What Now?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Good morning. Pray with me, please. Living and loving God. We pray that the eyes of our hearts will be opened as we listen to what Evelyn has prepared for us. We need your strength and wisdom to live into the days ahead. Grant us understanding and give us the courage to obey your truth so that we can be vessels of living hope wherever we live, work and serve. Amen. Our scripture reading this Morning is from First Peter, Chapter 1, Verses 3 through 9. It's found on page 983 of your Pew Bible. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By his great mercy, he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you who are being protected by the power of God through faith, for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this, you rejoice, even if now, for a little while, you have had to suffer various trials so that the genuineness of your faith and being more precious than gold, that though perishable, is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him, you love him. And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him. And rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. [00:02:02] Speaker B: A wise person once told me, never speak about the words of God without giving them to God. So please pray with me real quick. Lord God, speak through me. Speak into the hearts of the people in this room. Remind us of who you are, Lord, what you've done through Christ, and, Lord, how much you love us, how much you hold us. Pray all this in your name, Lord Jesus. Amen. So as Josiah said earlier, I'm a chaplain candidate with the Army Reserve. What that means is I'm training to become a chaplain. So once a month, I go down to Oceanside, California, and all of my anxiety and insecurity I put to the side so I can bear the anxiety and security of everyone else. And then I take off that uniform, I cry a little bit, and I go on with my day. No, it's a great job, and I love it. And as I was preparing for this sermon, I received a letter while performing my Army Reserve duties. It was left on my desk in the chaplain's office and was from a soldier who I'd been getting to know. For a while in the letter, they expressed an experience of burnout, knowing how they wanted to think and act, but feeling limited and discouraged. The soldier had recently experienced something very difficult and felt that it was definitive. And in our most recent conversations, they shared that their very sense of self, efficacy and identity were being challenged by their failures. What they had worked so hard for had not come to pass and they didn't know how they would proceed. That soldier had hit their limits. And in that letter they wrote to me with this set of questions. How do you find the strength to be who you are, to be that kind of person in life and from wherever you do find your strength, how do you find enough fuel to consistently be that person? Now, that letter impacted me profoundly in a number of ways. Most significantly, I felt as though that view of me was seen through rose colored glasses. I only wish that soldier could see how deeply I struggle with insecurity and anxiety. They might have a different perspective then. It's a strange thing for someone else to see something in you that you struggle to see within yourself. But beyond that reflection, that letter made me aware of a deeper reality that seems to be taking shape more and more these days. What my soldier described as strength is really hope. And hope is in short supply these days. Now. I've seen throughout my life how hope takes shape through achievements, through unexpected positive life events, in the promise of a stable future. We feel hope when we feel like uncertainty will not have the final say. And we feel the absence of hope when we can't see a way out or a way through. When I find myself in these hopeless moments, I often ask the question, what now? When my newly fostered puppy, Smudge, moves into another room and I hear the sounds of chewing, but he doesn't have a toy. What now? When I finally accomplish the project that took me weeks to complete and suddenly realize I no longer have a task to guide my day. What do I do now when a breaking news banner flashes across my phone screen? What happened now? It's in those moments of uncertainty and anxiety that we crave the strength to continue on. Like my soldier, we all look for that thing that empowers us to move forward, even when we don't have all the answers we need hope. In today's passage, Peter provides an answer to the uncertainty to that what now? Question. He tells us about a living hope. Now Peter addresses this letter to exiles around the world. And I imagine that qualifier meant that they too felt uncertainty. The experience of exile, though I've never felt it, though I've never experienced. It is the experience of being forced into uncertainty. Peter, too, knew this feeling. As a young man, he chose to commit his life to following around a teacher who challenged the very framework he lived within. That teacher, Jesus undid the power of illness and injury with miraculous healing. He cast out demons. He proclaimed the year of the Lord. And he challenged every theological standard that the religious elite had put forward, not in a way that broke it down and threw it away, but in a way that revealed what God really wanted for them. And because of that, because of that whole life, that teacher was tried, beaten, and executed. And even when, like we heard about in last week's sermon, the women came from the tomb rejoicing, proclaiming that Christ had risen from the dead. I imagine Peter and his fellow disciples began to feel uncertain. In John 20:24, 29, we read the story of a disciple named Thomas who, having missed the initial reunion with Christ, the resurrected Christ claims that he will not believe until he feels the wounds in Christ's body. The disciples knew uncertainty even after Christ told them over and over again that he would rise again. See, even in the face of miracles, we feel unsure of what to do or think. We will always need strength to believe and hope to empower faith. Peter understood the need for enduring hope, and so he describes our new lives in Christ as lives born again into a living hope. Now, in order to understand this hope, we have to understand this process of experiencing it, this process of being born again. Peter uses this Greek word, and I'm sorry for the Greek scholars in here, anagonao, which can be translated as born again or new birth. It's a single verb describing an impossible process. Earlier in. In the Gospel of John, Jesus first describes this process to a religious leader named Nicodemus, causing him tremendous confusion. How can someone be born again? I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure it happens once. Now, when teaching Nicodemus, Jesus uses two words to create this phrase. Genete, anafen. Well, the