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Third Sunday of Lent
Cycle B, 2015
Church of St. Joan of Arc, Marlton NJ
Our Lenten Homily Series:
HOPE FOR ALL PEOPLE!
Part Three: Hope Gives Us Strength
HINGE, ANCHOR, FEATHER,
CROSS
Are you a hopeful person? If so,
where’s your hope come from?
Ask your children, your
grandchildren if they would
consider themselves hopeful
persons. Ask them where their
hope comes from?
In one of the most famous
passages from the Bible, St. Paul
writes: “Three things last: Faith.
Hope. Love. The greatest of these
is love.”
Love may be the greatest, but
hope is the hinge. Notice where
Paul puts it: Faith. HOPE. Love. In
the middle. Hope is the hinge.
Hope holds the other two
together. How?
Consider this: I have faith in God;
I believe in God’s promises, and
that’s what gives me hope. The
promise that I will always be
loved. The promise that God will
always be with me. That gives me
hope!
And now, because I have that
hope I can love. Hope-filled people
can take the risk to love.
Hope, the hinge, gives me the
strength, the courage, to love like
Jesus … to do what I never
thought possible – to risk loving,
to risk forgiving, to risk doing the
right thing, even if it’s not the
popular thing, for the Kingdom of
God!
It is hope that gives a person the
strength, the strength to get up
and try again even after falling
three times. Remember Jesus on
the way to the cross? What made
him get back up? What made him
get back up even knowing what
was at the end of the road? What
made him get up?
His relationship with God.
Consider this image of hope: the
anchor.
Early Christians used the anchor
as a sign of hope. (They weren’t
wearing crosses around their
necks. Christians were being
crucified on crosses; the cross
wasn’t a piece of jewelry!) They
got the anchor image from the
Letter to the Hebrews (6:19):
“hope is the anchor of the
soul.”
If you don’t have an anchor, you’re
going to drift through life or be
wracked by every storm. Hope is
that anchor. It connects us to God.
Once you know you will never be
lost, you can face any storm! That
is true strength!
Hope also lifts up our spirit!
Without a sense of hope, life and
its burdens weighs heavy on our
shoulders. Emily Dickenson, the
poet, says, “Hope is the thing
with feathers.”
Did you see the movie, “The
Theory of Everything”? It’s a
movie about the British scientist
Stephen Hawking. Very good film.
At the end of the film, here’s what
Stephen Hawking says:
“There should be no boundaries to
human endeavor. We are all
different. However bad life may
seem, there is always something
you can do, and succeed at. While
there's life, there is hope.”
Okay. I’m with him to a point.
I, too, believe there are no
boundaries to human endeavor
but I believe that because we are
created in the image of God who
is limitless!! God is ALWAYS
MORE! More than we even
imagined or thought possible!!
That’s makes us limitless.
So, for me, where there is God,
there is hope!
Here’s what Pope Francis said a
while back: Wherever the Cross is,
there is hope.”
Amazing, isn’t it, that a cross with
a man hanging on it should be a
sign of hope!
When I look at a crucifix I do not
see death!! I do not see death! I
see the power of faith, hope and
love!
When I look at the crucifix I see a
promise from God that whatever
sadness, whatever hurt, whatever
pain or loss or disappointment or
failure I am right now
experiencing will not have the
power to destroy me or defeat me
or define me!
That is our hope!
Hinge, Anchor, Feather, Cross:
our Hope is Jesus Christ!