CHRIST AT THE CENTER: THE HOPE OF THE WORLD

Scripture: Genesis 1:26-31; Romans 5:1-5; Text: John 3:16

INTRODUCTION

Most summer vacations are over now, with photographs and memories to remind us of good times spent with our families and friends. Most of the children, teenagers and college students are back in school now, moving up and into the next level of their education. And most of us have returned to this sacred place on Rally Day with great anticipation of all that God holds in store for us as we begin another new church year.

Yet, with all those things said, there are many of us who are caught somewhere in between a lingering sense of nostalgia for “summer time when the living is easy” and the hustle and bustle of pushing on into autumn, wondering where we are going and when we will arrive at our destination.

Last month at Chautauqua Lake, I listened to a wonderful sermon by Joanna Adams, our close friend formerly from Atlanta who now serves as co-pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. In that sermon, she told the story about a friend of hers who took his family on a vacation. The children were in the back seat of the car, and as the miles rolled by, they became more restless and impatient. One of the daughters kept asking “How much longer? How much farther do we have to go? When are we going to get there?”

Finally, said Joanna Adams, my friend lost his patience. He declared emphatically “Do not ask that question again. Do you understand? I don’t want to hear it.” There was silence for five or ten miles, and then he heard a plaintive voice come over the back of the seat: “Daddy, how old will I be when we get to the beach?”

My friends, the truth is that we, all of us, live somewhere in the midst of the past, the present and the future: longing for the golden moments of days gone by, trying to navigate through the time that is here and now, and wondering what it will be like on down the road and when we are going to get there.

You see, this life of ours is a journey, with twists and turns that can and will take us in many different directions. But as Christians, there is one thing of which we can be absolutely certain: we do not walk alone, for God has sent His Son Jesus Christ into this world to come alongside us, to guide us and provide us with all that we need. And through His life and His love, His grace and His forgiveness, His death and His resurrection, our Lord has promised to lead us toward our final destination, where we and all of God’s family of faith will live together, forever, in that place we call heaven.

Believing in that promise, our Session has chosen the theme for this new church year to proclaim that “Christ is the center of our lives and of the church and that He is the hope of the whole world.” The text which undergirds that great confession of faith comes from John 3:16 – For God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

We know, because the Bible tells us so, that God has loved all of us and the world He made since the dawn of creation. The first chapter of Genesis records the marvelous and mysterious story in poetic form, which was never meant to be interpreted as an historical, chronological, factual or literal account. It couldn’t have been, because no one was there to witness what happened until the sixth day, and even then, they wouldn’t have been able to comprehend the magnitude of what God was up to – light and darkness, land and sea, heaven and earth, sun and moon, plants and trees, birds and animals and all kinds of living things … until finally, the majestic moment which brought forth those first human beings – not even Stephen Spielberg could touch that scene!

And as the ancient authors, whoever they were, imagined and envisioned the unfolding of that creation story, the last verse of the first chapter of the Bible sums it all up with grandeur and glory: …God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good (Genesis 1:31).

Notice please, there are no disclaimers here, there’s nothing in fine print at the bottom of the page, indicating that God had an escape clause in case things didn’t work out. To the contrary, “In the beginning” or as we like to say today “At the get go,” when the foundations of this world were laid and when our first forbears were made in the image of the Creator Himself, God saw it all and said that it was “very good.”

Now I believe, and I acknowledge that there are some Presbyterians and other Christians who disagree with this – but I do believe deep down in my heart that God has not changed His mind about us or about the world He brought into being and blessed with His love.

We know that something went wrong in the Garden of Eden a long time ago. The biblical imagery describes eating fruit from the one and only forbidden tree, and how the blaming began – It was the woman said Adam, It was the serpent said Eve. But wherever it came from, that garden by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which is now Iraq, was invaded by sin and we are still reaping the “whirlwind” today.

In Baghdad and Kabul, Afghanistan; in Jerusalem, Jenin, Ramallah and Iran we can see the destructive forces of rage and revenge, ignited by poverty and inequality and incited by hatred and retaliation which has gone on for generations.

But you don’t have to go all the way to the Middle East to witness the reality of sin. We have more than enough of that to go around right here in America, where the gap between rich and poor is growing wider, where a sense of distrust and division seems to be getting deeper, where the erosion of integrity has infected many of our public institutions and the exposure of immorality has seeped into the privacy of our homes through the internet, television and videos.

