This coming Sunday ends our “Done by Hope” annual focus year. It seems hard to believe that we started this church year off in the calendar year 2020. Over the past year we have engaged quite a bit in our hopes.
The name “Done by Hope” came from a quote from Martin Luther. Luther said that “everything that is done in the world is done by hope.” Essentially he was noticing that in order to accomplish something, we first need to be able to envision it and then approach it with faith. In fact, the Lutheran Confessions even say “hope and faith cannot be separated in reality.” (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, V)
I would like to thank you for your hope this year and your faith. In a year when we very much needed it, you kept your faith and hopes for University Lutheran. You believed that God could do something great through this community situated here in Tallahassee on the campus of Florida State. Without your hopes and faith, we would not have been able to continue to operate through the difficulties of the pandemic and so many other challenges. This year has truly been “done by hope,” and those hopes that have been operating it have been yours as you have engaged with the hope that is offered to you in Jesus Christ.
When pressed, the Confessions do make this allowance, that “If anyone wants a distinction between faith and hope, we say that the object of hope is properly a future event, but that faith is concerned with future and present things.” (Apology V, again). As we look at the year gone past, I’m sure that we can see some of our hopes realized in today, other hopes maybe have to wait a little longer, and other hopes yet may need to be reexamined. Nonetheless, we are assured of a hope that we still have – a future event that we grasp by our faith, the event of the Resurrection. Let us continue our hopes into the next year and grasp them in the faith of this present moment!