October 20, 2024
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
Jeremiah 29:11-14; Romans 8:24-31; Matthew 5:13-16
All That We Hope to Be
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Our offering hymn, “We Lift Our Voices” has been the foundation for our fall stewardship emphasis. The hymn first looks to three ways we make offerings to God. And they’re all very INCARNATE. They speak about our physical self.
• We lift up our voices. Here we look to our worship of God and our prayer.
• We lift our hands. This phrase points to the offering of our actions, how we become servants in the world.
• We lift our lives. What do we present to God with this life and the time we’ve been given?
The middle part of the song then builds to a crescendo: all that we have, all that we are, ALL THAT WE HOPE TO BE, we give to you.
Here the song reaches beyond what we currently are and have. It looks to what we hope to be. It aspires to our dreams, to God’s plans for our future. Our offering reaches forward into what is yet to be.
The prophet Jeremiah encouraged Israel to look forward to this very thing. Israel found itself a broken nation. They’re captive, living in the foreign land of their conqueror. In spite of their current situation, Jeremiah speaks some of the most hopeful words found within our scriptures:
“For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, TO GIVE YOU A FUTURE WITH HOPE.”
Those words are supremely uplifting. And they’re not just for Israel in the distant past. That promise echoes across countless generations all the way to our ears. They are God’s promise to us, here and now. Friends, God has a plan for you!
All that we hope to be: Hope allows us to believe in all the unknown potential awaiting us in the future. And hope is a powerful thing.
Eugene Lang was the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Hungary. He grew up in New York City where he attended public schools. Through scholarships, he was able to get a college degree. From his humble beginnings, Lang became very successful in business and a self-made millionaire many times over.
Lang didn’t forget his humble origins. Many years later, he was asked to speak to the graduating 6th grade students at P.S. 121 in East Harlem. It was the very school he had attended as a young boy. He had prepared a typical “work hard and you’ll succeed” kind of speech. But on the day of the event, the school principal shared with Lang that three-quarters of these students likely wouldn’t finish high school.
This new knowledge prompted Lang to change what he had to say at the last minute. When he got up to the podium, he promised to these sixth graders that, if they got their high school diploma, he would pay for their college tuition.
Lang had witnessed Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. He shared the experience with the students. He encouraged them to dream for their futures and he would help them achieve them.
You can imagine what that promise meant to those children. They had hope for their future, and it transformed their outlook for their lives. Of those 61 students, nearly 90% went on to finish high school. Reflecting on that day at P.S 121, one of the students said, “I had something to look forward to, something waiting for me. It was a golden feeling.”
Hope for the future is a powerful thing. And there is no greater promise of the future than one spoken from the mouth of God: “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, to give you a future with hope.”
God has a plan for you. AND God has a plan for us as a community of believers, our life as Hope Lutheran Church. God has had a plan for our future since 1944 when a group of people met to worship for the first time in the old Sherman house.
In our Olson Hall right now we have a timeline that we’re populating. It tracks all of the pastors of our church, the various building phases, the choir and youth directors. We’re writing in our baptisms, confirmations and weddings, when people have joined.
This timeline looks back from where we stand today. We see all the threads that have been spun together to form the community we are today, the mission we fulfill. And we know that, looking into the future, God has a plan for us there, too, plans for our welfare, plans for our mission, plans for our future direction.
God’s promise: this is the basis for our hope, and this is the motivation for our commitment towards our shared ministry. It fills us with enthusiasm for our congregation! Hope in God’s promise stokes the engine of our desire to pitch in and get involved. It fuels our generous giving, for WE BELIEVE IN THIS FUTURE.
We have faith, as a community we have faith in God’s promises. Like Paul, we believe that all things work together for good for those who love God. When we look to our shared future in mission, we know that God is guiding us at Hope, the Holy Spirit leading us, Christ is opening up a future path into our shared future in mission.
It’s this hope that urges each one of us to commit of our selves, our time, and our financial resources towards our shared mission at Hope. We believe that God has a plan for us, and we believe in that plan! This hope opens our commitment and generosity. It builds our enthusiasm towards what we will become. It fuels an inner anticipation and excitement for what exactly God’s future holds for us. What does God’s future hold for us? What shall we discover as it unfolds before us?
We eagerly hope in this plan God has in mind for us! And that hope enables us to be God’s salt and light in the world. Together in mission, we have and we shall continue to be a light on the lampstand in our community. We shall proclaim the message of God’s transforming love and grace for all people through Christ Jesus our Lord. That light shines before us!
And we’ll continue to join in our common mission to be salt: to preserve and cure through our many caring ministries; to add the flavoring of grace as we welcome one another and our neighbors in the name of Christ.
“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”
All that we have, all that we are, all that we hope to be, we give to you.
