Homilies
Hope that is seen, is not hope
Holy Spirit, take my words and speak to each of us according to our need.
There are few words in Scripture more misunderstood than the word hope. When we speak of hope today, we often mean wishful thinking. We hope it won't rain (although, given the current weather, perhaps we hope it might!). We hope the team we support wins. We hope the doctor brings good news. Hope, in modern language, often means a desire for a good outcome, but one edged with uncertainty.
But that is not what St Paul means. For Paul, hope is not optimism. It is not pretending everything will turn out well. Christian hope is confidence in God's promises even when we cannot yet see their fulfilment. That is why Paul says "Hope that is seen is not hope."
If you already possess something, you no longer hope for it. If your birthday has arrived and your presents have all been opened, you no longer hope for them – they are already yours. Hope always stretches beyond what our eyes can see.
The Christian life, therefore, is lived between promise and fulfilment. Christ has risen. Sin has been defeated. Death has lost its final victory.
Yet we still live in a world where people suffer, where injustice remains, where illness weakens us, where relationships breakdown, and where we gather to mourn those we love.
We live in what theologians often call the "already and the not yet." God's Kingdom has begun, but it has not yet reached its completion. And so we hope, not because we doubt God, but because we trust in God's promises.
In British Sign Language there are different signs for ‘to believe’. Firstly, the palm is flat, the thumb tucked in and the forefinger touches the forehead before moving swiftly down to the open palm of the opposite hand. But when talking about belief in a religious context, the sign changes slightly. Instead of having the thumb tucked in, it is the thumb that touches the forehead. The difference in meaning is that for Christians belief is not just thought to be true, it is known to be true.
Romans also addresses one of the most common questions asked by people who do not share the Christian faith. "If God exists," they say, "why doesn't God simply prove it?"
Many people imagine that faith is simply a substitute for evidence, as though Christians have chosen to believe because there is no evidence available. But biblical faith has never been unthinking belief. The Christian faith rests upon history, upon the witness of Scripture, upon the testimony of generations of believers, upon the resurrection of Christ, and upon the work of the Holy Spirit within the lives of ordinary people.
Yet God has never chosen to overwhelm humanity with such irresistible proof that belief becomes unavoidable.
Why? Because God seeks relationship. Love cannot be forced. Trust cannot be manufactured. A relationship entered into only because there is no alternative is not truly a relationship at all.
Throughout Scripture we see that God consistently invites rather than compels. Even when Jesus walked upon the earth, not everyone believed. Many witnessed miracles. Many heard his teaching. Some watched Lazarus walk from the tomb. Yet some still rejected him.
The issue was never simply a lack of evidence. It was the response of the human heart. God desires children who freely respond to divine love. Which is why we were given free will.
Faith, then, is not the absence of reason. It is the decision to entrust ourselves to God despite not seeing the whole picture yet. Think of every important relationship throughout life. You never possess complete proof that another person will always love you. You cannot scientifically demonstrate that those close to us will remain faithful, or never disappoint us.
At some point, every meaningful relationship requires trust. Faith is like that. St Augustine once said, "Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe."
Paul tells us that we "wait for it with patience." Patience is not passive resignation. It is active perseverance. It is continuing to pray when answers seem delayed; continuing to forgive when it is costly; continuing to worship when life hurts; continuing to love when the world encourages cynicism. Hope keeps us walking because we know who walks beside us.
Many centuries after Paul, the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal suggested that every human being, whether they realise it or not, is making a wager with their life. If God exists and we trust him, we gain everything promised in Christ. If someone believes and is mistaken, they have still lived a life shaped by hope, mercy, forgiveness and purpose. But if God exists and we never even seek him, we risk missing the greatest gift imaginable. Pascal wasn't trying to frighten people into belief. Rather, he asked a simple question: What have we really got to lose by seeking God? His idea became known as Pascal’s Wager and it is a challenge that still speaks today. We insure our homes against fires we hope will never happen. We wear seatbelts for accidents we hope will never occur. We save money for retirements that are decades away. Every day we make decisions based upon possibilities we cannot fully prove and the probabilities of them happening or not.
Yet when it comes to God, many feel that they must have every question answered before they will even begin the journey.
Faith asks something different. It asks: What if Christ really is who he says he is? What if the resurrection really did happen? What if eternal life is not fantasy but promise? Perhaps the greatest risk is not believing too much but refusing even to ask or to seek.
Hebrews tells us that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Things not seen. Paul says exactly the same thing here in Romans.
Hope concerns what is unseen. Faith reaches towards what is unseen. Both remind us that God's greatest gifts are often invisible before they become visible.
The seed beneath the soil. The child growing within the womb. The dawn before sunrise.
One day, however, hope itself will end, not because it failed, but because it will have been fulfilled. One day faith will be seen and hope will become reality.
We shall no longer hope for God's presence because we shall stand within it. We shall no longer hope for resurrection because we shall share in it. We shall no longer hope for the healing of creation because all things will have been made new. People sometimes ask me, "How can you believe in something you cannot see?" For me, faith has been a series of glimpses of God in moments of answered prayer, in worship, in the kindness of others, in the beauty of creation, in the quiet assurance of the Holy Spirit. None of these moments is the sort of proof that could be bottled up and displayed in a laboratory. Yet taken together they form a pattern that is impossible for me to ignore. They do not compel belief, but they continually invite it. As St Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, "Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we shall see face to face." Until then we live by trusting the glimpses God gives us.
Perhaps a better analogy might be the wind. We can’t see the wind, but it is known by its effect on other things. Grass rippling, trees swaying, dry leaves swirling. The wind is invisible but its presence is unmistakable
Our world often says, "Seeing is believing." The Gospel gently turns that around. Believing opens our eyes to fully seeing.
May we therefore not become discouraged because we cannot yet understand everything. Instead may we rejoice that God has invited us, not into a mathematical proof, but into a living relationship. May we continue to walk by faith and not by sight.
And may our hope remain steadfast until that day when faith really does become sight, hope is fulfilled, and we stand at last in the presence of the One who has been faithful all along. Amen.