Those are overwhelming problems, my friends, which could easily lead us to despair, the kind of despair Woody Allen described through the protagonist in one of his movies (played of course by himself): “We have two alternatives before us. One leads to despair and alienation. The other leads to total destruction. Let us hope for the wisdom to make the right choice.”

Well, we know as Christians that those are not the only alternatives, thank God! Ever since the dawn of creation, God has been weaving the theme of hope into the fabric of our human story. I think it was Robert Frost who wrote that “There is something in God that wants us to win” – not to beat down or knock around or get ahead of everyone else, but rather to be and to become all that the Lord has called us to be. And He has promised not to give up on us, because God loves us with a love that will never let us go.

How do we know? Our text from John 3:16 promises that is so. Please say it with me now: For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. That is what we believe in this church – that Christ is at the center of all we say and everything we do and that He is the hope of the world!

II.

So let me ask each of you and all of you the question that sets our new church year in motion: “Are you hopeful this morning? Are you truly hopeful about your life, this church, our city, nation and world? Are you hopeful today?”

You say “Well I was hopeful until Michael Vick broke his leg last weekend and now it seems that the Falcons football team might be in for a rough season.”

Are you hopeful today? You say “Preacher, I want to be hopeful, but the economy is still struggling and with the second anniversary of September 11 coming up in a few weeks, it seems that we are still dealing with a lot of anxiety.”

Are you hopeful today? You say “I would like to be, but it has been 40 years since Martin Luther King, Jr’s speech in Washington, D.C., and we still have such a long way to go.”

Are you hopeful today? You say “I wish I could answer ‘yes,’ but the conflict in the Middle East is still a mess and just when it looked like things might get better, now it appears that the situation is becoming worse.”

Christian friends: if you have come here this morning looking for, praying for some sense of hope on the horizon of your life and in this world, then please listen again to Romans chapter 5 as I read the verses which I believe can point us in the right direction:

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing 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 which has been given to us.

When the apostle Paul wrote his letter to the Romans, they were up against hard times and needed some encouragement. So Paul sent them a word that lifted their spirits and helped them go on instead of giving up. The word, in the Greek, is “elpis” – which translates into English as “hope,” and it meant and still means more than mere optimism, a positive attitude or wishful thinking. For the hope which Paul commended to those Roman Christians and to all of us today is a gift which only God can give – confidence in the midst of chaos, courage in a time of crisis and the comforting assurance that God is working all things together for good even when we are struggling to find our way in the darkness.

Ten days ago, on Thursday, the 14^th of August, when the power shut down and the lights went out in the northeastern section of this nation and parts of Canada, 50 million people were caught in what Time Magazine’s senior editor Nancy Gibbs described as “the largest blackout in the North American history.” (Time Magazine, “Lights Out” by Nancy Gibbs, August 25, 2003, pages 31-32).

Our fears of another terrorist attack were soon put to rest as we learned within hours that the power systems had broken down in Ohio, setting in motion a chain reaction of events that we still don’t fully understand. But Barbara and I knew one thing for sure – our 28 year-old daughter Aly was somewhere in New York City and we couldn’t reach her.

We found out later when she was able to contact us that at 4:15 PM on Thursday afternoon, her subway train had come to a sudden halt way down below East 86^th Street. Aly and her fellow passengers were trapped in the bowels of that tunnel for 30 minutes, wondering what on earth had happened. Silence turned to anxious conversation and then some of the people began to cry and others were ready to try to do anything to get out of there.

Finally, two of the train conductors spoke on the intercom system and said “There’s been a power failure – don’t be afraid – we’re going to lead you out of here.” And with flashlights in the darkness, those conductors showed the way to 70 or 80 people as they walked up all of those steps and through the turnstiles and finally emerged onto the street.

Barbara and I were greatly relieved when we heard the words on the cell phone from our daughter – “I’m ok – don’t worry – the conductors got us out of there and we’re all safe.”

CONCLUSION

Now I don’t know about you, but in the good times and in the hard times of my own life, I am continuing to discover that the promise is true: God does work all things together for good for those who love Him and are called to serve according to His purpose (Romans 8:28). That doesn’t mean that we will be exempt from trouble, sorrow or the valley of the shadow. But it does mean that we don’t have to be afraid, for hope does not disappoint us, and Jesus Christ, who is the light of the world, has promised to walk with us, even in the darkness, every step of the way.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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