A sermon preached by the Reverend Scott D. Nowack

on July 17, 2011 at the First Presbyterian Church of Kilgore, Texas.

 

Strength for Today, Hope for Tomorrow

Romans 8:12-25

 

Hope is a common word in our verbal repertoires.  As a child at Christmas time, Christmas Day could never come soon enough.  I hoped and hoped that glorious morning would come, so I could see the great presents I dreamed of receiving. 

The birth of a child is a moment of hope.  It gives us hope that there is new life for tomorrow and a better world to come. 

When someone we love is sick or ill or injured in some way, we hope that person would get well and be healed of their injury.  The hope is that one day that person would be well again. 

When someone we love dies and goes to be with the Lord, we hope and pray for mercy and care for the departed and for all who are left behind as they mourn their loss.

Paul writes to the Christians in Rome explaining what hope means.  As Christians, we are no longer enslaved to the deeds of the body, but rather we are a part of a new spiritual body, God’s family, made real through the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit of God frees us from the actions of our physical selves and we are transformed into new people in the present time and the future, too.  Thus, we have a new strength for today and hope for a new tomorrow.  It is a hope that saves us from ourselves. 

            So how do we do this?  Hope is not an easy thing to believe in.  It requires struggle, grace, forgiveness, patience and complete trust in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.  But hope gives us a reason to live knowing that tomorrow is in God’s hands; that the best is yet to come.

The children of Bosnia-Herzegovina know the ancient story of the peasant woman who caught a golden fish, released it, and in return gained wealth and happiness.  This fairy tale turned into reality for one poor family.

Before the start of the Bosnian war, the Malkoc family lived next to a small lake in the northwestern village of Jezero.  One day in 1990, Smajo Malkoc returned from a trip to Austria with an unusual gift for his teenage sons, Dzevad and Catib: an aquarium with two goldfish.

Two years passed and then Bosnian Serb forces advanced on Jerzero.  The women and children fled; and the men stayed back to resist the attacking soldiers.  Smajo Malkoc was killed.  When his wife, Fehima, sneaked back into the destroyed village to bury her husband and rescue what remained of their belongings, she took pity on the fish in the aquarium.  She let them out into the nearby lake, saying to herself, “This way, they might be more fortunate than us.”  Life was looking very hopeless.

Fast forward to 1995.  Fehima Malkoc returned with her sons to Jerzero.  Nothing but ruins remained of their home and their village.  They had no money and only a few belongings.  She felt utter despair and hopelessness.  Through misty eyes she looked toward the lake.  Glimpsing something strange, she walked over to the shore.

“The whole lake was shining from thousands of golden fish in it,” she said.  “It made me immediately think of my husband.  This was something he left me that I never hoped for.”

During the years of killing and war all around the lake, life underwater had flourished.  After their return, Fehima Malkoc and her sons started caring for and selling the goldfish.

By 1998, homes, stores and coffee shops all over the region featured aquariums containing fish from Jezero.  The Malkoc house, rebuilt on its original site, is one of the biggest in the village.  Two new cars are parked in front, and the family says it has enough money to quit worrying about the future.

“It was a special kind of gift from our father,” Dzevad Malkoc said. 

Their story can be read as a parable of God’s grace and hope at work in the midst of great hopelessness and strife.  While life was killed and destroyed on land in Bosnia, life underwater in this small lake grew and flourished.  It is a story of hope that God’s will is being done – the Kingdom of God is growing – even when life on the surface is full of struggle, suffering, trouble and strife.  It is a story that illustrates that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 5:3-5) 

Paul tells us that our sufferings and challenges pale in comparison to the glory we will one day experience with God in heaven.  And so our present-day sufferings will not last, but give us strength for today and hope for tomorrow.  It is a hope that gives a reason to live each day for Christ.

Our scripture tells us how hope that is seen is not hope.  When the challenges and difficulties of life are weighing down on us, when we can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, there is only one thing to do.  Seek out hope.  And we find it in Christ Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit, to give us strength for today and hope for tomorrow because tomorrow is in God’s hands. 

            For it is hope in Jesus Christ our Lord that gives us purpose and direction for our lives.  Without it, we would not have a reason to live.  At greyhound dog racing tracks, dogs sprint around an oval track much like racing horses do trained to chase after a mechanical rabbit on the inside rail.  A man in the press box electronically controls the speed of the rabbit, keeping the rabbit just out in front of the dogs.  The dogs never catch up to it.

At a Florida track some years back, a big race was about to begin.  The dogs crouched in their cages, ready to go, while betting spectators finished placing their bets.  At the proper moment, the gun went off.  The man in the press box pushed his lever, starting the rabbit down the first stretch, while the cage doors flew open, releasing the dogs to take off after the little rabbit.  As the rabbit made the first turn, however, an electrical short in the system caused the rabbit to completely stop, explode, and go up in flames.  Poof!  All that was left was a bit of black stuff hanging on the end of a wire.

Their rabbit gone, the bewildered dogs didn’t know what to do or how to act.  Several dogs simply stopped running and laid down on the track, their tongues hanging out.  Sadly two dogs, still frenzied with the chase, ran into a wall, breaking several ribs.  Another dog began chasing his tail, while the rest howled at the people in the stands.

Not one dog finished the race.

Like these racing greyhounds, we seek direction and hope in our chosen “rabbit”.  We need a reason to live.  We need a real, authentic hope to give us direction and purpose for our lives.  Sadly, so many of us chase an illusion of hope, a mechanical rabbit of sorts that turns out to offer us no hope at all.  We seek hope in our own abilities and skills trying to live life apart from God depending on our own sensibilities.  We seek hope in things that can destroy our lives and of those who love us such as abusing alcohol, drugs, food or any other thing that we put in place of God in our lives.  We seek hope in the conditional love we receive from others. 

When the world says to us that our dreams are a waste of time and it simply can’t be done, God says nothing is impossible with me in your life.  When the critics say you’ll never get that promotion.  There are a hundred others ahead of you.  God says keep hope alive.  When the critics say our congregation here in Kilgore is getting old and fading away, God says I will give you the strength you need to dream new dreams and a vision of hope for tomorrow.  There will always be naysayers telling us that there is nothing to live for, that there is nothing to hope for.  But my friends this is simply not true; for it is in hope that we are saved from ourselves and the naysayers all around us. 

Our only true hope is found in Jesus Christ.  We have been adopted into the family of God as children of God through the power of the Holy Spirit.  God in Christ Jesus is the only one who can give us strength for today and hope for tomorrow.  And we long for the day when all humanity and all creation will be made new.  This is our hope.  My friends, this is the gospel of Jesus Christ, our hope for all time.  And all God’s people say, Amen.