"Hope" is one of the most beautiful words in the English language. It evokes thoughts of sunrises that push back all kinds of darkness. It suggests birth and healing and promise and possibility. Hope makes us able to keep on going, or if we have fallen to get up and try again. Hope is a gift that our faith can give to us that will indeed meet the need of our hungry hearts. Hope is the essence of the Christian faith. The good news is that hope is there for us. But most of us have yet to learn to discover it and take hold of it. It may be that our scripture lesson for today can help us in that regard.

Our gospel reading for today tells the first part of the story of John the Baptist. John the Baptist was a popular preacher in his day. The text says people flocked to hear him and to be baptized by him. They came from Jerusalem and Judea and from the regions around the Jordan River.

That is really kind of surprising. The picture that the text gives of him does not suggest someone who would be a popular preacher. He was dressed like the greatest maverick in Israel's history, the prophet Elijah. He laced his message with large amounts of judgment and talk about what was wrong with the world. He even got on the case of Pilate, the governor -- not a very smart thing to do. He talked to people about their sins. The ritual he called people to go through was a version of the purification ritual used to bring Gentiles into the Jewish faith. You wouldn't think that would be very popular with people whose main source of self-esteem was being Jewish. Besides that, the road from Jerusalem to the Jordan River at Jericho was steep, rough, and dangerous. Yet people flocked to hear him. Why did they come?

They must have come because, when all things are considered, John preached a message of hope. His message was essentially the same as the one Jesus would soon be preaching: "Repent, the kingdom of heaven has come near."

Those were restless days in the history of Israel. The Roman army occupation could be harsh. The members of the patriot's movement, the Zealots, were always trying to stir up a revolution. The people had seen major highways lined with hundreds of bodies of rebels hung from crosses. It is hard to feel safe in that kind of an environment. Their own people were trying as best they could to cope with their situation. The Sadducees, the conservative party that held power in Jerusalem, were trying to keep peace with the Romans.

The Pharisees were trying to find stability in their religious faith, but they were going to such extremes with it that the demands they made upon the people were oppressive. The Essenes, the monastic group, were trying to withdraw from Jewish society into desert enclaves where they lived by an order so radical that they thought it would be a sin to go to the bathroom on the Sabbath. Certainly many people were restless and eager to discover a new possibility.

John came promising a new possibility. His preaching revived the people's long-cherished hope for the coming of the promised messiah.

What about us? Would we have gone out to hear John preaching his message of hope? Are we hungry for hope?

Frankly, some of us probably are not. Either we feel that we have all we want or we have some plan working that we think will meet our deepest needs as soon as we work it. Or maybe we have given up on any hope that anything can be much different from the way things are. Or maybe we just haven't thought about it.

There are times in our lives when we may feel a desperate need to recover hope. That may happen when a dream has died or we realize that something we really wanted is never going to happen. It may happen when someone has disappointed us or when we have disappointed ourselves. It may happen when our world seems to be falling apart. When the economy is failing or when everything seems to be shallow. When the political processes that we have trusted seem to be failing, or when the world seems to be full of violence and bent on self-destruction. In certain situations, we become aware of our need to recover hope. There are some of us who feel a deep need for some belief that things can be better, for ourselves, for those whom we love, and for our world.

The truth is that we need hope in our lives just as we need self-esteem, the ability to trust, or a belief that the sun will come up each morning. It is part of what makes life work. We need hope to give us a sense of expectancy that will make us want to get up in the morning and draw us forward into the living of life.

John tells us where to look for hope. Look to our belief that there is a God who loves us and to the belief that God is at work in our lives and in our world. It is strange that many of us may believe in God but do not let that belief shape our lives.

John reminded the people who came to hear him that Israel had always believed in a God who is at work to save. Their very understanding of who they were as a people was based on the memory that God had saved them from slavery in Egypt, and God had been there to reach out and save them again and again in all of the crisis times of their history. Their prophets had told them that the God who had saved them in the past would be there to save them in the future. Trusting that, the prophets promised the people that God would eventually send one who would be the savior of their nation. John reminded them of that promise. John urged them to take hold of that promise and to let it revive hope in them.

Our Christian faith gives us a similar affirmation. Jürgen Moltman, a theologian who has been teaching a theology of hope for half a century, wrote:

...for Christians hope is the power of resurrection from life's failures and defeats. It is the power of life's rebirth out of the shadow of death. It is the power for the new beginning at the point where guilt has made life impossible. The Christian hope is all of these things because it is spirit from the Spirit of the resurrection of the betrayed, maltreated, and forsaken Christ. Through his divine raising from the dead, his hope-less end became his new beginning. If we remember that, we shall not give ourselves up, but shall expect that in every end a new beginning lies hidden. (In the End -- The Beginning: The Life of Hope [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004])

The hope is there for us. We just need to take hold of it. We just need to claim it. It begins by remembering what we believe about God, then reminding ourselves that God comes to meet us in every new moment of life and that God is at work in our lives and in our world to save.

