This summer at Second, our focus is scripture’s

promises for people of faith and doubt. The

assumption behind that theme is that all of us

are both, that we have faith, and we wrestle with

doubt. I’m not sure about you, but sometimes I can

experience both faith and doubt in a single hour. And

we are also, I think it fair to say, people of both hope

and despair. Often in roughly equal measure. We cling

to hope. We are overwhelmed with despair.

If this description feels familiar to you, then the

scripture you just heard might seem naïve or

unhelpful in its simplicity. The words of the prophet

Jeremiah publish a promise. The promise is this: God

is in charge. And because of that, a hopeful future

lies ahead. God has a plan. A plan for wholeness, for

peace, for shalom, for welfare. A plan for blessing a

future of hope.

Having heard the promise, we might wish we had

the opportunity for a rebuttal. Which news sites are

you reading, Jeremiah? How do these words land in

the heart of graduates who look to what is next with

anxious worry? How do they sound to those who

are grieving loss—a loved one, a relationship, a job,

a sense of confidence, a former strength now lost, a

dream whose time has passed? Where is the hope

for those who daily experience physical or emotional

pain? And what about all of us who have desperately

prayed that the future would be brighter for our

children and our grandchildren, and who now wonder

if our best days are in fact behind us? What is the

source of your hope, Jeremiah? What kind of world

are you living in?

That’s a good question, and the answer might surprise

you. What kind of world was Jeremiah living in?

Jeremiah’s active life, his prophetic career, coincided

with the greatest crisis in the history of his people.

He lived through a period of unmitigated disaster.

Absolute collapse of every kind. Destruction of the

temple in Jerusalem. The beginning of forced exile

in Babylon. Imagine these words, this promise,

spoken in that moment. I imagine that Jeremiah’s

original audience would also have appreciated

the opportunity for a rebuttal because from where

they stand, Nebuchadnezzar, the tyrant king of the

Babylonian Empire, is calling all the shots. He’s in

charge. And as for this God for whom Jeremiah claims

to speak, this God is absent at best and perhaps

derelict in his duties. And so, Jeremiah’s people

wonder if their days, their best days, are behind them.

Now I do think that Jeremiah’s people, like so many of

us, have a profound longing to feel hope, to feel hope

again. They wanted to believe. To the depths of their

souls, they wanted to believe that what the prophet

said was true. But there are so few signs of the kind of

bright future he describes. Nevertheless, the prophet

is insistent. Even now, he writes, though you cannot

see it and may not even be capable of believing it,

even now God is making plans.

This captivity, this hopelessness, this fear, this

despair—this is not the end. Jeremiah promises that

a new day will dawn. And our job, as people who

have experienced the power of God in the past, is to

stand on our tiptoes and live toward the promise we

cannot yet see.

Hope, if it is true hope, is not flimsy, is not weak, is

not naïve, and is never passive. The Apostle Paul says

that only three things will survive, will endure, will last:

faith, hope, and love. And so, hope is durable, durable

in a way that optimism could never be.

And that’s a good thing because hope must be

durable. Living in this world will test the resiliency of

our hope in ways we could not imagine. And when this

happens, when it happens to you, to those you love, it

is easier to give up. It is simpler to isolate ourselves. It

is natural to allow despair to overwhelm us, to listen

to voices that aim to convince us that hope is nothing

more than a childish dream. If you have ever found

yourself doomscrolling social media or worst-casescenario-ing (that’s a verb I created) everything at 4

o’clock in the morning, you know what I mean. I trust

I am not the only one. Have you ever noticed how

quickly despair expands, how it crowds out everything

else? It takes up all the space in the room or in our

minds. Have you ever observed how defeating despair

can be, how it freezes us in our tracks, convincing us

that it is foolish to believe a different future is possible?

And we might as well quit now.

In my ministry I have walked alongside deeply faithful

souls who have fallen victim to exile. They are pinned

to a past they cannot change or trapped by the

emptiness of what they always assumed mattered,

swimming in possessions or power but utterly drained

of purpose or passion. I’ve watched how faith fades.

Vision grows dim. How past hope succumbs to the

harshness of present reality. And perhaps this is

where you find yourself this morning. If so, I believe

that you have been led to this place because today’s

promise is for you.

