Rev. Jared Buss
Pittsburgh New Church
Readings: Genesis 50:15-21 (children’s talk); Secrets of Heaven §6578;
Lamentations 3:15-26; Coronis §59.4
Today’s sermon is about hope—and the message I hope to leave you with is that the Lord designed us to hope. Hope is powerful, and He wants us to lean into it.
The Word definitely talks about hope. During our prayers this morning we said, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word do I hope.” Those lines are from Psalm 130 (v. 5), and there are many similar Scriptures. But the Word doesn’t treat “hope” like a theological term, and it’s never discussed at length. In the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church we find countless passages about things like love and wisdom; hope, on the other hand, is mentioned here and there.
But we know, from experience, that hope is important. If you pay attention, you start to notice just how often we use the word in everyday speech. Perhaps you recognize, intuitively, that hopefulness is bound up with spiritual happiness. And of course the opposite of hope is hopelessness, and nobody wants to be hopeless.
To begin with, we need to define hope. It’s a familiar word; if you hear a phrase like, “I hope it’s sunny tomorrow,” you know exactly what that means. But just to be crystal clear: hope combines four elements. [1] If we hope for something, that means we want it. [2] The thing we hope for is something we look towards, something that isn’t here yet, something in the future. [3] If we hope for something, that means we’re willing to believe that we can receive it—it can be real. [4] And when we say we hope for something, we’re admitting that we don’t control it. We don’t control the weather, so we don’t say, “I choose for it to be sunny tomorrow.” We say, “I hope it’s sunny.”
We’ll turn now to the Heavenly Doctrine. This next reading doesn’t exactly define hope, but it does help us understand it. The story that was read to the children says that Joseph consoled his brothers and spoke to their heart (Gen. 50:21). This reading is part of the explanation of the spiritual meaning of those words: [SH §6578].
All of our internal experiences are seated either in the will or in the understanding—the heart or the head. “Hope” is a fairly emotional word, and we might assume that hope belongs to the heart, or to the will. But the reading says something different: “hope is of the understanding by means of truth.” This doesn’t mean that hope is cold or academic: real hope always touches the heart. But fundamentally, hope belongs to the mind. To hope is to look towards something, and the sense of sight corresponds to the understanding (SH §§4404-4411; AE §260). Without that something to look towards, hope is meaningless. We can’t “just hope,” we have to hope for something. We have to see something to hope for.
The reading said that Joseph’s efforts to console his brothers symbolize hope. “Consolation,” again, might seem like a pretty emotional word; but again, consolation actually belongs to the understanding. When you console someone, you’re trying to tell them—or better yet, show them—that everything’s going to be okay. You’re trying to help them believe that everything is going to be okay.
The reason why all of this matters is what we get to choose what we look towards. Emotions are slippery, and we can’t make ourselves feel them. If hope is an emotion, then we have little or no control over it. We can’t create that emotion. But we can choose to look to the Lord. We can choose to look towards heaven—towards the heavenly rest that the Lord has promised us. We can choose to look towards happiness in our marriages, or the happiness of our neighbors whom we serve in our daily work. And so on. When we choose to look to those things, the Lord bends our hearts to follow our gaze. There are lots of feelings that attend hope: a kind of tender longing; a certain straining or striving; a kind of comfort. When we choose to hope, those feelings follow. Though not always right away, which is an idea that we’ll come back to later.
Earlier I said that the Lord designed us to hope. Ultimately, He designed us to be happy—that’s His plan for us (DP §27.2; TCR §43; SH §1735). And the Heavenly Doctrine indicates that our ability to hope is integral to our ability to be happy. The underlaying idea here is that we need to be spiritually free in order to be happy: if we aren’t free to think and to will, then happiness can never be assigned to us because there is no “us.” We need to be free in order to be happy. And hope is connected to freedom.
There’s a passage in the Heavenly Doctrine that contrasts hope with certainty—the kind of certainty that we would have if we were permitted to see into the future, as the Lord does. The passage says that hoping is a much happier condition than knowing. We read: “if in consequence of some Divine prediction [a person] were to know the end result or outcome, his reason would surrender, and with reason his love” (DP §178). The passage goes on to explain that hope comes from our reason—that is, our ability to think—looking towards what we love. So if our reason surrenders, our hope also disappears.
