HOPE - the Labor Pains of Life


based on Romans 8:12-25

When Viktor Frankl wrote his classic “Man’s Search for Meaning”, he focused his attention on the concept of “Hope”. He had survived the holocaust and become a beacon of light for countless people who have read and cherished his writings. He was a psychotherapist, and a Jew, when he was imprisoned, and used his time in the camp observing and pondering the lessons people were learning there. On the surface, the book is a memoir of his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp. At a deeper level, it is a revelation of the nature of the human soul.

At one point he remarks, “The prisoner who had lost faith in the future–his future–was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay.” (P. 82)

“Faith in the Future” is another way of saying “Hope”, and for Frankl, hope was – and is - the essential mode for existence. We cannot exist without it.

The Irish playwright Bernard Shaw, writing in quite a different style, came to the same conclusion. He wrote a witty drama depicting hell as the place where hope no longer exists. That’s an odd approach, isn’t it? Well, Shaw was a most eccentric author. In the play, a woman has just discovered that she has died and gone to hell; a development she considers shocking. All her good works had gone for nothing. She immediately announces she will starting praying. Another character quickly interrupts her saying, “Don’t do that. If you pray, you will throw away one of the chief advantages of this place. Written over the gates are the words ‘Leave all hope behind, ye who enter’. Think what a relief that is. For what is hope after all but a form of moral responsibility. Here we have nothing to hope for, nothing to work for, nothing to pray for. We can do exactly as we please.’” To another character, that is an excellent definition of hell, and the very thing that makes it so horrible. To be forced to live wheren there is nothing left to live for - that is the ultimate essence of hell.

One might think Paul had every reason to long for death. His was not an easy life. As a young man he was tormented with depression, insecurity, doubt. He was driven to live a good life even when he found no satisfaction or relief in his austere life. After his conversion on the road to Damascus, his life got significantly worse. As a Jew he had been admired and respected. As a Christian he would be beaten, imprisoned, stoned, ship-wrecked, and if tradition is accurate, finally executed in Rome - all for his loyalty to a Jewish carpenter who had been crucified and whose body mysteriously disappeared. Paul dedicated his life to telling this unbelievable story to people who constantly misunderstood him or argued with him or ignored him. But in spite of all this, he would write friends in Corinth that, as much as he would like to die and be with God, yet he still very much wanted to live and serve that God. “So that, whether here or away, whether in this body or in the new body of eternal life, (he) was always content.”

The key to this attitude was, and is, hope. Even in that famous passage in I Corinthians, when he sums up his belief in those familiar words “Thus abideth faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love,” hope cannot be overlooked. It may or may not be the greatest, I will not quarrel with St. Paul about that. But I think I will demure just a bit and suggest, while love is what life is really all about, such an insight rests on an intellectual belief - a matter of faith. And faith, as a mere creedal statement is good for a memorable quote, a beloved verse of scripture to memorize. But where the rubber meets the road, where it all comes down to energizing a human life, is in that four letter word HOPE. That is what makes it possible to get up in the morning.

Frankl said of the moment when hope died: “We all feared this moment–not for ourselves, which would have been pointless, but for our friends. Usually it began with the prisoner refusing one morning to get dressed and wash or to go out on the parade grounds. No entreaties, no blows, no threats had any effect. He just lay there, hardly moving.” The death of hope was the prelude to death itself.

He also made it clear that such a hope had to be grounded in the present. One cannot live merely on the promise of some day. You see, hope for someone, someday, somewhere is rather like a well-dressed store window at Christmastide. It’s lovely, it’s admirable, and it may even be enjoyed by live people - but it’s not my feast, my fireside, my festivity. Hope is that elusive quality that makes the possible my possible. It grows in the heart that has been affirmed, cherished, valued, loved.

I wish I had known St. Paul. I wish we’d been able to sit down together and talk about the weather. I wish I could have heard about his day. About the sandal strap that was coming loose and caused him to limp a little as he climbed Mars hill. I wish I could have told him about the scary dream that grabbed my mind and would not go away. I wish we could have compared our taste in vegetables. Did he despise bell peppers too? I wish I could have felt his hand grab hold of mine as I struggled to get to my feet. It would have been a steady hand that not only helped me but believed in the strength of my legs. I wish I had known all this, for it is out of this seed bed of common humanity that faith is bred and hope ignited.

Hope is hard. It must survive the blind rush of life that can bruise as well as heal. It must stand up against the impersonal, the mindless, the selfish, the cruel. It is the beacon light that reassures us that we do matter, that someone does indeed care, that someone laughs with joy at our awkward loveliness, and weeps with our disappointments and our losses. And hope never settles for rewards postponed. Hope sustained St. Paul, and four year old Jeanette who skipped through her house singing lustily “Jesus loves me! Rah! Rah! Rah!”

Hope is the Energizer Bunny that keeps going whether anyone is looking or not. Hope is the springboard of creativity that strives to perfect the turn of a phrase, to return to that one brief shade on a painting that makes the picture come alive. A story is told of the actress Lynne Fontaine that she had struggled with one brief line in a play that had never seemed to be just right. The evening of the last performance, she burst into her husband’s dressing room and exclaimed, “I’ve got it! I know how to do that line.” “For heaven’s sake, Lynnie,” Alfred Lunt replied, “It’s our last night.” “Ah,” she replied wisely, “But that’s just it. There is still tonight!”

And hope can get exhausted prisoners up out of bed in the morning, convinced that this new day matters. It matters because they matter.

That’s the message of our Psalm today, isn’t it? The indisputable truth is crystal clear. God created us. God knows us. And God never gives up on us. The missing link was establishing that truth in us. A link, a bond, a connection that transformed theory into reality. For me, that link has always been reinforced with a human hand. God in human flesh. God in human hearts. God, incarnate, in the Holy Spirit.

I remember Bill. He had hit bottom, a truly terrible bottom. He had lost his career, his reputation, his ‘significant other’. He had given up on sobriety. He could not believe in God. His substitute was an empty whisky bottle that had given him no relief. And finally, the thought that he might be able to redeem himself by donating a kidney to his sister was rejected. Doctor’s established it was not a suitable match. In his despair, Bill chose a bullet in his brain, only to wake up in a hospital bed with the humiliating thought he couldn’t even successfully kill himself. One thing sustained him. One friend was left; a friend who loved and valued him in spite of all the rest that had gone before. It was a slim thread to tie on to life, but it would be enough. I call that thread hope. And it was held out by the human hand of a friend.

Paul called hope our birth pangs. Never forget. Where there is labor, there is life. Life, the ultimate gracious gift of God. Amen.