at all like we do in church. We have but the one reference that after the Passover meal Jesus sang a song with the Disciples. However, the notion is that we can all come together in one voice. We have joy in creating harmony in one voice with others glorifying God in song. Even when I feel tired and as if I would rather not sing, I always bring myself here and sing and am blessed to have done so. Finding harmony as one voice is amazing. I wish to recommend to all!

In verse 2 of today’s Scripture Paul says that we need to please everyone to build them up. Let us not get confused about what the emphasis of that sentence is. Our task, our goal, is to build up others. It is not just to please them. We are supposed to build them up in the faith. We are supposed to take the weak and make them strong in that same hope that made us strong in this life. If you think that being a Christian means just trying to please, then consider Jesus’ life on this planet.

Jesus did not come to earth to please everybody. He came to save them and give them hope in eternal life with the Father in Heaven. That is of course the most pleasing thing one could ever do for another. However, to get that person to that point of accepting Jesus may not seem pleasing to them at all.

People came up to Jesus all the time looking for pleasing answers from the Son of God. “Jesus, what should I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 18:18) Just give everything away and help the poor and needy. Well, that is not very pleasing at all! The fact is that Jesus never tried to please himself. He never tried to please anyone. Instead he said, “Pick up my cross and follow.” That is why we find hope in the Cross of Christ–a symbol of rebounding from death!

Yes, we can start with a pleasing smile to our neighbors. We should try to be pleasing to all. This is not an end of itself. The goal is to make the other person strong in the hope of Christ..