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Last Sunday, I preached about being a Christian in a post-truth world: which I describe as a world distorted by lies and half-truths, where opinion masquerades as facts, where personal power parades as universal principle, where algorithms claim objectivity, rather than the preference of programmers.
And I suggested that in such a world, the Church has something to say. Maybe we’re not well organized to say it, but we are well prepared, because we are people of hope. Hope is the product we peddle. It’s what we carry, not because of some strategy we designed, but because of the God we worship: the God who is real, the God who is present, the God who is love.
And when love shows up it has a remarkable way of disarming fear, and decoupling us from the factions that divide.
From the very beginning, the Church understood the power of hope and from whence it came. Paul says it well: “Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, 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.” (Romans 5:3–5)
That’s not sentiment. It’s truth. I know it because I’ve lived it, and I am pretty sure you have as well.
You may remember the story I told last Sunday about Dr. Winkleman; the husband of my tutor whose house I’d go to a few times a week to work through flashcards, sound out words, read books, all the while struggling to make connections between the letters, my brain and my tongue. It was painful.
And I told you about the afternoon I ran into Dr. Winkleman as he emerged from the garage. A living monolith of a man who placed a big hand on my shoulder and said, “Doyt, I hear you’re doing great work. I’m proud of you. Keep at it.”
And I confessed that I didn’t know what facts Dr. Winkleman was working with to come to this conclusion, but, and here’s the point, since his words colluded with my perspective, I was happy to accept them as truth.
Here’s the danger: even those who commit great evil often think they’re doing good. I’m sure Hermann Goebbels believed he was doing important work when he rounded up the Jews, and exported them to foreign prisons. I’m sure he sincerely thought he was serving the best interest of the German people. If someone had come up to him and said, “Hermann, you’re doing good work,” he would have likely agreed, just as I had agreed with Dr. Winkleman.
The difference lies not in the sincerity of belief, but in the truth that undergirds it, truth grounded not in ego, ideology or politics, but in love, justice, and hope.
Let me give you a sense of the power of hope. On the day Dr. Winkleman blessed me with words of encouragement there wasn’t a world that existed, not even in my wildest dreams, where I grew up to have a job that required me to read out loud in front of people.
That kind of future was beyond hope because I didn’t understand what hope really was… hope is not limited to what we see, it is grounded in who God is… a God willing to suffer and die on the cross for us.
Hope is grounded in suffering which produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope — it is a circular and ascending experience that does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts.” (Romans 5:3–5)
For me 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades were pretty tough. Reading out loud in those reading circles was like being in a public stockade. I was in the lowest reading group. You know how I knew? Because everyone knew. It was painful. It was suffering.
I can see clearly now how kids like me, with slightly different circumstances, could give up, could act out, could fall behind and never catch up.
But in Mrs. Winkleman’s study, I was held in a cocoon of hope. Even in the middle of the flashcards, even in the middle of the struggle, there was a persistent hope: Suffering builds endurance. Endurance shapes character. And that character began to carry me, not just in school, but in life.
So now, when I encounter something I’m not good at, something hard, something intimidating, I tend to go at it because I know what suffering feels like.
And you do too, because we have all suffered, including Dr. Winkleman.
When he placed his hand on my shoulder and said, “I’m proud of you. Keep at it,” he and I were colluding, signing a pact of hope: hope I had for myself, hope that he experienced along the way, hope he had for me… Because hope is communal,
and it gets stronger when we engage it together, grounding us in the Spirit of Truth, not as fact, but as faith. Not as measurement, but as mutual honoring of what could be; what should be. Dr. Winkleman’s words of hope, more than any flashcard, defined my future. Neither of us could have imagined I would become a priest. There was no reasonable evidence, no facts to suggest it could ever be.
But God’s plan is bigger than what we can see or imagine. Hope doesn’t rely on evidence, it trusts in a God who waits for us patiently, still patiently.
As Paul says again in the Letter to the Romans: “Who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it patiently.” (Romans 8:24–25)
We live in a world that desperately needs hope. The facts may be discouraging. The systems may be broken. The laws may be unjust. The weapons may be loud, and getting louder…
But hope is even more resonant. It hums through the fabric of creation because hope is not just from God, it is of God. It’s what God pours into the hearts of his people through the Holy Spirit.
Let’s be clear: this hope for the world in which we have been set, is not naïve, it is not wishful thinking. Hope is resistance to the powers and principalities of evil. Hope is the weapon of the faithful.
Make no mistake about it: there is evil in the world. We know this because evil divides, evil lies, evil diminishes and distorts, evil turns neighbor against neighbor, it dehumanizes the stranger, whispering: “You do not belong.” “You can’t read.”
That is the voice of the enemy. And it is a loud voice right now.
But the people of Jesus don’t fight fire with fire. We don’t wage war with fear, or fury, or force. We fight with hope. We fight with love. We fight with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that fuels us, fills us, and fortifies us with power from on high poured into our hearts.
It may not look like much to the world, but in God’s kingdom, this is how the war is won — just ask the Caesars of Rome who, over time, withered in the face of Christian faithfulness. Hope is what breaks the cycle of despair. Love is what breaks the logic of fear. And the Spirit is what breaks the chains of sin and death.
So, when we walk into spaces of conflict, we walk in not with certainty, but with compassion. Not with dominance, but with dignity. Not with slogans or weapons, but with hearts ablaze with hope.
Because we know: the Spirit of the Lord is upon us; he has anointed us not to dominate but to liberate, to proclaim good news to the poor, to release the captive, to bind up the brokenhearted, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor — right now.
Hope is not weak. Hope is not wishful thinking. Hope is the strength of the saints, the defiant, patient, unyielding strength of those who believe that God’s love will have the last word; who believe that God’s love has been poured into their hearts.
That’s what we carry. That’s who we are. We are people of hope. And nothing, nothing, can stand against us when we walk in the Spirit of truth.
So, as people of hope, we have something to say to this post-truth world, a world caught up in the spiritual battle between the unity of God and the division of men, between the love of God and the fear of men, between the power of God and the pettiness and small imaginations of men. As people of hope, we have something to say: do not fear suffering! Name it. Own it. Let it form within you the endurance of Jesus…
Because endurance gave rise to the character that brought you here today; the character that allows you to sit in this place, to claim your Christianity, to know its power, and to stand firm against the distortions and deceits of a post-truth world.
We are people of character, formed by suffering, shaped by endurance, and filled with hope. Hope that is reinforced by love.
So, when we walk out of here today, we walk out with love: not a love we need to manufacture, not a love we have to earn, but a love that has been poured into our hearts by God, through the Spirit, for the sake of the world. That love is our hope, our calling as the people of Epiphany. And nothing can stand against it.