A Place Called Hope
by Donald Hoffman


I Peter 1:3-9

John 20:19-31

April 14, 1996

(Note: You need to understand that this 
sermon was preceded by a children's sermon where 
I told the story of my little brother locking 
himself in the bathroom of a home we were 
visiting, and then, panicky, screaming, crying, 
couldn't figure out how to get himself out. All 
the adults in the world, yelling through the 
door, couldn't calm him down. ("All the king's 
horses ...") It took another child to rescue him. 
The adults were able to raise the little bathroom 
window and push his ten-year-old brother (me) 
through the hole too small for a grownup. It has 
always struck me as a good metaphor for the 
Incarnation.)


You may remember that at the end of last week's 
episode, I had been caught by the arch-criminal 
Centipede. I was falling from a high altitude in 
a sealed box. All the air was leaking out. Poison 
gas was leaking in. A bomb was ticking down to 
zero. And sharp knives were closing in from all 
directions. How would I ever get out? How could I 
ever escape?



Are you ready for today's episode? Well, after 
I escaped the Centipede's trap, I went downtown 
to my office!



Does it seem like I left something out, there? 
Does the plot of the story seem a trifle weak?



Well, sometimes an author paints himself or 
herself into a corner. That's why we included the 
little picture in today's bulletin. Sometimes an 
author sets up a problem for which there is no 
solution. Sometimes the hero is in such a 
terrible predicament that there is no possible 
way out.



Now, very few authors are so bold as to just 
gloss over the difficulties, like I did a few 
moments ago. So they bring in an ancient plot 
device called a deus ex machina.  That's Latin 
for a god in a machine. Deus ex machina. I'm 
going to call it a d-e-m. D-e-m's come in all 
shapes and sizes, but they are always a cheat. 
You're being held at gunpoint by the Mafia. 

Suddenly all the gangsters have heart attacks and 
die. That's a deus ex machina. A d-e-m. Notice 
that when Mark Twain had Tom Sawyer and Becky 
Thatcher lost in a cave, he didn't have an 
earthquake let them out? That would have been a 
d-e-m. And Mark Twain was too good a writer.



The writers for the old Batman TV show of the 
'60's loved to end an episode with a 
cliff-hanger. And they knew they didn't dare 
start the next without some way to get Batman and 
Robin out. So they always used a d-e-m, but they 
called it a utility belt. It just so happens that 
here in my utility belt is a spring-loaded dog 
biscuit that I can shoot out at just the right 
trajectory so that the Penguin's pit bull will 
leap into the air and bump into the reverse lever 
on the sawmill conveyor belt.



Star Trek Next Generation and Voyager shows use 
d-e-m's all the time. They do it with 
double-talk. If I can just tweak the framistan on 
the chrono synclastic infundibulum, and soak some 
kleenex in Arcturian vodka, I can build a space 
torpedo during the station break and blast the 
Klingons to pieces.



Now, I'm going to suggest that there are only 
three ways of looking at the future. One is 
Optimism: "I know things look rough right now, 
but I'll just work very, very hard, and it'll get 
better." Another is Pessimism: "You can work just 
as hard as you want to and things will get 
worse." And the third way is to use a d-e-m: "I'm 
going to squinch my eyes closed and hope like the 
dickens, and maybe God'll bail me out."



Uh-oh, I just said that prayer is a bad plot 
device. I just said that religion is kind of 
unbelievable.



But face it: would you read a detective novel if 
the hero of the series always catches the crook 
by prayer? Would you watch a sci-fi movie if they 
defeat the bug-eyed-monsters by praying? Oh, 
well, maybe you would. Because I guess that's how 
Luke Skywalker blew up the deathstar. But most of 
the time, would you keep watching a series if at 
five minutes before the end they always stop and 
pray, and all the problems straighten out? I 
don't think so!



And yet, right at the center of our faith there 
is a Deus ex machina. A Deus with a capital "D". 
I sort of snuck it by you last Sunday, Easter 
Sunday, because you were so used to the story you 
weren't watching closely. I got my hero into the 
worst predicament possible; he was actually dead 
and buried. And the only way I could get him out 
was to have God intervene. Boy, what an amateur 
story-teller!  Louis Lamour and Agatha Christie 
and Tom Clancy are all laughing themselves sick! 
Couldn't you do any better than that? You killed 
him and stuck him in the ground, and the only way 
you could think to get him out was to have God do 
it? What a klutzy author!



