Jeffrey C. Long

The following sermon was preached on Sunday October 1st at Filer Mennonite Church

It’s an unlovely tree in an unlikely place with an unmistakable message.

The tree sits along an interstate highway just outside of Fort Worth, Texas. It is a mimosa tree that appears lifeless, except at Christmas. Each December, for the past ten years, the tree has been decorated, its scraggly limbs bearing a few ornaments and a garland.

The original decorator was a homeless woman whose health has prevented her from the task for several years. Other hands have carried on the work ever since. “Everyone sees it, but no one knows who does it,” said one woman.

Sitting on an isolated hill absent of other vegetation, the existence of the tree itself is a bit of a mystery. When gardener Neil Sperry first spotted the tree, he was surprised because a mimosa tree should not be growing in such a place. “It’s just a God thing when a tree grows where it’s not supposed to grow,” he said.

Passersby say they have never noticed a single leaf on the tree, but every December life blossoms in the form of a few Christmas decorations. Jodi Hodges, a member of the Texas Department of Transportation, acknowledges that the decorations are technically not permitted on state property. Hodges says, “We have motorists call in thanking us for the tree, and we have nothing to do with it. It’s just a mystery…. It’s just a tree mysterious people decorate. It gives us hope.”

Centuries ago, Christian refugees set sail across the Atlantic in the hope that they might live in a place where they would be free from the religious persecution that they had experienced in Europe. Since those first settlers America continued to be a moment to hope. Immigrants came looking for a better standard of life. Refugees fled abuse. As land became available people moved west to settle. There was always a group of people looking to move to the next frontier until eventually they reached the Pacific ocean. Through the industrial age and a capitalist economy people lived with the hope that their standard of living would improve. When we won two world wars, there was hope that through the strength of America, peace would thrive in the world.

A great transformation took place in America in the 60′s. With the Korean and Vietnam war we lost hope in our country’s ability to make good international decisions and for our military to prevail. Our purpose for fighting those wars was less clear. Protests were met with police violence. Racial tensions accelerated. Political figures were assassinated.

And so, we find ourselves today living without hope. As I mentioned last week, cynicism and sarcasm prevail. Months ago, Deana and I took an evening to go see a movie on a date. I thought it looked interesting. It was called “Friends with money.” Jennifer Aniston. Artsy. But it was pretty much depressing. It was an image of life that was mundane and ordinary. It had no hope. This is one of the reasons that depression is so prevalent. We don’t have hope. I also think it is why television shows like touched by an angel and extreme makeover home edition are so popular. We hunger for hope. People say that when people buy a lottery ticket they are buying hope.

We need hope.

A medical study in which 122 men who had suffered their first heart attack were evaluated on their degree of hopefulness and pessimism: “Of the 25 most pessimistic men, 21 had died eight years later. Of the 25 most optimistic, only 6 had died!… Loss of hope increased the odds of death more than 300 percent; it predicted death more accurately than any medical risk factor, including blood pressure, amount of damage to the heart, or cholesterol level.”

Chris Peterson, “Optimism and By-pass Surgery,” in Learned Helplessness: A Theory for the Age of Personal Control. (Oxford University Press, 1993

Another study of 1,000 people aged 65-85 points to the importance of a positive attitude in dealing with life. After almost 10 years of follow-up, researchers found that people who described themselves as optimistic had a 55 percent lower risk of death from all causes and a 23 percent lower risk of heart-related death.

Rubel Shelly, Nashville, Tennessee; source: E. Giltay, Archives of General Psychiatry (November 2004) vol. 61, pp. 1126-1135, re

Of all the virutes in the Bible, hope ranks among the top three:

1Corinthians 13:13 But now faith, hope, and love remain—these three.

What is hope?

Harvard Medical professor Jerome Groopman says that “hope is the ability to see a path to the future…. You are facing dire circumstances, and you need to know everything that’s blocking or threatening you. And then you see a path, or a potential path, to get to where you want to be.

At different times in our lives we find ourselves facing difficult situations that feel like could defeat us. Financial problems, marriage problems, watching our teenagers and adult children struggling with life. What will get us through?

Hope. We must see a path through whatever adversity we face. It doesn’t mean that the problem is solved. It means that we find a way to get through it.

This comes first through seeing our lives through a larger purpose then ourselves. What is God doing in and through us.

Turn to Romans 8:28 says that

28 all things work together for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.

There is hope in Jesus because regardless of the circumstance, regardless of the situation, God is tinkering away to make good come of what you are going through. When we see our lives through a larger purpose then ourselves, we can have hope that God is at work.

This also provides us with the vision to be able to see what He is doing. We learn to see miracles, even small ones because we are on the lookout for the good that God is working out through what we are going through.

Second, Jesus desires good in your life. John 10:10 says that Jesus came so that we could have an abundant life. The New Living Translation says His purpose is to give life in all its fullness.

When your life has gone south, you need to know that Jesus’ desire is that you not be there. He doesn’t want you to suffer. He wants a full rich life for you.

We get hung up on the fact that bad stuff happens to good people and so we get cynical about verses like this. We see too many examples when people aren’t living abundant lives and so we think there must be something wrong with this verse.

But the fault is not in Jesus. Jesus _wants_ us to have full rich lives. He grieves when our lives are broken.

This doesn’t mean that we won’t be faced with trials that don’t appear to be the good that Jesus desires.

What hope is not

Sheila Walsh, former host of the 700 Club tells the story of a letter she once got from a young woman in her mid-twenties who had cancer and MS. She said, “Sometimes I watch your program and I’m helped, and sometimes I want to take my shoe off and throw it through the screen.”

Sheila writes “I was so fascinated by her honesty, I called her. We became friends. One day she said, “One of the things I hate about what you do is you always present people whose marriages get better in 10 minutes, people who get healed, people who have the nice, packaged answers.” She said, “What about people like me who are dying and still love God? What about people who take very few steps, but every step leaves a big impression in the snow because it costs every ounce of strength they have left?”

She changed my perspective. Christianity is not this nice “everything’s going to work out okay” attitude. When you think of Christ at the tomb of Lazarus, he wept because it wasn’t supposed to be like this. He had spoken this beautiful world into existence and it was so broken, so messed up. I think one of the greatest gifts we can give is just a dose of reality that life down here is sometimes disappointing. God doesn’t always give us answers. But he does always give us himself.

Sheila Walsh, singer and author, a former co-host of the 700 Club, and now a speaker with Women of Faith, "Staying Alive,&q

Jesus promise of an abundant life does not free us from the trials that come with life on earth. But it does mean that God does not want that for us. He desires rich full lives for us. And He is working that for us.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

God is seeking to work for good all things in your life.

We need to hold on to hope.

Next week I’ll talk more about hope, including the basis for our hope and some areas that the Bible teaches us to have hope in.