first word means to be born or to be given birth, and it's straightforward. The second is intentionally vague. Anothen can meet either again or from above. This impossible process, which Jesus describes and which Peter later alludes to, is one in which we experience the newness of birth, empowered by heavenly means. Through faith in Christ, we experience the world anew. Like children, we see the world with new eyes, not yet limited by prejudice, and hear the words of others not yet limited by opinion. Life changes dramatically when we choose to follow Christ as our Lord and Savior. And from that new birth, that heavenly renewal, we experience living hope. So now we get to the heart of my soldier's question. What makes this hope different? How is the source of our strength and perseverance unlike others? What is living hope? It's that word living that sets this hope apart as that which upholds and strengthens us. As hope grounded in Christ, it is hope grounded in resurrection. To be living in light of Easter, then, is to be hope which looks beyond death. Peter describes the focus of this eternal lens that we have through this hope as an eternal inheritance being guarded by God, imperishable, undefiled and unfading. Our living hope isn't merely expectant of a good life or a meaningful legacy. It looks beyond death and violence onto eternity, where nothing can interfere with the joy God has for us. It's a hope that sees the brokenness in this world, recognizes the fragility of all of our efforts, and moves through the barrier of death into our true home, where our true, lasting life awaits us. This hope is living because it follows Christ beyond the grave into the presence of God. I saw that, that aspect of living hope in my grandmother. She lived her life walking with Jesus, living into that hope. Even in her final years, she didn't seem to fear death the way that I do. And I see now that living hope had always drawn her imagination beyond this life. In the uncertainty of death, living hope drew her towards eternity. And because of that, she lived a life filled with a joy that belonged to eternity, a joy that nothing in this life could take from her. Living hope does not perish or fade away. Peter goes on to proclaim a second attribute of living hope. It's present and active now. As our inheritance is guarded, so too are we protected by the God of the universe. Even as our faith, like gold, is tested by fire, it's not only a hope that causes us to look beyond life's pain. It simultaneously is a hope that inspires joy in the midst of suffering. We have this hope because we have this faith, and this faith changes everything. And when we think about this faith, faith, what does it boil down to? This is what we believe, right? We believe by the mercy of God the Father, Christ came into the world, bringing with him the good news that the kingdom of heaven had come. He lived, he was crucified, and he rose again, taking his seat at the right hand of God and once again bearing the title of King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This is what we believe. And because of that belief, because of that seemingly impossible set of realities that God accomplished through Christ and the life that we are called to because of God's work in Christ. We will encounter the fire Peter describes. Even if our suffering isn't the result of ridicule or indignation from people who don't understand our faith, being born again means we will feel the pain engaging in an old and dying world with new and living hearts. You will need a strength which empowers us to live in faith as the fire rages on around us. When I look into this congregation specifically, I see the faces of those who had that faith literally. As someone not directly impacted by the Eaton fires, I was amazed by watching my brothers and sisters in this congregation come together. You supported one another and encouraged one another. You bore with each other. You held each other up. And it's funny because as I was writing this sermon, it hit me you were living hope to each other, present and active. Even by writing this letter, Peter exemplifies what a living and active hope looks like. This letter isn't a journal entry. It was written to encourage and remind the scattered and battered family of God of our living hope. Our living hope is in every place that a brother or sister in Christ occupies. And when we choose to embody that hope, we become beacons of hope and strength to all those we encounter through the power of the Holy Spirit. Our hope is living and active because Christ is living and active through the church, through this collection of broken people experiencing new life with one another as brothers and sisters. Our hope is living and active because it exists when real fires blaze through our cities. It exists when rulers and authorities find new ways to overwhelm us with cruelty and violence. It exists in houses where our brothers and sisters shelter in order to not be taken from their families. It exists in Lebanon, Iran, in Israel and Russia, in Ukraine, and all the places where war rages on. It exists. It exists in detention centers, in prisons, in safe houses and shelters. It exists in the spaces where we feel utterly alone. It exists in those spaces because our God exists in those spaces and it exists in us. We bear our living hope as an anchor to our souls, and we share it, often without realizing it, when we live as the body of Christ to each other, to our neighbors, and to the world. Peter ends this passage stating, although we have not seen Christ, we love him. And although we don't know him now, we believe in him and rejoice with indescribable joy. Peter is right. We don't get to sit with Jesus like Peter did. We don't get to hear his voice and look into his eyes as he speaks to us. Yet through the Church, through the body of Christ, we know Jesus. We see his love in the clothes given to those whose closets were reduced to ash. We see his mercy in the mutual lament and grief shared between brothers and sisters whose own nations are at war. We see his humility in the ones who sit with us and listen, even when our anxiety stems from a fostered puppy named Smudge. And we know his hope because it lives within and among us, drawing our eyes towards eternity and our hands to the aid of the creation he died for. What the soldier saw in me that day was a living hope. It's a fire tested hope that even when I fail and I do, often remains and sustains me. It's a hope seasoned and strengthened by you, my brothers and sisters in faith, walking alongside me and reminding me of our new life and our God's power. It's a hope that we do nothing to earn, but it is always available by faith to anyone who knows Christ as Lord. And it's a hope that gives us strength to live like Christ, to love as he did, and to continue on even in uncertainty. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.