John 6:4-15
How do I hope? Lenten Preaching Series IV

Hope is a word that we use very casually nowadays. In fact it has become so much a part of our vocabulary that it barely transcends beyond the present moment. We say things like, “I hope you are feeling better now” to someone who was sick, which really is just another way of affirming the wellness we see. In Hebrews 11:1 it says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” So Christian hope is something which is very closely tied to faith, in fact, they are really like the two sides of the same coin. We cannot say we have faith in God if we do not hope at the same time that God has the power and the willingness to transform us, to bring justice, healing and joy in our lives, and the hope of eternal life with Him.

What is different about Christian hope is also the element of expectation that is over and above personal hopes. The hope that Christ calls us to is not hope at all if it does not extend beyond what we hope for ourselves. Let me explain; two years ago, just before I came to be your priest I was at St. Martha’s Church in the Bronx, a tragedy happened to one of the families there. There were two sisters, 16 and 13 years old who worshipped with us every Sunday. Their parents were divorced and they had a pair of 16 month-old twin brothers. One Friday afternoon when their mother was coming home from work, their estranged father got hold of her and stabbed her to death. Over several conversations I found out that they had no close relatives, except for their retired grandmother. Their father was already in police custody, and they were not exactly well off. Nothing in their situation called for hope, and statistics show that people with no support system quickly get into crime, become homeless or get tangled in all sorts of social and emotional problems. Under the enormously despairing situation, our small church came together committing with hope that the girls and their twin baby brothers would not become state wards, that one day they would go to college, find decent jobs and learn to forgive their father. I was told the other day that the oldest sister is now in one of the SUNY colleges, the younger sister in a magnet high school and that the twins are very much like everyone’s children in the church. The kind of hope that this tiny church showed for this broken family is what it means to hope beyond oneself. It is the kind of hope that sees tremendous possibilities in people who would otherwise be brushed of as hopeless and unworthy. It is the kind of hope that sees and fights for oppressive situations to be changed into redemptive ones. It is the kind of hope that Apostle Paul talks about when he says, “out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.” Christian hope is about seeing and believing in life even in the midst of death, to know that there is Easter beyond Good Friday.

I wonder what Andrew was thinking when he said to Jesus, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish.” Andrew saw that there were at least five thousand people tired and hungry gathered around Jesus, and he knew that it was ridiculous to think of feeding that crowd with five barley loaves and two fish. That boy had enough just to fill his stomach or maybe a little more to share with another person. I would have thought he would protect his food even more closely seeing the crowd, but obviously he made it known to the disciples that he did have some food. The passage says that Jesus says, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" in order to test the disciples. This is the kind of question that we ask ourselves every day. Where are we to get the help for the family that is struck by such tragedy? Where are we to get the money and the volunteers to feed the hungry and the homeless? What are we going to do if hoards of people start coming to our church? How can I have enough if I give to the poor? Doubts and fear can shackle us to the past, and those same fears and doubts can keep us from moving beyond the present rut.  Too often we get caught up with analyzing the details of the past and the present that we forget to hope for the future. And that is what the disciples did; they laid out before Jesus the realities that they saw. What they saw was the crowd and their lack of financial resources to buy enough food for all of them. Philip was talking from past experience when he told Jesus, "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." And it really seems like a joke when the boy brings his lunch to the disciples. Imagine if a house was burning and someone brings a bottle of water to douse the raging fire. The boys’ offering of his lunch was beyond laughable; it was like adding insult to injury. Five thousand hungry people and there was the boy offering his five loaves of barley and two fish!

But for Jesus that was enough. For the young boy being in the presence of Jesus was enough to know Jesus would do something with his small lunch. Maybe he thought his lunch could at least feed Jesus. Whatever his thoughts, the important thing is that the boy gave whatever little he had to Jesus. Jesus took the willing gift of that boy and transformed it into the miracle of feeding the five thousand, with leftovers to gather. How do we hope when we pray to God? Are they just empty words that we repeat for the sake of prayer or do we really pray believing in the hope that Christ gives us through His life, death and resurrection? And how do we hope when we bring our offerings before God? Do we bring our offerings believing that God will and can multiply all that we give? When difficult situations arise, or when we see oppression and injustice abound around us, do we get stuck in our questions of where, how and what? Or do we engage with hope in that difficult situation believing in the presence and willingness of God to lift us out of despair? God has given us a hope in Jesus Christ that always directs us to the resurrection. Even in our inadequacies, our sorrows and pain, Jesus has made sure that we do not stand alone, he hangs on the cross bearing all our pain of despair and hopelessness. Jesus is our hope, our bread of life that sustains and transforms us to become a blessing to others just as He is to us. Amen.