It would be a mistake to be too specific about our expectations. Some people make a list of things they hope for in life, much like a child making a list of things she wants for Christmas. Then these people assume that, by prayer, they can mobilize God to make this list happen. It is much better to approach life as the apostle Paul did, confident that "all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). We should all approach life in expectancy and openness, eager to see what God will do in our lives.

John warned the people who came to hear him that there are some right ways and some wrong ways to go to meet God's new possibility. The new possibility should be allowed to change our lives. John called the people to repent, that is, to be ready to change. When John suspected that some of the religious people were just going through the motions of claiming the hope, he scolded them and told them that they must bear fruit that will show they had repented. Their lives should show it. Learn all you can about the saving work God does in people's lives. Learn all you can about the shape of the new possibility God wants for us. Then be ready to enter into a life-shaping interaction with the God who comes to meet you in life. Open yourself to his love and take it in. Let hope bring you to life.

What does it mean to take hold of hope? What does that look like? Let me tell you a story. This is a fictional story made up of a composite of the experiences of some real people.

Bill was a middle-aged man with a wife and two teenage children and a job that he liked. He was a concerned person so he was active in his church and his political party in the hope of helping to make the world a better place. Life was good for Bill and he knew it. He had the grace to be grateful that so many fortunate people lack. Bill was a person of faith and he was able to see that God was giving him life as a good gift day by day. It was fairly easy for Bill to take hold of hope and meet life expectantly.

Then things changed. There was a routine medical examination with a surprising discovery, a biopsy, and an announcement: "Bill, you have cancer, one of the bad kinds, and you need to get it attended to right away." Suddenly Bill had more things to cope with than he was able to name. There was fear, anxiety for himself and for his family, and anger. Bill was wise enough to recognize those things and deal with them. It was no longer easy to take hold of hope. But Bill knew that God works to heal, both through the scientists and medical people and also through the capacity for healing that was at work in his body. Bill made an intentional decision to take hold of hope and to let hope, rather than the other things he was feeling, guide his life.

This time, there would be a cost to claiming hope. He would have to work with the healing processes. There would be physical pain, possible disfigurement, major financial costs, and enormous inconvenience. Lots of things would have to be reorganized in Bill's life. Hope was no longer easy for Bill. He began to make some practical reorganizations of his life in case he did not survive. He began to value things differently. He began to spend more quality time with his family. When he saw a bright blue sky, he paused to enjoy it. His hope began to focus more on the present than on the future. He did what needed to be done, because he chose hope.

In spite of all efforts to defeat the disease, the doctor eventually said, "Bill, we can't cure you. You have only about a year to live." Again, Bill felt himself being drawn toward the depths of anger, despair, and hopelessness. Bill was human. He spent some time dealing with those bitter experiences. Eventually, he again chose to take hold of hope. He did a lot of talking to himself. Bill instinctively hoped that something would happen to change things, but he knew better than to count on that. He began to intentionally make the most of each day. He began to make the practical preparations for the end of his life.

Drawing on his faith, he told himself that God would still be at work in the life of his family and that others would be able to do the important things he hoped to do for them. He told himself that God would still be at work in the world, and that since he believed the things he hoped to accomplish through his religious and political endeavors were right, they would eventually prevail.

He also told himself that the God who had given him life for years is eternal and will be there to give life beyond death. In these ways Bill took hold of hope and let it shape his life. He had never been a person who thought of his faith primarily as having to do with what would come after death, but now it was time to think about that. Bill began to gather up the aspects of his tradition that had to do with that and let them minister to him. He remembered passages from scripture: "Do not let your hearts be troubled... In my Father's house there are many dwelling places" (John 14:1-2). Nothing in the whole creation, not even death, "... will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:39). He began to remember those old songs that he used to think they sang too often: "Going home," "I'll fly away," "Tis grace that brought me safe thus far and grace will see me home," "Sing with all the saints in glory." Bill knew better than to take the words of those old songs literally, but he knew they came out of a witness of hope. He let them minister to him. He prepared to entrust himself to a hope that would take him beyond all that he had ever known.

This is a story about how one person might take hold of hope. Other stories could be told of how people coping with guilt, divorce, business failure, or many other life situations might take hold of hope. It sometimes has to be done very intentionally. It sometimes has to be a matter of choosing hope in spite of many things that would discourage. But it is the thing to do.

How might you go about taking hold of hope?

Jürgen Moltman said: "We will only become capable of new beginnings when we are prepared to let go of the things that torment us, and the things we lack. If we search for the new beginning, it will find us" (In the End -- The Beginning).