First, let me be clear. The prophet Jeremiah was not a

particularly optimistic person. Afterall, his nickname,

well-earned, is the weeping prophet. Since first being

called by God as a child, he has endured the betrayal

of his people, the injustice of his nation, the failure of

his leaders, and the judgment of his God. There are

no stars in Jeremiah’s eyes as he sits down to write a

letter to the exiles. Afterall, Nebuchadnezzar is on the

throne. His people, Jeremiah’s people, are scattered

to the four winds, and all he has is this vision that will

not let him go. All he knows is that God has promised

a hopeful future. All he trusts is that it is still somehow

possible. He will not live to see the fulfillment of his

prophecy, and yet he cannot keep from sharing the

hope that he has been given. Jeremiah is not filled

with cheery optimism but by the defiant force of hope.

And so, he gives voice to the promise. And he issues a

bold charge: there is work for God’s people to do.

Jeremiah is insistent that the circumstances of our

lives and the state of the world do not dictate the

character of our hope. I want to say that again. The

circumstances of our lives and the state of our world

do not dictate the character of our hope. We are not

helpless in the face of all that seeks to immobilize or

demoralize us. We have agency.

The prophet says that when we seek with all our

heart, we will find God. When we call on God with

all our hearts, we will be heard. We will be brought

home. And we can choose to anchor our confidence

in the promise of God’s presence. We can look for

signs of the Spirit in trying times. We can practice

hope by providing hope to somebody else. Afterall,

like all virtues, hope is grown by practice. We can be

a beacon of hope in the life of someone else. That’s

what I saw all week long in the classrooms and

gathering spaces across this building. Hope. Hope

in the presence of volunteers who took a week of

vacation or teenagers who got up early on summer

break to be here each morning, smiles on their faces.

I saw it in the bright eyes of children who felt loved

here, just as they are, whose faith grew by leaps and

bounds. I heard hope in the voice of a grandmother

who sought me out on Friday morning to share that

her grandson had come home on Wednesday and

declared, “This was the best day of my life!”

According to the prophet Jeremiah, if you want to feel

hopeful, you must not retreat or withdraw. Serve. Pray.

Engage. Commit. Give. Invest your life in the life of

your community. Seek out the face of God in the faces

and voices and stories of others. The best way out of

despair is to do something for someone else.

A few summers ago, our family was in north Georgia

for a long hike with some old friends. One of those

friends is eighty-two years old, and Roger made his

way through mountain laurel and up muddy hills with

great, admirable finesse. Later, Roger was telling

me about his other hobby. He loves to chop fallen

trees into firewood. I’ve seen the man’s shed. He has

enough firewood saved for at least a dozen north

Georgia winters, and yet, he keeps chopping. Perhaps

that is optimism. His wife had told him that they would

never live long enough to use all that firewood. And

Roger said, “She’s probably right, but then again, I

know it will keep someone warm.” And that’s hope.

The superpower of trusting in a hopeful future is the

capacity for good that it unlocks in us. This summer,

our family has been slowly working our way through

the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We finished the third

movie, Return of the King, on Friday evening, and I

was curious to see how the movies line up with the

novels. And so, I pulled out Tolkien’s novels. The

storyline tracks well enough, but the constraints of a

feature film left some of the book’s most memorable

lines on the cutting room floor, I’m afraid. For example,

at the very end of the final book, my favorite character,

the hobbit Sam, wakes from a very long sleep to the

sound of a familiar voice, the great wizard Gandalf.

And here, though absent from the movie, the great

writer gives us the gift of these words:

“Sam lay back and stared with open mouth. For a

moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he

could not [speak]. At last, he gasped: ‘Gandalf! I

thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead

myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue?’”

Jeremiah’s answer, despite all evidence to the

contrary, is yes. By God’s power, all that is broken

will be repaired. Through God’s grace, all that is

torn apart will be woven together again. Because

of God’s love, all that is wounded will be healed. In

God’s time, all that is wrong will be made right again.

Someday, someday, everything sad will come untrue.

And somehow, somehow, it will be all the greater for

having once been lost.

I tell you a mystery. The future is filled with hope. Let’s

start chopping wood.