Sermon: Watch for the Hook

The American idea of “hope” is a concept that people use like a sweet jam, spread ever so lightly, over the bitter bread of injustice. We use sentimental language about the hope of the future as a way to ignore the injustice and oppression of the present.

If we want to be honest about Scripture, we will not participate in that brand of sentimentality, and be willing to look oppression, evil and sin square in the eye and say, “Yes. We have a problem here.”

But using human-made weapons like violence and power will never work. Throughout the Bible, there are stories of God using imperfect people to do God’s work. Today, God will use people like us and uses our weakness to make God’s power made known. Yes, there is hope. But we have to follow it up with prayerful action.