After listening to the evening news each day, it’s hard to deny that the world is a broken and hurting place. Last week we looked at one facet of that brokenness: illness and sickness. And yet the brokenness of the world extends beyond the heartbreak of illness and disease. One needs only a cursory knowledge of the events in Burma and Sudan to hear of the brokenness of both of those countries. In place of a just and fair government, the ruling regimes in these nations kill and imprison people simply to maintain their dictatorial power. Similarly, the news out of Iraq raises the specter of unceasing warfare which continues to claim the lives of Americans and Iraqis in the midst of a conflict that seems to know no end. One needs to listen only briefly to the reports coming out of China to hear how broken and hurting the environment is.

 Environmental degradation is so bad that many Olympic athletes are planning on limiting their presence and even not participating in certain events because of the radical physical risk they are put in by the local pollution. And right here in Michigan, home foreclosure rates continue to climb and local agencies like the Salvation Army find themselves stretched to the breaking point. Our world is broken and hurting. And yet today, both our Old Testament and Gospel readings speak of hope.

This Biblical hope is in no way naïve or sheltered from the heartbreak of life. On the contrary this is hope which is found in the midst of brokenness, in the midst of death, hope found in the very midst of hopelessness.

The people of Israel knew hopelessness. They had seen their nation utterly destroyed by the invasion of the Babylonian army in 586 BC. They had seen their cities ransacked, their families enslaved or killed. They had been forced to abandon their land and live as an oppressed and captive people in Babylon. Israel knew hopelessness. For a full two generations they lived as a nation of exiles underneath the tyrannical rule of an unjust king. And yet, in the midst of that forced exile, in the midst of what seemed like a hopeless situation Jeremiah spoke to the people of hope; hope based on and founded in God. Jeremiah told Israel that even in the midst of their suffering God was present. Even in the midst of a broken covenant relationship which had undergone countless acts of infidelity by Israel God was calling them to a New Covenant, a new life giving relationship. Their loving and always present God was calling them to new life and because of that call Jeremiah claimed that Israel should have hope.

This radical, unlikely, hope did not deny the past. It did not ignore pain and suffering. Instead it acknowledged the painful, broken reality of human life. At the same time this hope acknowledged God’s desire to bring forth new life and new hope even in the midst of despair. According to Jeremiah, God desired to begin anew, to write God’s life-giving law within Israel’s very being in such a profound and personal way that each and every person would know God deeply and intimately and thus be filled with hope.

Just as Jeremiah spoke of hope in the midst of a hopeless situation so too did Jesus. Jesus described a widow, someone with no means to work, no means to inherit wealth, someone who was completely and utterly dependant on others for a place to sleep, food to eat, and clothing to wear. This powerless woman went to the one person who was called to treat her with dignity and justice: a judge. Deuteronomy charged judges with the following responsibility, "Give the members of your community a fair hearing, and judge rightly between one person and another, whether citizen or resident alien. You must not be partial in judging: hear out the small and the great alike; you shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s." (Deut 1:16-17) And yet the judge Jesus speaks of had no regard for this calling. He feared neither God nor any person and he cared not for justice. And yet the widow, faced with this unjust, uncaring judge had hope even then. As a model of prayerful and hopeful living this amazing widow continued to seek after justice, to hold out hope, to live in such a way that acknowledged that God was with her even in the midst of the most trying and difficult of situations. And so the widow continued to come to the judge for judgment until finally he heard her case. For Christ, this poor widow embodied the very idea of hope in the midst of a hopeless situation. This widow demonstrated to those who would follow Christ how they were to live as people of undying hope.

One of the most basic parts of the Christian faith is that our God is a God of hope. Our God is a God who brings slaves to freedom, children to the barren, a home to the homeless alien, life to those who have died, life out of the very instrument of a torturous death. Our God is a God of hope and thus we are called to be people of hope.

In Jesus Christ we see that hope incarnate, living with and touching humanity. In Christ we see the hope of God that even as we reject God, even as we are blind to God, even as we attempt to control and limit God, even as we try to kill God, God continues to reach out in love and offer us life. Our God is a God of hope—hope which is present at all times, in the midst of evil and good, sadness and happiness, despair and joy. This is true in our readings, it is true in our history, it is true in our lives. God is with us at all times in the darkness and in the light. And this very presence is the reason that we are called to be, and are enabled to be, people of hope, not because the Christian life always easy or happy but because God is with us.

So my friends, we are a people of Jeremiah’s New Covenant. We are God’s beloved people and God will never leave us. As we see in Jesus, God walks with us the road of the world’s suffering. God cries with us, bleeds with us, and God continues to offer us hope. Hope that life will triumph over the brokenness of this world just as life triumphed over death on Easter. As Christians we encounter this hope each and every week that we come to this Table. Each time that we come forward to receive the body and blood of Christ we are confronted with the fact that God is with us whether we find ourselves in a time of joy or a time of despair. In this meal Christ meets us no matter where we are. In this meal God is calling out to us to become the very hope which we all long for. God is calling us to embodied Christ’s love and service to the world in our own lives. As one Anglican theologian said, what happens to the bread and the wine at the Eucharist doesn’t matter nearly as much as what happens to us. In the Eucharist we become the body and blood of Christ. As the Church we offer ourselves at the altar and pray that God transforms us into God’s incarnate hope within this broken and hurting world.

This call to be the hope of God in the midst of a hopeless world is seen throughout the Church’s history. This is the story of countless Christians, of Desmond Tutu who fought against the evils of apartheid, of Mother Teresa who in the midst of hopelessness, poverty and despair lived a life of hope and love. This is the story of St. Francis, the Apostles, St. Paul, Martin Luther King Jr., and each and every Christian who looks to Christ for their hope. This is the story of the Church, and it is our story because God’s promised New Covenant is here. God’s new Covenant has been enacted through Jesus Christ and through our entrance into his life through Baptism. In this New Covenant lives are repaired through God’s power, people are healed through prayer, people find wholeness in their friendships, in their families and in themselves even in the midst of the injustice and evil of this broken world. It is our calling, yes even you and me, broken and sinful, hurting and weak, to live into our baptism, to live into the New Covenant, to open ourselves to Christ’s power which brings wholeness out of despair, justice out of corrupt and callous judges, life out of death!