In other words, when we’re looking towards an outcome that we aren’t certain of, our reason and our love are engaged. When we don’t know what’s going to happen, we have to invest ourselves in hoping for something. Our freedom of choice is invested in that hope. Whereas if we’re certain of what’s coming, we go slack. The future becomes a freight train bearing down on us. It’s going to be what it’s going to be, and we have nothing to do with it. Our freedom has nothing to do with it. Hope is fundamentally free, because in a state of hope we don’t know the outcome—we choose what we want the outcome to be. And because there’s freedom in hope, hope is alive. Certainty, on the other hand, is static.
The long and short of it is that hoping is a happier condition than knowing. One illustration of this is the fact that people often observe that anticipating something can be better than having it. Waiting for Christmas can be better than Christmas. Another illustration is the fact that stories are way more exciting when we don’t know how they’re going to end. The Lord designed us not to know the future, but to look into the future with hope, because He knows that hoping will make us happier. And we can lean into that design.
The main points that have been put before you so far are [1] that hope is something we have a measure of control over, because we can choose what we look towards, and [2] that we are meant to hope—we are meant to use that ability to look forward and long for something, because in so doing we choose what we want, and choosing makes us feel alive.
Obviously there are wise hopes, and there are unwise hopes. Investing your life in the hope of becoming the greatest athlete in history may not be wise. There are also good hopes and evil hopes. Hoping that that maniac driver loses control of his car and gets what he “deserves” is evil. If we have some control over what we hope for, then we also have some responsibility to hope for things that are wise and good.
There are lots of good hopes. But the surest of them all is hope in the Lord. The Lord is always there, and He never changes. We can’t know the future, but we can have unshakeable confidence that when we come into the presence of the Lord, we will be met with peace, with tenderness, with forgiveness, with mercy, and with joy. Other hopes can be defeated, but the Lord has all power in heaven and on earth—and His plan for us is good. If we’re willing to hope in the Lord, we can do it. And it will make us happier.
This isn’t to say that hope in the Lord is like a light that we can switch on. We might wish to hope, and feel that we simply can’t. Hopelessness and despair and apathy are heavy weights, and the Word by no means tells us that we should be able to get out from underneath these things effortlessly. On the contrary, the Lord goes to some lengths to show us that He understands our despair. But even in despair He is present, and He has all power, and He loves us—so we can hope in Him.
Our next reading is an illustration of someone choosing to hope in the Lord, even in the midst of ruin and grief. The reading is from the book of Lamentations, which, as the title suggests, is not a cheerful book. It’s essentially one long lament for Jerusalem and her people, written after the city was besieged and then conquered by the Babylonians. The Babylonians burnt the temple, looted the city, and carried off many of the people. Those who were left were left with ruins. The book of Lamentations is filled with grief for these things. In the midst of that grief, we find these words: [3:15-26]
Near the beginning of the reading, the speaker says that his strength and his hope have perished (v. 18). Then something shifts, and he says, “This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope” (v. 21). And what he recalls seems to be the simple truth that the Lord’s compassions fail not (v. 22). Great is His faithfulness (v. 23). “‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I hope in Him’” (v. 24).
Hope can be casual. We can say things like, “I hope it’s sunny tomorrow,” and not have much invested in those words. Hope may not seem especially powerful. When things are going well, it generally doesn’t seem so significant. But hope comes into a new light when we grieve, or when what’s in front of us is despair. That is, the light that is hope shines so much more brightly when the world is dark. And when the world is dark we need that light—we yearn for hope, we search for any hope that we can find. Hope in the Lord is always there to be found.
Our last reading for today is from the Heavenly Doctrine, from the book called Coronis. The main point of this passage is that we need the Lord: we cannot conquer in temptation without Him. The passage offers us a series of illustrations to reinforce this point. But there’s a subtle shift partway through the series of illustrations that I’d like to call your attention to. The first several illustrations show us that we need the Lord—He is the one who sustains us in temptation. Then the illustrations start to suggest that hope in the Lord is what sustains us in temptation. We read: [§59.4]
Hope in the Lord is like hope in the sunrise. Believing that the sun will rise isn’t like switching on a light—it doesn’t make the darkness disappear. But to know that the darkness will not last makes all the difference.
This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope.
Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
They are new every morning…. (Lamentations 3:21-23)
Amen.