Sermon Notes: My Hope Is Alive

These are largely Dr. Tim Mackie’s words in his teaching titled "A Living Hope" from the series "New Day: Living in the Light of the Resurrection", re-written in a semi-poetic form to help me return to these truths when I needed a reminder. 

Father, forgive me 

When I disorganise my story 

Into isolated chapters that have no goal 

No purpose 

No hope 

Unfeeling and numb to happiness 

When I become a fantasiser 

And I can’t deal with the realities of life

That face me 

Can I for once

Put my trust

In a real hope that cannot be taken away from me

That cannot be touched by my circumstances 

That cannot be manufactured and controlled

By the limits of my sub-conscience 

Will my suffering free me 

From my false hopes

And my false identities 

A living hope 

To go through all my life 

With a living hope 

That so transforms my outlook 

On all of these events 

That I’m a new, different kind of human 

With how I make sense of it all

Can the hope of the risen Jesus 

Do that for me?

How and why does the hope of the risen Jesus do that for me?

We need hope to survive 

But is there really 

A hope so certain 

That it transcends any and all of life circumstances 

Anything that happens to me 

My hope is untouchable 

But I am not 

A day in our world 

Of hardship and suffering 

Can it test the genuineness of my hope 

Walking into the fire 

A lifetime in our world 

Is to be (prev. being) consumed by fire 

In all of the suffering and grief

Can I be filled 

With inexpressible and glorious joy 

A fixed hope so powerful 

That it transforms how I undergo suffering 

How I undergo grief and pain 

With an attitude of joy

Peter, no stranger to grief and pain 

But he writes of such joy 

Yeshua, Man of Sorrows 

No stranger to grief and pain 

When You allow Yourself to feel 

The depths of emotional pain 

The weight of grief and loss

Facing your fate of betrayal 

and abandonment and death 

And everything that was going to happen to you 

As you knelt in the garden 

And prayed to Your Father

You are weeping 

You are grieving 

Without words

Quoting from psalms of grief

Overwhelmed with anguish to the point of death 

A posture of hope and joy 

Even when I’m

Lying on my face 

Weeping to you my Father 

This present circumstance of suffering 

Does not get to define 

The meaning of my life 

These suffering and trials 

Don’t get to rob me of my joy 

Because they cannot rob me of my hope 

My hope is untouchable 

This is 

the paradox of suffering 

What is it about suffering that can produce hope? 

The paradox of joy, pain, and suffering 

In the melting of metal 

As it goes through the fire 

My joy

My hope 

Of greater worth than gold 

Passing through immense heat and pressure 

Melted

The dross removed 

My hope never changes 

A hope not based on me 

But on what happened to you Jesus 

When you came out of the tomb 

Can I fix my hope on Someone 

Who is not dead anymore but alive 

My suffering becomes this paradox 

It’s so, so painful to get burnt 

But could it be a strange gift 

Though unwelcome  

If only I can see it through it a new lens

Melting me down 

Removing from me all of these things 

that are not the essence of who I am 

All of these false hopes 

All of these false identities 

Suffering and its way of focussing me 

On what’s truly important 

Sit with one 

Spend an afternoon with one who has been at it for so much longer than you have 

One who is older and wiser 

They’ve reached that age 

where they’ve seen too much 

Too much hardship and suffering 

Dear Suffering

You are

A strange, painful teacher 

Can I learn to be teachable 

Can I be taught and not be crushed by you?

Like refining metal

Can you purify someone like me too?

Suffering purifies 

Why do you do that?

How do you do that?

Like what Frankl learned: 

What life in the camps does 

It strips away everything 

That gives our lives 

meaning 

It condenses the loss

of a lifetime 

of status and wealth 

and family and friends 

It takes all of that away 

In mere moments 

It forces us to ask 

What am I really about? 

Who am I? 

What am I hoping for? 

What is the meaning of my life

when I’ve so attached my value and identity to

precisely those things that 

I can lose through suffering, 

that I can’t go on without 

We’re suffering loss 

All of these things get stripped away

Becoming a strange gift 

That forces me to  

Either be crushed by my suffering 

Or put my hope in the only thing 

That can actually give me true meaning and purpose 

Something that can’t be taken away from me 

It doesn’t spoil, perish or fade 

Because it doesn’t have to do with me 

Suffering wakes you 

A megaphone to rouse a deaf world, Lewis you remind us still

Forcing me to think about 

What matters

And what I really need

Suffering strips away 

Everything you thought you needed 

What am I going to do with these things?

