1 Peter 1:3-9
“Radical Hope”
By: Rev. Kenneth Sauer, Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church, Newport News, VA
Is there any hope?
This is a question that many of us face at some point in our lives.
Is there any hope...for the married couple who seem to wind up at the same dead-end of unresolved conflict
again and again?
Or what about the person who has fallen victim to alcohol, drugs, or gambling or any of a number of
addictive behaviors?
The person who is in so deep that he or she fears they’ll never find a way out?
Is there any hope for them?
Where is the hope for the mom-to-be who goes to her obstetrician for a routine checkup and hears the
words, “I’m sorry. We can’t find a heartbeat?”
Or for a single mom who works a full-time job by day, serves as both mother and father by night and
wonders to herself-- “How long can I keep this up?”
Or the person who battles depression and anxiety?
Or the person who stands by their spouse’s bedside as they lay dying?
And where is the hope for a generation of young people who seem to be an easy mark for drugs, STD’s,
abuse, or the pain of a broken family?
The question is...Where is hope? What is it’s source? What reason is there to hope?
The dominant theme found throughout this letter from Peter is that there is hope.
And it is a radical hope!
We’re not talking about the wistful, nebulous optimism that in the end everything will turn out
alright---which is what--in this world--so often passes as hope.
We’re talking about Christian hope.
And Christian hope is a hope that does not rest on humankind...but on God and God alone.
This hope rests on the living God who is known by His loving deeds...
The God who raised Christ from the dead and gave Him glory, so so that our faith and hope can be in
Him.
Christ is the only One who offers us this hope which is incorruptable and undefiled and will never
fade away!
Therefore, Peter can say to us and to these early Christians... “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ!”
How astonishingly marvelous and new was the gift of hope to those first Christians!
“In His great mercy” God has given this living and radical hope to the world.
It’s not according to human merit, instead, it’s all about the Resurrection of Jesus Christ!
The Resurrection and all that it meant to human life and history up until the time that Christ rose again...had
turned out to be no myth, no fable, no dreamy possibility conjured up by the human mind.
It was a free act of the merciful God who did something for us that we cannot do for ourselves.
And no amount of human energy or money can pay for it!!!
The gift of this living hope is appreciated so greatly by those who know what it is like to live under the
bondage of despair.
While Greco-Roman civilization abounded with beauty, with courage, and intellectualism, it was indeed a
world without hope!
Those who were economically and politically well situated were still living lives devoid of satisfaction.
And old age was faced with fear; people’s lives were continuously being threatened with misfortune and
tragedy, and early death was something that people desired over a life that had to end anyway.
In the 1960’s a rock and roll band named The Who summed up the thinking of a generation which was living
without the hope that comes from the resurrection.
Oddly enough, the song is entitled My Generation.
In it, the band belts out the lyrics: “I hope I die before I get old...”
To everyone who has ever been inundated by such a frustrating sense of despair and meaninglessness....
God has opened up the true destiny of life, for those who believe, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ!
The resurrection is indeed history’s greatest miracle!!!
By Christ’s resurrection, God has lit this inextinguishable hope in those of us who have experienced the new
birth.
Without the resurrection there would be no Christian Church because Christianity is a resurrection
religion!
The hope produced by the resurrection is a living and active reality; it produces the life of hope in which the
eternal power of God is at work.
And this life of hope finds it’s anchor in the One who is alive even now; it is not a product of human wishes,
and it is not contingent upon the passing and perishing hopes of this timebound world.
This living hope is based on the resurrection of Jesus Christ!
And it is a unique and personal event.
This is what we as Christians celebrate every Sunday....every day!
The resurrection is the crowning triumph of life in this created universe!
In the beginning, God created order out of chaos; then He brought light into darkness.
Then He created human life in his own image; and finally when our love failed-- by the resurrection--He
brought reconciliation between Himself and us.
Jesus Christ is not only a historical figure--
He lives now and is with us always.
Jesus Christ is our assurance and pledge that the future is meaningful, that “in all things God works for the
good of those who love him”, that the last word is the life that the resurrection brings, and that those who are saved
through the new birth can face the future with a spirit of triumph and confront trials without the deep darkness of
despair.
And this radical hope is so important for those of us who are suffering in some way and may only see more
pain and worry ahead.
We all need to be able to pierce the dark clouds of the future and fasten on to the vision of hope if we are
going to be able to stay on track!
And I’m not talking about a hope that clings to a faded dream, a dead hope....
I’m talking about a living hope....which is grounded in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Because Jesus lives, we shall live also.
Our future is not in the hands of fate or destiny, it is in the hands of God.
It’s easy for us to become depressed about our lot in life.
We may be disappointed about the way we fall into temptation again and again.
We may become dejected about the sickness we suffer, the business failures we experience, the family
problems we face.
And I don’t want to belittle the agony in mind and body that these cause by any means.
