Concerning Hope, Patience, and God’s True Power

Concerning Hope, Patience, and God’s True Power

December 3, 2017

UPDATE 12/6/2017: It was pointed out that my source Robert Fulghum was incorrect. “Robert Fulghum confused James with his father in the book It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It (1989); erroneously attributing the authorship of “Jingle Bells” to the Rev. John Pierpont.” Click here for the source.

So sorry that this was incorrect. -Luke

John Pierpont died a failure. In 1866, at 81, he came to the end of his days as a government clerk in Washington, D.C. with a long string of personal defeats that Robert Fulghum recounts in his book, It was on Fire When I Lay Down on It.

Things began well, he graduated from Yale, which his grandfather had helped found. He studied to become a teacher, but he failed at it. He was too easy on his students. So he studied law.

He failed as a lawyer as he was too generous to his clients and too concerned about justice to take cases that brought good fees. So he became a businessman.

He was a failure as a businessman. He didn’t charge enough for his goods to make a profit, and he was too liberal with credit. So he decided to be a poet.

He was published, but he failed at being a poet as he couldn’t collect enough royalties to make a living. So he decided to become a minister. He went off to Harvard Divinity School and was ordained as minister of Hollis Street Church in Boston. But his prohibition and anti-slavery positions got him in trouble with the influential members of his congregation, and he was forced to resign.

He was a failure as a minister. Politics seemed a place where he could make some difference, and he was nominated as the Abolition party candidate for governor of Massachusetts. He lost. Undaunted, he ran for Congress. He lost.

The Civil War came along, and he volunteered as chaplain of the 22nd Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteers. Two weeks later, he quit. It was too much of a strain on his health. He was, after all, 76 years old. So someone found him an obscure job back in the offices of the treasury department in Washington where he finished out the last 5 years of his life as a menial file clerk.

The people of Israel look like a failure at the time Isaiah is written. They are in exile in Babylon. They have been defeated by the Egyptians, sacked by the Assyrians, and are now conquered and brought to the foreign land and culture of Babylon. The prophet writes, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down… and show our enemies what’s up!”

It is easy to have faith when things are good, but to have faith when things are bad… That’s a little harder. And yet most of the Bible was written during an occupation. Israel could easily have given up and thought, “Well, we tried this religion thing and tried to follow God but we keep failing. Might as well quit.” But they don’t.

You might be facing something. Maybe it’s a job change. A change in health. Maybe you’re struggling with a loss of ability. With the holidays, you might be facing depression. Maybe you’re in or have memories of an abusive relationship that you can’t shake. Maybe you’re struggling with addiction, and given the size of this room that’s statistically true… Maybe you’re dealing with a break up or a rejection of one form or another. I don’t know what each of you are carrying, but I do know that it’s hard to hope in this world. Hope is a four-letter word.

Yet here’s the thing… Hope springs eternal. Hope is the hardest thing to crush. In October of 1989, people started to gather in Nicolaikirche, an 800-year-old church in downtown Leipzig in East Germany. They gathered and then marched to tear down the Berlin wall. They were out there despite the arrests, despite the weather, despite anything anyone threw at them. And it looked hopeless. No one and nothing had ever dented the Iron Curtain. Yet what smashed the wall wasn’t a show of force or a demonstration of power. It was singing. They sang old hymns, Christmas music, and some German pop songs. One East German Policeman, when asked how the wall fell, he stated, “We had no contingency for singing.”

Songs are vehicles of hope. Songs transcend the how of our world and remind us of a why. And you know a song written by John Pierpont, the man I mentioned earlier who seemed to have failed at life. Each and every year, come December, we celebrate his success. We carry in our hearts and minds a lifelong memorial to him. It’s a song that each of us knows by heart.

It’s not about Jesus or angels or even Santa Claus. It’s a terribly simple song about joy in the cold white dark of winter… in a sleigh pulled by one horse. “Dashing through the snow, in a one horse open sleigh, over the fields we go…”

John Pierpont wrote “Jingle Bells.” In doing so, he left behind a permanent gift for Christmas, the best kind, not one under the tree but the invisible, invincible one of hope and joy!

And history has vindicated John Pierpont and his causes. Education was reformed, legal processes were improved, credit laws were changed, and, above all, slavery was abolished.

My grandma Bet always had hope. She was in a hard relationship with my grandpa. She had rheumatoid arthritis and each movement was painful. She had every reason to be bitter and mean, but I remember her as an extremely hopeful person. She knew that God will save and restore. She used to say, “It will all be all right in the end, if it’s not all right, then it’s not the end.”

So good people, remember to hope! And if you can’t find something to hope in right now, borrow someone’s hope. It can be the littlest thing. For me, when things are hard and I’m mad and don’t know the way forward… I think of my next meal. How dumb is that? But when all feels hopeless, I find something to hope in: my next meal. I love food. And how lucky am I that I can afford food?

In finding that little glimmer, I start to see other things to hope in. And eventually I’m reminded of my big hope which is the Beloved Community of God coming in its fullness where there will be no weeping or gnashing of teeth, where God is present and looks upon all of us with kindness as we look upon one another with that same kindness. And you, you can hope in all sorts of things. Big things, little things.

We can look at John Pierpont as a failure or a man who was ahead of his time. A man of great hope and conviction. Which reminds me of the people of Israel, the consummate losers of the Middle East, but people of great hope and conviction that their God will deliver them. And the early church. The persecuted and hunted church that was filled with great hope. We are people of hope. We are light to the world.

As Viktor Frankl stated, “What is to give light must endure burning.” So let your hope burn within you, and may you catch fire! And may all your problems and troubles be consumed in the fire of your hope for a better world.

God’s power does indeed shake mountains, turns lives around, and saves. It is the only thing that saves. Yet God’s power comes in a helpless baby, born to an unwed mother, and wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a manger. God’s power looks like the cross… The power and the hope of God is Jesus. Touch the palms of your hands. God’s Word to us through Jesus is, “I mind.” I mind your pain and your loneliness, your abandonment, your despair, and your failure. Don’t pretend your pain doesn’t matter. Don’t wait until you’re all fixed up to cry to me. I can turn your failure into hope. Do not be faithless, but believing. Endure with hope for I am Immanuel. I am with you. Amen.

Works Cited

Frankl, Viktor. Good Reads. https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/2782.Viktor_E_Frankl

Fulghum, Robert. It was on Fire when I lay Down on It. Ivy Books, New York, 1988. Pages 15-18.

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