Hope That Is In You

1 Peter 3:13-22

Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. The 1^st letter of Peter, like many of the pastoral letters and Pauline epistles, is written to a community that faces state sponsored religious persecution as well as social marginalization. When the author of this letter exhorts his listeners to always be ready to make their defense to anyone who demands it of them, he is talking about law-breaking, life-threatening testimony. He’s talking about martyrdom.

We read this passage in a country where our faith places us in a position of privilege, a significant majority. The likelihood that an agent of the state will demand an evangelistic accounting for the hope that is in each of us is slim; the likelihood that it will lead to our imprisonment and death is even slimmer. And yet this same exhortation still speaks to us across millennia, still reminds us that a calling has been placed on each of our lives and on our common life.

In our conversations in Bible Study, in our Lenten Study, at Tuesday Coffee Hours and vestry meetings and on Sunday mornings and all the conversations in between, we’ve talked a lot over the last year about evangelism. Nearly every time, at least one brave soul has shared the truth many of us can relate to- we do not know how to begin. We worry that we are not literate enough in the Scriptures. We fear we do not have the language, or know the theological terms, or have the public speaking skills to make our defense- that is to say, evangelize. Some of us have suffered greatly from the aggressive, manipulative, even downright abusive tactics of so-called evangelists in our lives, and shudder to think we might replicate that harm for someone else. We feel self-conscious, or uncomfortable, or we worry we might start a debate or a fight we’d rather not have. We may spend most or all of our time with fellow Christians, and thus do not feel it is really necessary to discuss the details of our faith with people who have already heard the Gospel for themselves. These are all fair reasons to hesitate, to question what it really means for us, in our lives, to be ready in the way that the First Letter of Peter assures us we must always be. But if we stop there, if we do not follow that train of thought and question what exactly our responsibility is, we risk closing ourselves off from our hope, from the calling to be witnesses of Christ.

That calling is always before us, and yet I think it must be a rare thing to find a Christian who is truly always ready. I know that I am not always ready. There are many moments when I am too busy, or too exhausted, or bad news weighs too heavily on my heart, and I do not stand ready to make my defense. There are days when cynicism and pessimism and disappointment in my fellow human beings makes it difficult to imagine convincing anyone, least of all myself, of the hope that is in me. There have been moments when the demand came, when the hope was needed, and my words failed me. There have been moments I was the person in the room everyone looked at, expecting me to speak for God, and all I had to offer was silence and tears. All I could do was hope that was enough, that the Holy Spirit was working beyond my limitations.

You and I may not be commanded to give our testimony nearly as often or with nearly the kind of stakes that the early Christians experienced, but our testimonies are still demanded of us whether we realize it or not. There are the obvious moments, when someone asks why we go to church or why we are baptized or why we pray. There are the moments that might make us uncomfortable, when a stranger or a neighbor or a family member asks us if we have been saved, if we have accepted Jesus into our hearts, if we have aligned ourselves to their particular understanding of Christianity. There are the painful and heavy moments, at bedsides and gravesides and in funeral homes and in front of the evening news or the morning paper, when someone asks how did this happen, how could this happen, how will we survive this. For as long as you call yourself a Christian, there will be people in your life who will look at you with the questions in their eyes and on their hearts and maybe sometimes even voiced from their lips. How can you hope, when the world is burning? How can you love, when people continue to be so unloving, so unlovely? How can you account for the way you keep your head up while the sky falls down around you? How have your tears not drowned that tiny flame within you? What is that thing that holds you together even when you fall apart? What is your hope? Where can I find it?

That hope is the core of who we are as Christians, the key to every other aspect of our life of faith. We tend to romanticize and sterilize hope, we make it warm and fuzzy and outcome-driven, something fleeting and marketable. To paraphrase a surprisingly impactful Tweet, “People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider’s webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair… she always rises for another go.” (@CrowsFault (Matthew)) If we are to truly always be ready to make our defense, if we are to account for the hope that is in us, this is what we have to remember about our hope. It is not a commodity, not something to be given and taken away. It is not always beautiful, and it is not always obvious. Hope is a man who made the world choosing not to harm his own creation, even as they led them to his death. Hope is an empty tomb and a woman running to tell an impossible story. Hope is a still small voice and tongues of fire and most often Hope is gentle nudges and hot tears and love that seems impossible. Hope is rough around the edges, and our accounting for it is too. You won’t do it perfectly. You’ve heard enough of my sermons by now to know for sure that I don’t do it perfectly either. But the Holy Spirit’s resources are inexhaustible, and our hope always gets up for another round. That’s the story we have to tell, the accounting that is demanded of us every day. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. That hope is in you. Share it whenever and however you can.