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    Hard Times Sermons On Hope
    Hard Times Sermons On Hope
    Hard Times Sermons On Hope
    Ebook92 pages1 hour

    Hard Times Sermons On Hope

    By Donna Schaper

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    About this ebook

    One of the volumes of the popular Protestant Pulpit Exchange series, this volume focuses on the ways in which preachers can make use of Biblical passages to help listeners deal with hard times in their lives.  This universal issue is addressed in compassionate and helpful ways in this collection of sermons.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAbingdon Press
    Release dateSep 1, 2010
    ISBN9781426726477
    Hard Times Sermons On Hope
    Author

    Donna Schaper

    Donna Schaper serves as Senior Minister at Judson Memorial Church in New York City. She has also served churches in Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Arizona. She is the principal in a consulting firm called Bricks Without Straw, which shows not-for-profits how to raise energy and money and capacity, and has been involved with a series of turn-around congregations and a host of social-action issues. In addition to serving as pastor, she has written several books. Donna lives in New York, New York.

    Read more from Donna Schaper

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      Book preview

      Hard Times Sermons On Hope - Donna Schaper

      Hard Times

      BOOKS IN THE PROTESTANT PULPIT EXCHANGE

      Be My People: Sermons on the Ten Commandments

      Ross W. Marrs

      Be My Guest: Sermons on the Lord's Supper

      C. Thomas Hilton

      Believe in Me: Sermons on the Apostles' Creed

      James A. Harnish

      Fatal Attractions: Sermons on the Seven Deadly Sins

      William R. White

      What Are You Waiting For?

      Sermons on the Parables of Jesus

      Mark Trotter

      Ripe Life: Sermons on the Fruit of the Spirit

      C. Thomas Hilton

      Pack Up Your Troubles: Sermons on How to Trust in God

      Maxie Dunnam

      Image1

      Sermons on Hope

      Donna Schaper

      Image2

      Abingdon Press

      Nashville

      HARD TIMES: SERMONS ON HOPE

      Copyright © 1993 by Abingdon Press

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed in writing to Abingdon Press, 201 Eighth Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37203.

      This book is printed on recycled, acid-free paper.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Schaper, Donna.

      Hard times : sermons on hope / Donna Schaper.

      p. cm. — (Protestant pulpit exchange)

      ISBN 0-687-37559-2 (alk. paper)

      1. Hope—Religious aspects—Christianity—Sermons. 2. Sermons, American.

      I. Series.

      BV4638.S3253 1993

      234'.2—dc20

      93-4028

      CIP

      Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.

      Scripture quotations marked RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.

      Scripture quotations marked Moffatt are from The Bible: A New Translation by James Moffatt. Copyright © 1954 by James Moffatt.

      Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

      The sermon Hope for the Elder Brother is a revision of sermons originally published in Salt and Kairos magazines.

      93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 — 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

      To Hazel Harrup,

      who hoped enough

      to risk a lot at age eighty-six

      Contents

      Introduction

      1. Hope When Others Fail Us

      Matthew 4:1-11; Psalm 30:5

      2. Hope for the Elder Brother

      Luke 15:11-32

      3. Hope in Times of Recession

      Isaiah 30:20-21

      4. Hope the Right Size

      Exodus 3:1-14

      5. Hope Beyond the Hope in Violence

      Luke 15:11-32

      6. Hope for Acceptance

      Luke 15:1-10

      7. Hope for Love

      2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18

      8. Hope for Happiness

      Luke 16:1-13

      9. Hope for the Church

      2 Corinthians 4:5-7

      10. Hope in the Face of Death

      Luke 18:1-8

      11. Hope to Get High

      Acts 2:1-13

      Introduction

      Hope is the place we go when optimism fails. Right now the times are hard. Few people are optimistic about the economy or the environment or the culture: we fear for our jobs, for the ozone layer, for the manners of our children. Fear is the national pastime. Optimism is on vacation. The slate is cleared for hope.

      We are at a time of great cultural conversion, not great cultural catastrophe. Those of us who feel like we are stuck to moral flypaper—unable to fly until things settle down—are eager to awaken our hope, what the poet Emily Dickinson calls that thing with feathers.

      To those still seduced by the data, hope seems like a luxury. We misunderstand its relationship to optimism. Hope is not based in the evidence and is not damaged when the evidence disappears. Hope instead gets stronger in darker times. Hope is less the belief that things are going to turn out well than it is the confidence that, no matter how things turn out, they still make sense and carry meaning. Hope is believing in God's promises more than we are seduced by those of the world.

      Because hope is not based on the facts, it can actually thrive in the face of genuine danger. The child stuck at the bottom of a well is not optimistic; she hopes. The adult who assesses the possibility of nuclear danger realistically does not indulge fantasy; he hopes. Likewise the man who has lost his job reads the classified ads with hope, not wishful thinking. Hope is that thing that gets people who have lost their reason to get out of bed in the morning, out of bed in the morning. Hope thrives in hard times.

      Christopher Lasch, the historian, says it well when he says:

      We need to recover a more vigorous form of hope, which trusts life without denying its tragic character or attempting to explain away tragedy as cultural lag. We can fully appreciate this kind of hope only now that the other kind, better described as optimism, has fully revealed itself as a higher form of wishful thinking. (The True and Only Heaven [New York: W. W. Norton, 1991], p. 37)

      What follows is an examination of hope from the perspective of a few selected biblical texts. There are people who say that the entire theme of the gospel is hope, and they are probably right. The Old Testament sees hope as waiting for the Messiah and the promised time. For good examples, see Psalm 62:1-5 or 130:1-6 or probably the most famous one, Isaiah 40:29-31. The New Testament sees it as living in the realized promised time—as though it were already here—through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This gospel is at least the invitation—what Douglas John Hall calls the permission and the command—to enter trouble hopefully. It is the way we live in God's future and not the world's present, without abandoning the world to itself. We wait on the Lord when we can't see or feel or acknowledge the Lord—and we also watch the Lord at work in a present that appears, at first glance, not to be a realized promise.

      Asked by a younger woman when she could expect to live with the degree of courage and insight that the older woman was living by, the old woman responded, When you have lost as many things as I have and found them all again (Susan O'Halloran and Susan Delotte, The Woman Who Lost Her Heart [San Diego: Luramedia, 1992], p. 81). Hope waits through the loss. Hope lives as though the loss were simply the first meaning of the larger meaning revealed. Hope looks for the Christ in the crucifixion.

      By the way they live, most people fuel their belief in the terror of living. It takes great courage to finish your life larger than when you began. It requires deep trust to take action, to open and to grow (The Woman Who Lost Her Heart, p. 86). The wise woman who helped the girl find her heart speaks again. Especially when we are called to live in hard

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