These and other troubles cause us a great deal of hurt.
And if we let them., they can bring us down.
But the Christian always lives in hope, in confidence, trusting in God that our future is firm and secure.
We don’t know what life on this earth holds for us.
It’s sure to be filled with all kinds of ups and downs.
But we have a real hope!!!
We have a confident knowledge that God loves us, and cares for us, and is constantly with us.
We have a “living hope”, because we have a living Savior raised to life from the grave, who is able to
sympathize with our weaknesses.
It’s true that we may never know complete freedom from the problems of this life while we live on this
earth.
Each of us has a personal struggle of one kind or another that may be with us till the day we die.
There will always be something that will remind us that we live in a fallen world.
And the Apostle Paul was no stranger to these trials in life.
But listen how Paul expresses the radical Christian hope:
“We are often troubled, but not crushed; sometimes in doubt, but never in despair; there are many enemies,
but we are never without a friend; and though deeply hurt at times, we are not destroyed....And this small and
temporary trouble we suffer will bring us tremendous and eternal joy, much greater than the trouble. For we fix our
attention, not on things that are seen, but on things that are unseen. What can be seen lasts only for a time, but what
cannot be seen lasts forever.”
It is this hope that keeps our troubles in perspective.
Our troubles are only passing events, but the joy of heaven is forever.
And with that in mind we can endure anything!
Christian hope has nothing to do with the material and the external.
It has everything to do with the spiritual and the internal!
And just think of the guy who wrote our Scripture lesson for this morning.
The author is the Apostle Peter.
The same Peter who, during the trial of Jesus, denied three times that he even knew Him; the same Peter
who during the crucifixion of Christ ran and hid for fear that he would be next; the same Peter who had given up
everything to follow Jesus only to find his world crumbling when the body of Jesus was removed from the cross
and sealed in a tomb.
Peter was crushed.
He was truly a man without hope, beaten, defeated, and humiliated.
If you could have chosen any person on the face of this earth most likely to fail, most likely to
self-destruct--Peter would have been the man!
Six weeks later, according to the Book of Acts, this very same Peter stands in the center of Jerusalem and
preaches to thousands of people that Christ has risen from the dead!
Over the next few years, Peter travels the world preaching the Gospel. Several times, he’s beaten and
imprisoned for it. Eventually, the Roman government has enough of him and gives him the ultimatum: “Stop
preaching about this resurrected Jesus or share the same fate as Him.”
Peter makes his choice.
Peter winds up on a cross.
Where did this once defeated man get the courage to live that kind of life and choose that kind of
death?
There’s only one answer.
Peter didn’t hope against hope that Jesus was alive.
A person doesn’t take the kinds of risks Peter did on that kind of hope.
He didn’t wish or imagine that Jesus was alive.
You don’t let people nail you to a cross over wishes and imaginations.
Peter got his courage because he saw and experienced and knew that Christ actually rose from the
dead!!!
Therefore, Peter was able to have radical hope!
I have seen people (as many of you have) who understand that the resurrection is the source of hope.
They can tell you why it’s the source of hope.
They can tell you what God says and what they need to do.
They pray about their trials and sufferings, and release these trials and sufferings to God.
And that, my friends, is a conscious choice!
That my friends is what puts a smile on our faces and a song in our hearts.
Our situations may not change around us, but our hope can...
because real hope, radical hope, Christian hope, resurrection hope is not about changing what’s going
on around us personally.
It’s about allowing God to change what’s going on in us!
Do we have this hope?
Early Christians were characterized by their spirit of triumph!
And this is how we should be characterized.
Their worship and their work were done in the spirit of joy and anticipation!
They were already “raised with Christ” and enjoying the life of hope.
Are we?
Their new look caused pagans to inquire what the secret was to their new life.
Do others inquire what the secret is to our new life?
Their acceptance of suffering-- was unheard of in the Greco-Roman world.
Nothing could daunt them.
The center of gravity in their lives was a triumphant, living Person.
What is our center of gravity?
As Christians, we are heirs...
We are given an inheritance from God...
We are God’s adopted children....
We are “Heirs of salvation,”
“Heirs of the kingdom,”
and “Heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
And even though we can know we are children of God through faith in Christ while still on earth, “No eye
has seen, no ear heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”
For Christians, what will come is much more important, significant, and wonderous than what we have
already experienced.
The best is yet to come!
Our inheritance is reserved, fully assured--there will be no disapointments!
Our hope is secure in the knowledge that we will experience such a possession of our inheritance in
heaven that we can’t even dream of how great it will be.
As the Bible says, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.”
There is no doubt....heaven is heaven and earth is earth.
But our inheritance can never perish, spoil or fade---it’s kept in heaven for us!
When the course has been run, the fight fought, and the faith kept....our radical hope will have held
true---and the faithful Christian will be fully rewarded.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!”
Amen.