To be Christian is to believe in miracles. Or at 
least one miracle. To believe that God is always 
part of the plot, not just someone the author 
brings in at the last minute to get the hero out 
of trouble. To be Christian is to believe that 
God was always planning to intervene in history. 
And if God was willing to intervene once in the 
past, maybe God is willing to do it again. For 
me. For you.



I stole the title of the sermon from Bill 
Clinton, who claims to be from a place called 
Hope. Because all Christians are from a place 
called Hope. Hope is what keeps us going.



Now when I knew I was going to preach about hope, 
I looked up the word in two of my quotation 
dictionaries. And it turns out that a lot of 
people have some very negative things to say 
about hope. "He that lives upon hope will die 
fasting," says Ben Franklin. "Hope is the only 
universal liar who never loses his reputation for 
veracity," says Robert Ingersoll. "We should not 
expect something for nothing but we all do, and 
we call it hope," says Ed Howe.



All of these people, and people like them, think 
of hope as a d-e-m, a deus ex machina, a god in a 
machine, an amateur plot device. "If I just close 
my eyes real tight and pray real hard, maybe God 
will help me." And they are probably thinking, 
"If those ninnies would open their eyes, and stop 
wasting their time with useless prayers, and get 
to work, maybe they could help themselves."



Because there isn't any God and there aren't any 
miracles and we all learned to write better 
stories in Junior High School. Don't waste your 
time hoping! That's what they would say.



You see, all these people who are down on hope 
are optimists, and they think that hope just gets 
in the way of our getting ahead. Hope 
short-circuits our efforts, it drains our energy, 
and it keeps us from pulling ourselves up by our 
own bootstraps.



But the Christian Faith says that these optimists 
are the fools. Even the pessimists are too 
optimistic. Because we humans mess up everything 
we touch. It's the reverse Midas touch. 
Everything King Midas touched turned to gold. But 
everything I touch turns to garbage. And the same 
for you. And the same for Ben Franklin and Robert 
Ingersoll. Everything we handle turns to garbage. 
The only way we'll ever get out of the bathroom 
is if God pushes our brother through a hole so he 
can open the door.



But then, but then, we turn right around and 
become more wildly optimistic than any Pollyanna 
that ever lived. With God on our side, we _do_ 
have the Midas touch. And we can work, work, work 
with passion towards God's future because we know 
that even when we do mess up, as we all 
eventually will, God will make good come of our 
own mistakes, our own weakness, our own sin. 
Christian hope doesn't keep us from working. It 
invigorates us, it liberates us to work harder!



Belief in God, hope in God, is not a d-e-m if 
there really is a God! This isn't a device, 
pulled in at the last minute to fix a broken 
plot, if God has been planning it from the 
beginning of creation. If God turns out to be the 
real author, then the resurrection was intended 
from the beginning, God's intervention in history 
was always intended to be part of the plot. And 
God's intervention for me, for you, was always 
part of the plot, too. We have reason to hope.



And I also found some really neat quotations, too. Positive ones. For instance:



"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in 
our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. 
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes 
complete sense in any immediate context of 
history; therefore we must be saved by faith. 
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be 
accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by 
love." -Reinhold Neibuhr



"Hope is hearing the melody of the future. Faith 
is to dance to it." -Reubem Alves,Tomorrow's Child



"Hope: The way things are is not the way things 
have to be." -Walter Brueggemann



"Hope: To believe in spite of the evidence, and 
to watch the evidence change." -Jim Wallis, Sojourner, Magazine.



The fact is, all humanity has locked itself into 
little rooms, and we don't know how to get 
ourselves out. The only thing we can do is cry 
for help. The only thing that makes sense is to 
pray. Daddy! Mommy! Help!



And we Christians believe, that 2000 years ago, 
God pushed our big brother Jesus through a little 
hole to save us, a window of opportunity, not a 
deus ex machina, but a part of an age-old plan. 
And Jesus set us free to open other doors, free 
to hear the melody of the future and dance to it. 
Free to believe in spite of the evidence, and to 
watch the evidence change. Free to declare that 
the way things are is not the way things have to 
be. Free to stand up against the oppressive 
powers that still hold brothers and sisters in 
slavery and would put us back in our locked rooms 
also. Free to overcome the powers of prejudice 
and hate and greed.



Free to believe that the God who intervened in 
history once will do it again. For us. Because 
each of us comes from a place called Hope!

(Comments to Don at crestnch@televar.com.)

Creston, Washington, USA