A Living Hope?

“But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” ~I Peter 3:15

Something that I have observed through my time of teaching Bible studies, is that more often than not, what we are studying in the passage each week in some way, shape or form, will intersect with my personal life. I have learned to view this as being in God’s “classroom”, and have come to value  these lessons as they have challenged me to personally engage with the text, to wrestle with how this text should change the way that I live, rather than just imparting information to others.

But this week...this week has been a tough week in God’s classroom. A section of this past week’s text, will not leave me alone! It is circling around in my mind and I am frankly deeply troubled by it.  To be honest, I’m even struggling with how to write what it is I’m thinking, but let me give it a try.

Everywhere I turn, every place I’ve gone throughout the week, I have brushed up against a sense of hopelessness. From people who are struggling to overcome addiction, to people struggling with  disease and illness, to people facing death, and  people struggling to overcome abuse, there is this overwhelming sense of hopelessness. It transcends socio-economics, race, religion. And this hopelessness is so tangible you can walk in the room and feel it.

And so 1 Peter 3:15 started ringing in my head. Again and again I kept hearing. “Be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” Be ready for people to ask...and  yet nobody is asking! Instead, they’re looking for hope in therapy. They’re looking for it in community. They’re looking for it in themselves. They’re looking for it their work. I heard some say that  in the past they looked for it in their families...families have failed them. They looked for it in medicine. That has failed them. They looked for it in religion...and yes, religion has failed them as well.

So, if there is sense of hopelessness in our world, and indeed there is, and we, the church, supposedly have this living hope, then my question is, why isn’t anyone coming to us asking us the reason for the hope that we have? Which leads me to the next question, if they’re not asking us the reason for our hope...then do we really have a living hope? Or are we just like everyone else, people looking for hope in religious activity and community? Which will, by the way, if you haven’t already discovered it, let you down!

I think that we all have an intellectual knowledge that our hope is supposed to be built on “nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness.” We faithfully state that “We dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus name.”  We know this in our minds, we say this with our mouths, but if it were actually true, wouldn’t that LOOK like something in our lives? Shouldn’t that living hope, that we affirm we have, impact the reality of the way we live our lives daily, the decisions we make, the way we talk, the way we respond especially when everything is falling apart around us?  Shouldn’t there be SOMETHING that is different about us that will draw people to us to question us? That’s what it sounds like Peter is saying in the text. The Christians that he was writing to were under incredible persecution and suffering. That’s the theme of the entire book of 1 Peter. And he encourages them in their suffering by reminding them of their living hope and tells them to be ready...you are suffering...but be ready...because the hope you have is going to shine so brightly in your suffering, people are going to ask you for the reason!

It is time for introspection. It is time for us to do some serious soul checking...do we radiate a living hope in the Person of Jesus Christ or are we radiating a hope in religion?  A religious system...a church isn’t going to offer hope that doesn’t fade, that doesn’t perish. A church is not going to offer a hope that is going to set people free from addiction and the consequences of sin. Church community, religious ceremony does not offer hope to the desperate.  The only hope that is enough to sustain any of us in the midst of all kinds of hopelessness is a living hope in the Person and work of Jesus Christ.

And if our hope is found in the person of Jesus Christ, then what does that mean? What does that look like each and every day of life? What will that look like when I find myself in the middle of suffering, when I look ahead to my future and realize that the path that I’m about to walk, is going to be painful because of illness and disease? What does it look like to be enveloped in darkness, and yet have my hope so firmly planted in the person of Jesus, that this hope radiates out of my face, out of my mouth to the people around me?

I want to end this with a challenge...in what are you REALLY placing your hope???