“’Hoping against hope, he believed he would become ‘the father of many nations’” (Rom. 4:18).
When it comes to hope, people have all sorts of ideas. Some see hope as a form of optimism: people are hopeful when they think that the future will turn out alright. If you’re hopeful you’re expecting good things. You’re optimistic. Others think that optimism isn’t enough: to prove you’re hopeful you have to be willing to work to bring that future into being. If you’re hopeful you have to be willing to break into a sweat.
In our second reading today, from the Letter to the Romans, St. Paul writes about “hoping against hope” (Rom. 4:18): a doubling up on hope which pits one kind of hope against another. Here’s the short version of this sermon: Paul is contrasting our human ideas of hope with a different kind of hope. Whether you think that hope is optimism about the future, about the bigger and brighter world that lies ahead; or whether you think that future requires you to take action now: neither of these measures up to what St. Paul is talking about. “Hoping against hope” (Rom. 4:18) is something else.
Hope, for Christians, means trusting in God not only in spite of what we think will happen, but in spite of what actually happens. We’re looking for a particular result but there’s no telling what will happen. The point of hope is finding God trustworthy when things don’t go our way; even when the worst happens. This is the hope that’s against hope.
The future is in God’s hands no matter what we make of it. Hope doesn’t require us to take action, though stepping into action may be God’s call to us. But it’s not action that makes us hopeful, but rather our willingness to trust in God. God is faithful even when we are not; and it’s our hope in the God who will save that makes us hopeful.
As Paul says a little bit later in the letter: “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 that has been given to us” (Rom. 5:3-5). In other words, hope is about God’s love rather than about us. It’s about what God can do rather than what we can imagine, which is always far less than that.
St. Paul draws this conclusion, of hope against hope, from the story of Abraham, the father of faith, and the first to hope against hope. As it says in our reading, Abraham believed in God, “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Rom. 4:17). Paul calls to mind the promise of God, to make Abraham the father of many nations, even though both he and Sarah were advanced in age. It seemed impossible that an heir could be born, yet “No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God” (Rom. 4:20), as it says. He knew that God could call into existence even the things that do not exist. Abraham hoped against hope, and Isaac was born.
But there’s another part to the story of Abraham that is implicit here, which the Letter to the Hebrews makes explicit. “By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac” (Heb. 11:17). Now that’s hoping against hope: offering up the child of promise in spite of the promise. Abraham raises the knife, even though God stays his hand. But Abraham knew that God gives life to the dead, as it says in our reading. He trusted God for the present and the future. God himself will provide, as it says in the story. Abraham knew that God was faithful, and that he himself was called to faith.
This brings us, as it brought Paul, to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is the true ground of “hoping against hope” (Rom. 4:18): that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. As it says in our reading this morning, “[Faith] will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus Christ our Lord from the dead” (Rom. 4:24). If you are “hoping against hope” (Rom. 4:18), and I hope you are, it’s because of what God has done in Jesus Christ. He raised him from the dead, and he will raise us, who have faith in him. God is trustworthy, and for our part we are full of hope.