These things that give our life meaning and hope 

Almost always 

Not bad things 

If I love my family dearly 

I’m in grave danger 

If they’re the meaning of my life 

Then they too are in grave danger 

The pressure I’m putting them under 

To supply me the meaning of my life 

Will crush them 

My community 

My dear friends 

My hope for a meaningful career

All good hopes that we have 

Precisely the things 

Taken away in a moment’s notice 

And if I define myself by those things 

Who am I when I don’t have those things anymore? 

When I’m melted down by the loss of tragedy and suffering 

And just the course of ageing 

That happens to all of us 

Either in a condensed form 

Or long and drawn out in decades 

Who are we really? 

If my identity and hope are in exactly those things that suffering and tragedy can take away 

In a moment’s notice 

I’m a step away from becoming 

What Frankl could testify to

A brutal animal or zombie

Unless my hope is in something 

More substantial 

More real 

What him and Peter are inviting me to consider:

Does such a hope exist? 

The stubborn belief 

That regardless of the pain and horror of human history 

A disciple of Yeshua 

One who refuses to believe 

This evil and suffering and pain gets the last word

Because of the resurrection of the One from the dead 

Not the hope of my resurrection 

Somebody else 

Why on earth should the hope of my life and the hope of the universe 

hinge on somebody else’s resurrection from the dead? 

Where it begins is 

my hope being built on 

something outside of myself 

something that happened to the truly human One

Why is the risen Yeshua my hope? 

On that night Yeshua was betrayed and abandoned 

Wept and grieved in the garden 

A meal 

He knew that he was about to go through 

What Frankl experienced in less than two years

What many of us experience in the course of many decades 

Of loss, suffering and grief 

Jesus looking into that dark night 

He was going to experience all of that 

In the following twenty-four hours 

The loss of everyone he loved 

The abandonment of his friends 

The loss of his own life and dignity 

Staring at it in the face 

Why did He do that? 

He took the bread and the cup

He said 

His broken body and shed blood 

Was for others 

Jesus binding Himself to the broken, suffering human condition 

He was taking into Himself 

All of the suffering 

All of the pain 

All of the failures 

And the consequences for those failures 

All of that evil 

He was binding Himself to it 

He would allow the human condition 

To overwhelm Him and destroy Him 

Why?

Why did He do that? 

Look at our world 

What reason is there to hope?

One reason 

We can look at human history 

And have hope 

The story that we can take to the bank

Certain:

Jesus isn’t a figment of my imagination 

He is real 

His life was being offered in the place of others 

He would become who we are so that we could become who He is 

And He said would overcome the grave and the pain and the evil connected with it 

With His resurrection life

And with His love 

The empty tomb and the resurrected Yeshua 

Becomes mine 

The resurrected body of Yeshua becomes my hope 

Because He became what I am 

So that I could become who He is 

A hope not high in the sky 

But as real as the One who walked out of the tomb 

Left empty

If I can internalise that

And let that transform my outlook on life 

Then all of a sudden 

The pain and the grief and the suffering

Unavoidable in our world 

Becomes this strange, paradoxical gift

A tragedy to be wept over and truly grieved 

But also this gift because it’s melting me down 

Stripping me down 

Of all the things that I thought I needed

To give meaning to my life 

But really 

They’re simply gifts to be enjoyed 

That point me to the greatest Gift 

And that’s the love and the commitment 

That this God-Man has to me

To you 

And to our world 

The intensity of suffering 

Will I allow it to focus me 

And force me to ask 

What false hopes and identities I define myself by 

That I put my hope in 

That I need to deal with 

Or else I will be crushed 

By the weight of suffering 

As I go through this life 

I simply need to receive 

The committed love of this truly human One 

In His life, death and resurrection 

Spirit lead us 

Shape us 

To worship a Rescuer who opens up a living hope 

Through His resurrection from the dead

That has the capacity to make us into 

New, different kind of humans